Science
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Human evolution
How like the kiwi we are
To understand helpless human babies, our big brains and oddly involved dads, look to the evolution of birds not mammals
Antone Martinho-Truswell
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Anthropology
Lessons from the foragers
Hunter-gatherers don’t live in an economic idyll but their deep appreciation of rest puts industrialised work to shame
Vivek V Venkataraman
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Archaeology
Children of the Ice Age
With the help of new archaeological approaches, our picture of young lives in the Palaeolithic is now marvellously vivid
April Nowell
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Human evolution
Out of the forest
We have thought of humans for a century or more as creatures of the savannah, shaped in every way by grassland life. Not so
Patrick Roberts
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Neuroscience
The brain repurposed our sense of physical distance to understand social closeness
5 minutes
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Love and friendship
Tainted love
Love is both a wonderful thing and a cunning evolutionary trick to control us. A dangerous cocktail in the wrong hands
Anna Machin
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Anthropology
Primitive communism
Marx’s idea that societies were naturally egalitarian and communal before farming is widely influential and quite wrong
Manvir Singh
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Virtues and vices
Is virtue signalling a vice?
Proclaiming one’s own goodness is deeply annoying. Yet signalling theory explains why it’s a peculiarly powerful manoeuvre
Tadeg Quillien
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Human evolution
Homo imaginatus
Imagination isn’t just a spillover from our problem-solving prowess. It might be the core of what human brains evolved to do
Philip Ball
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Music
Music and sex
A song can take you on a journey of ecstatic arousal. Is music imitating sex, inviting it, or something else altogether?
Michael Spitzer
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Philosophy of mind
Caring for the vulnerable opens gateways to our richest, deepest brain states
7 minutes
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Sleep and dreams
Why do we sleep?
Adults sleep less than babies. Sperm whales sleep less again. A new mathematical theory unlocks the mysteries of slumber
Van Savage & Geoffrey West
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Anthropology
How equality slipped away
For 97 per cent of human history, all people had about the same power and access to goods. How did inequality ratchet up?
Kim Sterelny
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Mental health
We heal one another
When a person is in distress, we can draw on deep, evolved mechanisms to calm the storm, through attention, touch and care
Brandon Kohrt
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Human evolution
Brains in a dish
What pea-sized brain organoids reveal about consciousness, the self and our future as a species
Alysson Muotri
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Animals and humans
The joy of being animal
Human exceptionalism is dead: for the sake of our own happiness and the planet we should embrace our true animal nature
Melanie Challenger
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Anthropology
Sitting by the fire with a nomadic tribe, a physicist ponders the many shapes of wisdom
2 minutes
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Anthropology
Beyond the !Kung
A grand research project created our origin myth that early human societies were all egalitarian, mobile and small-scale
Manvir Singh
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Human evolution
Sheanderthal
Not all Neanderthals were ‘cavemen’: half were women. What can archaeologists tell us about how they lived?
Rebecca Wragg Sykes
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Complexity
All stars
Is a great team more than the sum of its players? Complexity science reveals the role of strategy, synergy, swarming and more
Jessica Flack & Cade Massey
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Genetics
If trauma can be passed down, could new therapies blunt the transgenerational impact?
9 minutes
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Human evolution
Vulnerable yet vital
The dance of love and lore between grandparent and grandchild is at the centre, not the fringes, of our evolutionary story
Alison Gopnik
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Cognition and intelligence
On the same wavelength
The urge to align our minds and emotions with those we care for, whether they are near or far, makes our species unique
Hayden Kee
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History of ideas
The self is not always selfish: Mary Midgley takes on Richard Dawkins
28 minutes