Showing results by narrator "Peter Marinker" in All Categories

Why policies should be based on careful consideration of their costs and benefits rather than on intuition, popular opinion, interest groups and anecdotes. Opinions on government policies vary widely. Some people feel passionately about the child obesity epidemic and support government regulation of sugary drinks. Others argue that people should be able to eat and drink whatever they like. Some people are alarmed about climate change and favour aggressive government intervention. Others don't feel the need for any sort of climate regulation.

Roderick Hudson is one of Henry James's first novels.

Originally published in 1875 as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly, it traces the development of the title character, a sculptor. Funded by the wealthy Rowland Mallet, Roderick Hudson travels from America to Rome, where he becomes the talk of the city. He soon finds that Europe tests him in ways he had not anticipated, both as an artist and as a man.

Alien Abduction: Some 2,740 US citizens claim to have been abducted by aliens each day. That's an incredible 2% of a population of 300 million. Surely statistically some of these cases must bear truths? Area 51: It is rumoured that Area 51 houses the UFO disc found at Roswell, as well as other crashed alien spaceships. What is the truth? The Babylonian Brotherhood: Twelve-foot lizards from the planet Draco have colonized Earth and seek world domination.

The Dead Sea Scrolls: Why was it so important these documents should not be seen? What ancient historical secret was so big that it had to be buried forever? Freemasons: Is this group of seemingly innocuous middle-aged men linked to almost every evil perpetuated? Are they really just an eccentric bunch of patriarchal do-gooders, or are they in fact sinister agents of satanic forces? The Gunpowder Plot: Why is it that we reserve particular scorn for Guy Fawkes when there were six other men involved?

The world is never done catching up with Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), the author of Walden, “Civil Disobedience,” and other classics. A prophet of environmentalism and vegetarianism, an abolitionist, and a critic of materialism and technology, Thoreau even seems to have anticipated a world of social distancing in his famous experiment at Walden Pond. In Now Comes Good Sailing, 27 of today’s leading writers offer wide-ranging original pieces exploring how Thoreau has influenced and inspired them.

"To inherit a great fortune. To inherit a great misfortune." These words, from Nathaniel Hawthorne's notebook, neatly encapsulate the theme of The House of the Seven Gables - that of a family whose fortunes are poisoned by its past misdeeds.

Our ability to make choices is fundamental to our sense of ourselves as human beings and essential to the political values of freedom-protecting nations. Whom we love; where we work; how we spend our time; what we buy: such choices define us in the eyes of ourselves and others, and much blood and ink has been spilt to establish and protect our rights to make them freely. Choice can also be a burden. Our cognitive capacity to research and make the best decisions is limited, so every active choice comes at a cost. 

Since America's founding, the US Supreme Court had issued a vast number of decisions on a staggeringly wide variety of subjects. And hundreds of judges have occupied the bench. Yet as Cass R. Sunstein, the eminent legal scholar and best-selling co-author of Nudge, points out, almost every one of the Justices fits into a very small number of types regardless of ideology: the hero, the soldier, the minimalist, and the mute.