This year’s Bristol Radical History Festival focused on the persistent threats of racism, xenophobia and, of course, our radical collective resistance to it across Ireland and Britain, reports LYNNE WALSH

THE world is in free-fall. This seems obvious enough in a world in which billionaires have collectively got richer by $3.9 trillion during a pandemic, exceeding by $0.2 trn the global combined wage income lost by workers in the same time.
However, beyond the inability of governments to regulate capital, the Earth itself is falling towards the Sun, always “overshooting” but being pulled constantly down in a way that creates its orbit.
This is the effect of gravity, the force that keeps us stuck on Earth, the Earth spinning round the Sun, and the Sun moving through space as part of an enormous galaxy.

A maverick’s self-inflicted snake bites could unlock breakthrough treatments – but they also reveal deeper tensions between noble scientific curiosity and cold corporate callousness, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
Science has always been mixed up with money and power, but as a decorative facade for megayachts, it risks leaving reality behind altogether, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT

