Into the Volcano

Despite Andy Burnham’s declared ambition to end forty years of neoliberalism, the first budget under his leadership was limited to cautious measures focused on cost-of-living pressures. What lies behind this inertia, and the apparent resistance of the British state to any transfo ...  عرض المزيد

According to their boosters, prediction markets such as Polymarket or Kalshi are ‘global truth machines’; their detractors say they’re just a glorified form of gambling. Either way, they’re zero-sum games with, as Geoff Mann put it recently in the LRB, ‘few winners and many loser ...  عرض المزيد

The Romantics were obsessed with Mount Vesuvius, climbing up to peer into its bubbling depths, and even using it as a metaphor to describe some of the tumultuous changes revolution was wreaking in Europe at the time. Rhiannon Davies spoke to John Brewer to learn more about this f ...  عرض المزيد

In 79 CE, the Roman citizens of Pompeii and Herculaneum believed that Mount Vesuvius was an extinct volcano. That is, until the mountain exploded—filling the sky with debris. Meanwhile, a military commander embarked on a daring rescue mission to the volcano’s shores. Learn more a ...  عرض المزيد

What happens when a volcano erupts just six miles from a bustling city? In 79 AD Mount Vesuvius is regarded as a source of bounty by those who live in its shadow. But one of history’s most infamous natural disasters soon unfolds. How did the lucky ones make their escape? And how ...  عرض المزيد