Think of a mystery musical instrument. If a physicist is told the loudness of the sound it makes at every possible frequency, ...

In every chapter we find the author in a different bothy (11 in Scotland, one in Wales), usually escaping some undetailed ...

From atheist YouTuber to praying for divine revelation, what has happened to Alex O’Connor?

Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (University of Minnesota Press) by Jordan S. Carroll Right-wingers are usually seen as political advocates for the past, associated with ...

Will future sex tech be more inclusive? What’s at stake in the design and distribution of sex robots? And what role could they play in our relationships? In this second episode of our podcast "With ...

The great Buddha statue in Nha Trang, Vietnam by Petr Ruzicka On paper, Buddhism looks pretty good. It has a philosophical subtlety married to a stated devotion to tolerance that makes it stand out ...

This piece accompanies Marcus Chown's feature on the discovery of cosmic background radiation, from the Spring 2015 edition of New Humanist. Penicillin Perhaps the most famous accidental discovery of ...

Octopuses are having a moment. So are slime moulds and honeybees. Mushrooms are in vogue. After 250 years of humanity (well, some of humanity…) confidently atop the great pyramid of being, we in the ...

A section of the 'The Arnolfini Portrait' by Jan Van Eyck For many generations in societies shaped by Christianity, monogamy has been the almost undisputed champion of relationship norms. In Britain ...

God: An Anatomy (Pan Macmillan) by Francesca Stavrakopoulou. We don’t know his real name. In early inscriptions it appears as Yhw, Yhwh, or simply Yh; but we don’t know how it was spoken. He has come ...

The popular association of atheism with immorality is a particular deterrent for women who have religious doubts, since in Arab society they are expected to be “virtuous” in order to marry. “It is ...