The consulting office reflects the personality of the therapist, while also subtly shaping the experience of their patients

Chatbots of the dead

We can now create compelling experiences of talking with our dead. Is this ghoulish, therapeutic or something else again?

Amy Kurzweil & Daniel Story

Why large language models are mysterious – even to their creators

8 minutes

The commitment to collaborate

Though natural selection favours self-interest, humans are extraordinarily good at cooperating with one another. Why?

Saira Khan

The bookends of time

Nothing lasts forever: not humanity, not Earth, not the Universe. But finitude confers an indelible meaning to our lives

Thomas Moynihan

Beyond causality

In order to bridge the yawning gulf between the humanities and the sciences we must turn to an unexpected field: mathematics

Gordon Gillespie

The many ways a lizard tongue sticks, grasps, pinches and plops – in slo-mo

6 minutes

How the Moon became a place

For most of history, the Moon was regarded as a mysterious and powerful object. Then scientists made it into a destination

Danny Robb

The birth of naturalism

The modern era is often seen as the triumph of science over supernaturalism. But what really happened is far more interesting

Peter Harrison