Tom Phillips is a writer and journalist. He’s the author of four books: Conspiracy: A History of B*llocks Theories, and How Not to Fall For Them (2022, with Jonn Elledge), Truth: A Brief History of Total Bullsh*t (2019), and the internationally bestselling Humans: A Brief History of How We F*cked It All Up (2018) . The fourth book is a history of the apocalypse, A Brief History of the End of the F*cking World, and will be published in February 2025.

As a journalist, he worked as the editor of Full Fact and as editorial director and senior writer for BuzzFeed UK (RIP).


Books

A book about the long, strange history of conspiracy theories – and how many that cause havoc today have their origins centuries ago.

“Uproarious… [Phillips and Elledge] pair the abundant good humour of this book with a warning about the corrosive effects of conspiracy theories” – The Times Book of the Week


Newsletter

Sign up for Tom’s email newsletter, including updates on work in progress, the next book, new projects, and anything else that seems worth emailing about. (Read back issues here.)


(Powered by Buttondown.)


Elsewhere

You can mostly find me on Bluesky, and (much more infrequently) on Instagram & Threads. I tried Mastodon but it didn’t really take tbh. If you want to get in touch about something specific then take a look at my contact page.