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The F-Word
Pop & Politics. Seen through feminist-tinted glasses.
Including Feminist Fashion Statements™, a moving speech on race, and an invitation to be weird.
The German media love their “Mutti” Merkel. That’s not only stupid, but also disrespectful.
Democracy, updated
Moving from ancient Greece’s agoras to Silicon Valley’s incubators, our democracy could use some entrepreneurial spirit and passion for innovation. But twiddling the knobs of our society is neither straightforward nor without risk.
The nation state is the single most important source of identification in our societies. The Internet is not the first to challenge its concept, but it's probably the most successful.
The Internet as we know it has come under threat. As governments and large corporations poise themselves to take control, the question is: What can we as individual users do?
Instead of adapting our democracy to new circumstances and insights, we’re trying to organize it with the 1989 Game Boy because we use the 2014 iPad to watch cat videos.
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"There are some who are in darkness / And the others are in light / And you see the ones in brightness / Those in darkness drop from sight." (B. Brecht)
It takes significant resources and good lawyers to do some of the best public interest journalism. Traditional media organizations are not the only entities capable of providing this service, but they remain uniquely positioned to do so.
The Japanese monster “Godzilla“ once anticipated the fears and risks of a whole century. Who could fill its shoes?
Despite all warnings, it took an infection on American soil for the West to respond to Ebola. The virus is much more than just a medical challenge.
Berlin Bears
Stories, people and impressions from the Berlin International Film Festival ("Berlinale").
With “Body”, Małgorzata Szumowska succeeded in making a small, touching movie about how we use our bodies to handle certain things.
Sebastian Schipper’s “Victoria” is a stunner, a breathless Berlin tour-de-force.
Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay face their past as a married couple in “45 Years”.
The Berlinale’s opening film “Nobody Wants The Night”, despite a spectacular cast and gorgeous cinematography, turned out rather pale.
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What decisions would we make if we deliberated carefully about public policy? Alexander Görlach sat down with Stanford's James Fishkin to discuss deliberative democracy, parliamentary discontent, and the future of the two-party system.
For many Europeans the massacre in Arizona is another evidence that political violence is spreading in the United States but this unfortunate event was the deed of a mentally ill person, not a political activist. There is no evidence of an increasing political extremism tearing America apart. Using
The US and Russia don't agree on much - but they are both keen to develop a good relationship with India. How do we know? Look at the arms trade.
More than 50 percent of the world's population now live in cities – and there is no end of urbanization in sight. Harvard economist Edward Glaeser believes urbanization to be a solution to many unanswered problems: pollution, depression and a lack of creativity. He spoke with Lars Mensel about the
Contrary to the mantras repeated by the press, HIV infections are not increasing. We need to move away from activist scare tactics and towards complex risk management strategies.
Nick Bostrom directs the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. He talked with Martin Eiermann about existential risks, genetic enhancements and the importance of ethical discourses about technological progress.