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Sam Haselby

Senior Editor, Aeon+Psyche

Sam is a historian of early America with a particular interest in religion and politics. He was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and has been a faculty member at the American University of Beirut, the American University in Cairo and at Columbia University in New York City. He was a Senior Executive Producer at Al Jazeera America and is the author of The Origins of American Religious Nationalism (paperback, 2016). @samhaselby

Written by Sam Haselby

Edited by Sam Haselby

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Economics

Who bears the risk?

Under the guise of empowerment and freedom, politicians and business are offloading lifethreatening risk to individuals

Suzanne Schneider

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Political philosophy

The battles over beginnings

Niccolò Machiavelli’s profound insights about the violent origins of political societies help us understand the world today

David Polansky

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Religion

Inventing Hindu supremacy

Vinayak Savarkar ridiculed Gandhi, preaching that anti-Muslim violence was the only means to unite India into a nation

Mihir Dalal

A footballer in the Manchester United red strip runs past cheering fans in the stadium
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Sports and games

The moral risks of fandom

Players, coaches and team owners sometimes do terrible things. What, if anything, should their fans do about that?

Jake Wojtowicz & Alfred Archer

Close-up of an orange Mercedes car with the focus on the front tyre, which is inscribed with ‘In Crypto We Trust’
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Economics

The cruelty of crypto

Selling itself as the new American dream, crypto exposes the vulnerable to fraud and scams, and loads risk onto the poor

Rachel O’Dwyer

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History

The mythos of leadership

How the biblical King David and Machiavelli’s Prince can help us understand the dominant view of leaders as individualists

Moshik Temkin

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Global history

One ship, many stories

How a single, unglamorous, workaday merchant vessel tells the history of the 19th-century world in many violent chapters

Boyd Cothran & Adrian Shubert

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Global history

Reconstructed hemisphere

In the 19th century, civil wars tore apart the US, Mexico and Argentina. Then came democracy’s fight against reaction

Evan C Rothera

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Global history

The Asian world order

Before modern Europe existed there was a grand, interconnected political world, rich in scientific and artistic exchange

Ayşe Zarakol

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History of science

The missing conversation

To the detriment of the public, scientists and historians don’t engage with one another. They must begin a new dialogue

Lorraine Daston & Peter Harrison

Men are seen in a nondescript office type rooma against sunlight streaming through the window, their hands raised in devotion
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Religion

Indomitable Sufis

Once a centre of Afghan culture, Sufism seems to have disappeared in the maelstrom of war and upheaval. But still it survives

Annika Schmeding

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Stories and literature

Saved by Infinite Jest

Bereft and suicidal, I lay on my sofa. Only David Foster Wallace’s novel kept me tethered to life, and still does

Mala Chatterjee