Going Viral

Return of the winter flu blues

Talk of “super flu” may be overblown but the surge in respiratory infections this winter has worrying parallels with a pandemic 135 years ago.

Dec 16 • Mark Honigsbaum

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November 2025

Lockdown Redux

Five years on from Covid-19, there can be little doubt that lockdowns were a disaster. But why is it that critics find it so difficult to accept that by…

Nov 23 • Mark Honigsbaum

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The President and the Madman

The new Netflix miniseries "Death by Lightning", based on the 1881 assassination of president James Garfield by a deranged office seeker, is highly…

Nov 11 • Mark Honigsbaum

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September 2025

The End of the End.

This weekend I kept my last promise to my beloved goldendoodle, scattering his ashes in the place he was happiest: a boat cove in West Penwith looking…

Sep 28 • Mark Honigsbaum

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Disease X Redux

A new BBC documentary meets the scientists working to identify the next pandemic pathogen. But the best defence lies in bolstering health capacities in…

Sep 23 • Mark Honigsbaum

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Meridian time

The shooting of Charlie Kirk could have come straight out of the pages of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. The question is, have we reached peak…

Sep 17 • Mark Honigsbaum

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Murphy’s Gift

What the death of my beloved goldendoodle taught me about empathy and the dangers of spending too much time online.

Sep 14 • Mark Honigsbaum

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August 2025

The Green Death

Today, parakeets are a common sight in public parks. But in 1930 the birds sparked a worldwide panic when it was discovered their faeces contained a…

Aug 17 • Mark Honigsbaum

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July 2025

When tears ran down her face...

We may never know what sparked Rachel Reeves's visible anguish in the House of Commons on Wednesday but the Chancellor's distress is likely to be…

Jul 3 • Mark Honigsbaum

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Hate and the limits of empathy

Whether or not the British rapper Bobby Vylan's call for"death to the IDF" at Glastonbury constituted hate speech, the crowd's reflexive adoption of his…

Jul 1 • Mark Honigsbaum

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June 2025

Displaying AIDS, Remembering pandemics.

The UK AIDS Quilt is the nearest thing we have to a memorial to the pandemic. All the more pity then that after a rare appearance at Tate Modern it has…

Jun 17 • Mark Honigsbaum

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The Empathy Wars

How did we become so divided? For an answer, look no further than the way that empathy has been weaponized by both the left and right.

Jun 14 • Mark Honigsbaum

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