The creation of global mushroom maps is unearthing new species and teaching us how they support Earth’s ecosystem ...

As big questions go, you can’t get much bigger than “What is the meaning of life?” It is a question that is often modified slightly, becoming “Does life have a purpose?” One can quibble over the ...

Hopeful Pessimism (Princeton University Press 2025) by Mara van der Lugt ...

Image from Seamless Transitions, a short film about the UK's immigration detention system by James Bridle, on show at the Photographer's Gallery, London, until 15 April. This article is a preview from ...

Most scientific breakthroughs take years of research – but often, serendipity provides the final push, as these historic discoveries show .

For many generations in societies shaped by Christianity, monogamy has been the almost undisputed champion of relationship norms. In Britain and the US, it has been held up as the dominant – really ...

It’s time for feminists (male or female) to bring some clarity to the debate about the burqa. The discussion at the moment is dominated by two arguments that defend the burqa from criticism, both ...

Everyone knows about the dreaded curse of the Ancient Egyptian mummy. It became fixed in global consciousness in 1923, when the Fifth Earl of Carnarvon, who had sponsored Howard Carter to dig for ...

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 ...

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 ...

Can the Integrated Education Act help to break the segregation of Catholic and Protestant education in Northern Ireland?

Historian Jonathan Israel's magisterial three-volume history of the 'Radical Enlightenment' is the intellectual version of a JCB, ripping up the terrain around him. Kenan Malik follows him down the ...