Cathy O’Neil: ‘Big tech makes use of shame to profit from our interactions’
The mathematician and author talks about the exploitation of our feelings, cancel culture, and why she believes JK Rowling is an example of ‘punching-down shame’Cathy O’Neil is a writer, a...
View ArticleGrounding by Lulah Ellender review – a literary hymn to gardening
Recounting a summer spent tending her garden under threat of eviction, the writer’s exploration of the appeal of gardens ranges far and wideGardens knit us into the cycles of life: every winter is a...
View ArticleDr Suzie Sheehy: ‘The eureka moment may come once in your career, or never’
The Australian physicist on why research is an investment, forgotten female scientists, and the impact of the Ukraine war on scienceBorn in Australia in 1984, Dr Suzie Sheehy is an accelerator...
View ArticleThe vision collector: the man who used dreams and premonitions to predict the...
In 1966, a British psychiatrist had an idea: to change the course of history by asking the public to share their eerie intuitionsOn the morning of 21 October 1966, a dark, glistening wave of coal waste...
View ArticleSounds Wild and Broken review – a moving paean to Earth’s fraying soundtrack
David George Haskell’s often wonderful book explores some of the lost frequencies of nature – heard clearly again during Covid’s initial human hushLockdown was, among other things, a sudden collective...
View ArticleThe Velvet Queen review – powerful hymn to the land of the snow leopard
This account of a photography expedition in Tibet goes beyond usual nature documentary territory in its writerly contemplation of the wildIn 2019, French travel writer Sylvain Tesson published The Art...
View ArticleAn optimist’s guide to the future: the economist who believes that human...
Oded Galor’s ‘Sapiens’-like history of civilisation predicts a happy ending for humanity. But should we trust him?Why is the Anglo-Saxon world so individualistic, and why has China leaned towards...
View ArticleThe Matter of Everything by Suzie Sheehy review – 12 experiments that changed...
How the quest for a deeper understanding of particle physics has transformed the way we liveIn 1895, the German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen noticed that a phosphor-coated screen gave off a green light...
View ArticlePost your questions for George Monbiot
What will you ask the author, Guardian columnist and environmental campaigner?• Read an exclusive extract from his new book Regenesis hereGuardian columnist George Monbiot has long warned that farming...
View Article‘I yearned for a deeper, slower, more useful existence’: dispatches from the...
From the ad executive turned charcoal burner to the woman who built a new life in the woods, a new genre of books about radical reinventions is proving a runaway successNot long after I had left my...
View ArticleMorgan Levine: ‘Only 10-30% of our lifespan is estimated to be due to genetics’
The Yale scientist explains her research into biological and chronological age – and why she’s joined a $3bn startup funded by the likes of Jeff BezosIt can be said we have two ages: a fixed...
View ArticlePreventable by Devi Sridhar review – a resolutely global view of Covid
One of the best-known public intellectuals of the pandemic gives her account of two years that shook the worldProfessor Nabila Sadiq was only 38 when she died of Covid-19. Unable to find a hospital bed...
View ArticleWonderdog by Jules Howard review – are we taming dogs, or are they taming us?
The zoolologist, presenter and author surveys centuries of human-canine relationsWhile you doubtless don’t need to be reminded of the aeons we’ve known dogs and loved them, zoology has had a tendency...
View ArticlePoisoned legacy: why the future of power can’t be nuclear
Mounting tensions with Russia, a global pandemic and a reckless scramble for nuclear energy: the echoes of 1957 are alarming – we would do well to heed themOn 10 October 1957, Harold Macmillan sent a...
View ArticleIn brief: Every Good Boy Does Fine; Islanders; Sentient – review
Pianist Jeremy Denk’s insightful memoir, tales of Guernsey life by Cathy Thomas and Jackie Higgins’s vivid exploration of the sensesJeremy DenkPicador, £20, pp384Continue reading...
View ArticleThe big idea: have we been getting sleep all wrong?
Eight hours a day is a myth. Embracing our individual sleeping patterns could be the key to a better night’s rest‘Sleep: those little slices of death, how I loathe them”; “sleep is a criminal waste of...
View ArticleHow to Prevent the Next Pandemic by Bill Gates review – a germ of an idea
The tech pioneer wants us to prepare for the ‘Big One’ by holding regular pandemic exercises. But how do you deal with the threat posed by fake news?You’d have to be living under a rock not to know we...
View ArticleAtoms and Ashes by Serhii Plokhy review – why another nuclear disaster is...
A grim account of the downhill slide of atomic power since its heyday in the 1950s illustrates why it can never be the solution to global heatingOnce hailed as a source of electricity that would be too...
View ArticleTop 10 books about listening to nature
From precise transliterations of birdsong to a quest for one square inch of silence, these stories teach us how to open our ears to the worldSound is a great connector among animals. A song or call...
View ArticleThe Facemaker by Lindsey Fitzharris review – transforming the wounded
A history of pioneering first world war plastic surgeon Harold Gillies gives due weight to the stories of the men he treatedFor many men fighting in the first world war, the fear of being permanently...
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