By Barry Newman Barry is a retired intensive care consultant. He leads the school visiting team at Dorset Humanists and has spoken to thousands of students about humanism in schools across the Bournemouth area. In this edited transcript of a recent talk for Dorset Humanists, he explores one of the most familiar yet elusive features of human life. Drawing on medicine, philosophy and cultural history, he asks why we laugh, what humour does for us socially, and where its ethical boundaries lie....

From Barry Newman The opposing views that David Warden and John Baxter have expressed in their recent articles in this publication on the appalling situation in Gaza are in my view both deeply flawed. Both contributors have indulged in sifting and selecting historical ‘facts’ – usually in themselves challengeable or open to interpretation – to justify and defend opposing moral positions on the recent events in that part of the world. Both have raided a vast and hugely complex history to...

By Barry Newman Barry is a retired intensive care consultant and a Humanists UK accredited schools speaker. In this article, he outlines...