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The latest culture as recommended by our staff

To become an extremist, hang around with people you agree with

Cass Sunstein — co-author of the hugely influential Nudge and an adviser to President Obama — unveils his new theory of ‘group polarisation’, and explains why, when like-minded people spend time with each other, their views become not only more confident but more extreme

Who would have thought a herd could moonwalk?

The acclaimed web theorist, Mark Earls, says that the death of Michael Jackson unleashed the extremes of collective action: mass mourning and sick jokes

A splendid lunch with Jimmy McNulty

In the first of an occasional series of interviews over meals, Deborah Ross talks to Dominic West about The Wire and the challenge to an Old Etonian of playing an American cop

Michael Jackson Notebook

The news cycle of a dead celebrity is a curious thing.

Labour’s U-turn on social housing for non-immigrants is welcome but too late

Rod Liddle says that metropolitan liberal ideology is too deeply ingrained in local councils, social services and the judiciary to be overturned by one panic measure driven by Labour’s sudden fear of the BNP

What I heard at J.D. Salinger’s doorstep

Tom Leonard makes a pilgrimage to Cornish, New Hampshire, where the 90-year-old author of The Catcher in the Rye leads a reclusive existence with his third wife

I am ready to go to prison for hamster murder

James Delingpole is threatened by the RSPCA after releasing a savage pet into the park, and marvels at another encroachment on freedom of speech by the nanny state

Incompetence is fine: but being offensive is sure to get you sacked

Rod Liddle says that something has gone wrong when 15 South Lanarkshire social workers are sacked over a dodgy Gary Glitter joke while none of their counterparts in Haringey has even been reprimanded over the ‘Baby P’ case

A pilgrim’s progress for the 21st century

Mary Wakefield talks to the author William P. Young, whose self-published religious novel has astounded the publishing world and sold nearly two million copies

Shared Opinion

It didn’t occur to Cameron that White Van Man might be trying to pat him on the back