JUDAS

 The Covid-19 pandemic has had a dramatic and devastating effect on the British education system. Forced into our homes, under lock and key, we had little to do but sit with our own thoughts and somehow find the self-motivation to learn. It’s something that all British schoolchildren have had to endure by now, and it’s not to be laughed at, the lockdowns have had an unpredictably massive effect on our educational experience, and I don’t doubt I’m worse off for it. I felt the effects of the pandemic first-hand, as did my peers.  The first lockdown was a brutal and wholly unforgiving period for me, made to hop on Zoom once a day to endure a few hours of technical difficulties. With no motivation to continue, and no sight of light at the end of the tunnel, it was so easy for me to just disconnect and dissociate from the hellish monotony my life had become.  The second lockdown was slightly better, but it was still a vicious cycle of boredom, disappointment, and an...

It ain't what you don't know that gets you in trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so. Although Mark Twain’s quote holds up to the SVB collapse as it did in 2007 and to an extent the recent failure of Credit Suisse, a Swiss investment bank -, don’t be so sure that we are going to experience another rerun of ‘The Big Short’ - yet. The S&P 500 is up 6.4% since the failure of the bank and current moods are high. However, what does this mean for the average person in the US or UK and where did this instability in the banking sector start?      The Apple HQ in Silicon Valley. To answer these questions we have to go back to the Obama administration in 2010. When President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Act, a reform that would subject nearly all banks to stricter regulation as an attempt to reduce poor business practices and overly-risky lending that caused the 2008 recession. However, some of these reforms were rolled back by the Trump Administration in 2018...

Emma Goldman was a Russian-American Jew who lived during a period of great social and political upheaval. She was a radical thinker and a fierce advocate for individual liberty and social justice, and her work in feminism remains influential today. Born in 1869 in what is now Lithuania, Goldman emigrated to the United States in 1885 and quickly became involved in the anarchist movement. She was a prolific writer and a charismatic speaker, and she used her platform to promote ideas that were considered radical and dangerous at the time, such as free love, birth control, and workers' rights.  Goldman's identity as a Russian-American Jew played a significant role in shaping her worldview and her activism. She experienced first-hand the anti-Semitic violence and oppression that was rampant in Russia, and she saw how Jews were marginalized and discriminated against in the United States as well. This fuelled her commitment to fighting all forms of oppression and injustice, and it led...

When we imagine life in the classical period, especially the most notable discoveries of the time, we often imagine the illustrious men of the time - their contributions to science, philosophy, and the arts. However, one woman stands out as a firebrand for intelligent ancient women and broke the patriarchial mold to make her mark on history - Hypatia.  Hypatia was born in Alexandria, in Eygpt, in around 370 CE. She was the daughter of Theon, a distinguished scholar who taught mathematics at Alexandria. It was from her father that Hypatia discovered her passion for learning, and sought to master multiple disciplines. Mathematics, astronomy, history, philosophy, geometry: Hypatia learned them all under her father's tutelage, and was a natural. Her growing reputation as a woman of science lead her reputation to almost separate from her father's, a concept unheard of in ancient Egypt.  An illustration of the death of Hypatia at the hands of her accusers.  Hypatia's achieveme...

Born as Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana in 1648, Juana is the reason I renamed my 'Ancient Women of Power' series to the 'Historical Women of Power' series. Despite being born far from the classical period, her feminism and strikingly modern thought were too inspirational not to include.  She was born in New Spain, Mexico, to descendants of Spanish immigrants. Despite her link to the noble Spanish, she seemed destined for a middle-class life, as she was born out of wedlock. Her father, a Spanish military officer, left her mother to raise Juana and her sisters alone. Despite her illiteracy and Mexican society's misogyny, Juana's mother successfully ran one of her father's estates and was determined on educating her children in the way she never was. It was perhaps her mother's revolutionary ideas about a woman's role in society that inspired Juana to pursue a life in scholarship.  A painting of Sor Juana, rocking what I believed were micr...

It's 500 BCE, and the sun is shining over Delphi, the seat of the Oracle of Apollo. According to the legend, Delphi was founded when Zeus sent out two eagles to the east and west. The eagles were meant to meet at the navel of the world, and they met at Delphi - the true centre of the world. Zeus marked the spot with a sacred stone, and the place was thereafter known as the centre of the world. Later, Apollo slayed his chthonic enemy - Python, the great snake - at Delphi, and the legends said that when the Python was slain, its body fell deep into the earth, its smoking body sending fumes through chasms in the earth.  The oracle sat upon her tripod in John Collier’s The Priestess of Delphi, 1891 Apollo, after saying the Python, took over the snake's Temple and Oracle in Delphi. The Oracle was a blameless woman selected from the local people, who would give advice from Apollo. Sitting above one of the city's chasms on a tripod, inhaling the fumes of Apollo's slain enemy, ...