The Joy of Six 1295

"Any pleasure I may take in the distinction of the honour of an FRS is diminished by the fact it is shared with someone who appears to be modeling himself on a Bond villain, a man who has immeasurable wealth and power which he will use to threaten scientists who disagree with him." Dorothy Bishop explains her decision to resign as a Fellow of the Royal Society - she's talking about Elon Musk, of course.

Jim Sleeper uncovers the Classical roots of the US Constitution: "The founders anticipated someone like Trump partly because they’d been reading Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which was hot off the presses in the 1770s. We should read Gibbon now, too, paying close attention to his account of how the Roman republic slipped into tyranny when powerful men had seduced or intimidated its citizens so that they became a stampeding mob, hungry for bread and circuses."

Amy-Jane Beer is excited by the rewilding project at Castle Howard: "While most authorised beaver reintroductions in the UK have been in small enclosures, here the plan is to give them 450 acres to work with, alongside pigs and large grazers that will churn and prune and trample and further invigorate ecological processes. I cannot wait to see it."

During the Cold War, philosophers worked together to aid dissidents behind the Iron Curtain. Cheryl Misak was part of a movement that included both Jacques Derrida and Roger Scruton.

 "Wicked makes its cinematic premiere at an awkward time, so soon after so many American voters acted against virtually every moral idea the production unsubtly espouses," says Luke Buckmaster.

Tim Rolls on the day in 1966 that Bobby Tambling scored five goals at Villa Park: "Looking at the TV footage a couple of things strike home. The quality of Chelsea’s accurate, incisive passing (particularly Osgood and Cooke) and speedy breaks, and the sheer inability of the home players to shut down their breaking opponents."