Society

We all know the nursery rhyme about “this little piggy”: one little piggy went to market, one little piggy stayed home and so on. A modern rewrite could also include the little piggy that got injected into a rich man’s body. The “super-rich” are using pigs brains to try and “biohack their way to immortality,” according to a report in the Daily Telegraph. Wealthy coffin-dodgers have regular injections of Cerebrolysin, a mixture of compounds taken from pig brains, to boost their brain health. Wealthy coffin-dodgers have regular injections of Cerebrolysin, taken from pig brains, to boost their health This isn’t the only way that pigs are being exploited in modern

In recent years the study of human ancient DNA – extracted from excavated remains rather than living people – has become so popular that scientists are trying to clamp down on the number of samples taken from long-dead individuals. The research keeps coming, however, and it can be hard to keep up. One recent project might have passed unnoticed outside of its specialism, but for one thing: Silvia Ghirotto, one of the scientists, told a journalist the people who built Stonehenge probably had ‘dark features’. In other words, they were black. The new study, from the University of Ferrara and published in the online journal bioRxiv, analysed ancient DNA from 348

It is always nice to have a personal connection to the Oscars, however slight and fleeting it might be; hearing Conclave screenwriter give a shout-out to my daughter’s godfather Simon during his acceptance speech for Best Adapted Screenplay was a deeply pleasurable moment. Yet this joyful touch aside, what had initially looked like one of the most wide-open Academy Awards in history eventually proved to be nothing of the kind. Indie director Sean Baker’s twisted romantic comedy Anora, about a sex worker who marries an oligarch’s son, had won the Palme d’Or at Cannes last year. After various twists and turns, it asserted its frontrunner status once again, taking four

Is Ireland a powder keg of racist, anti-immigrant sentiment, ready to explode at any moment? That was certainly the dominant narrative after a night of rioting in Dublin city centre in November 2023 that left a trail of destruction along O’Connell Street. On that occasion, politicians and elements of the Irish media were quick to blame far-right provocateurs for stoking tension and this was used as a convenient pretext to stress the importance of introducing the strongest hate speech legislation in the EU. Yet when it emerged that many of the Dublin rioters may themselves have been from an immigrant background, the politicians swiftly moved on to other matters. But while TDs