Marilyn Monroe: the star among stars who brought ‘new radiance’ to the concept of celebrity. Photograph: SAM SHAW / Rex Features Academics today are required to be popular: new funding criteria for universities measure the “impact” of their staff. What better way for academics... 

Twelve-year-old Chloe Moretz in the horror remake Let Me In In the last few weeks you can’t have failed to be aware of Will Smith’s pint-sized 12-year-old son Jaden; he’s been unleashed at film premieres from Beijing to Berlin. Sometimes he’s even worn a little Michael... 

Ayahuasca is traditionally taken in the presence of a shaman. Photograph: Reuters Have this generation’s crop of hippy-dippy indie artists found a new drug to match their music? Devendra Banhart, the Bees and Klaxons have in recent weeks namechecked ayahuasca, a so-called “plant... 

The trouble with Qwerty … Stephen Fry. Photograph: Richard Young / Rex Features Fry’s English Delight: The Trial of Qwerty (Radio 4) was an entertaining romp through the keyboard’s history. But it didn’t need the naff mock-trial aspect – played in the many trails... 

Born again … a detail from a poster of It’s a Wonderful Life. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive At home or hospitalised? With drugs or without? At the movies, there are as many types of rebirth as there are regular birth. There’s the fundamental lifestyle shift, where a finely-balanced...