When I first started studying language policy, I thought I knew where it came from, how it worked, and why it mattered. In my view at the time, language policy was about national politicians trying to...
A quick Internet search reveals various Truth About books: on nutrition, cancer, Covid, vinyl records, lies, …, to name a few. But whose truth should we believe, learn about, or invest precious time...
After a hundred years, the field of quantum mechanics still has much to cause us to ponder. Nevertheless, science has progressed, and we know more than we used to know. Among the things that have...
Have we reached a plateau in our understanding of corruption? I believe so. It’s time to push the boundaries of this discourse, moving what is currently at the periphery of the debate to the forefront...
Navigating Communication with Seriously Ill Patients, Balancing Honesty with Empathy and Hope – The VitalTalk Method is a book written for all clinicians who want to communicate better with seriously...
When I tell anyone what I study, people (even sometimes other academics) think it’s weird, distasteful, or just arcane. If the Indigenous population of the Americas is often seen as an “other,”...
In February 1946, the Indian nationalist leader Narendra Deva (1889-1956), who had just spent three long years being held in prison at Ahmednagar Fort by British authorities, published a short essay on...
2024 promises to be a year of decision for democracies worldwide, with important elections scheduled in Taiwan, Venezuela, Mexico, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Several of these elections...
Arthur C. Clarke famously stated that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Most of us have experienced this law with respect to the latest iterations of large language...
A page from the “Negroes” installment of Ilf and Petrov’s “American Photographs” showing a smiling young dancer; a man on the banks of the Mississippi River in New Orleans; and the marquee...
Most people have some dissatisfaction or concern about body weight, fatness, or obesity, either personally or professionally. I wrote ’Understanding Obesity’ out of a dissatisfaction with the dominant...
As I wrote my book Improving University Mental Health, the commonest question people asked was ‘who is the intended audience?’ If you are reading these words, then the answer is ‘you...