Our prosperous lives depend on activities that damage the planet

Climate campaigners should not ignore culpable industries other than oil and gas

Fiddler on the Hoof – Frank McNally on the making of a Chicago betting tycoon, ‘Big Jim’ O’Leary

How best to persuade people who do not accept scientific consensus

Since emotion plays a large part in motivating those who reject the consensus, then science communicators should also use emotion in making their case

Richard Ford, Joyce Carol Oates, David Hare and more on the rise of Donald Trump

A selection of writers pick the books that best make sense of the US election, and the ones that predicted the rise of a Trump-style candidate

Kathy Sheridan: Let’s hear it for the political U-turn

Why has changing your mind received such a bad rap? Some blame Margaret Thatcher

US poultry workers forced to wear nappies, report claims

Oxfam America says employees at largest producers are denied bathroom breaks

Eamonn McCann: Bernie Sanders’s big problem is his own party

Despite being far from the hard leftist portrayed in sections of the US media, Sanders does represent something different

Paul Thomas Anderson on adapting Pynchon, directing Day-Lewis and keeping the melancholy at bay

The director of ‘Inherent Vice’ sits down with Donald Clarke to discuss the pressure of being called ‘America’s greatest film-maker’

Is Irish literature too local to have philosophical heft?

In broader European and American literature, it is easier to find genuine marriages of philosophy and fiction

Will Davos make any difference to global inequalities?

The Accursed, by Joyce Carol Oates

The hothouse atmosphere of Princeton proves a perfect setting for real-life historical figures to get some gothic surprises