If science has a native tongue, it is mathematics. Equations capture, precisely, the relationships among the elements of a system; they allow us to pose questions and calculate answers. Numerically, these answers are precise and unambiguous – but what happens when we want to know what our calculations mean? Well, that is when we revert to our own native tongue: metaphor. Why metaphor? Because that is how we think, how learn, how we parse the world. Metaphor comes from the Greek metaphora, a “transfer”; literally a “carrying over”. The very act of understanding (from the Old English: to stand ..read more

My Blue Peninsula (Linen Press) by Maureen Freely As Israel escalated its assault on Gaza in October, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan posted on social media describing the Jewish state’s campaign in the strip as “bordering on genocide”. The same week, Turkey contributed troops, aviation equipment and artillery to a joint military exercise with Azerbaijan dubbed “Mustafa Kemal Atatürk 2023” near its border with Armenia – a nation whose ethnic forebears were massacred inside Turkish territory in the prelude to the foundation of the Republic. More than a million died. Erdoğan still refuse ..read more

Gen Z are given a great deal of credit these days. Born between 1997 and 2012, they’re the generation with their heads screwed on, trusted to sort out the mess the rest of us have made of the world. This generation, now aged 12 to 27, were the first full “digital natives”, having never known life without the internet. If you have a Gen Z person in your life, you will know that each one is an IT Support Department for their entire family. I was able to keep the wolf from the door during lockdown because my children were on hand to get me onto Zoom calls and set me up for online gigs. There are ..read more

"I’ve done quite a lot of work in various media, from making videos, to writing live science shows, to writing books,” Alom Shaha tells me, over the phone from his home in Kent. “And I would put it all down to the fact that I kind of fucked up my physics degree.” There are direct routes from studying physics to a career in teaching physics. Shaha took the long way around. Born in Bangladesh in the early 1970s, Shaha moved to south London as a child. In The Young Atheist’s Handbook (Biteback, 2012), he describes a troubled home life: his father was cruel and violent; his mother suffered badly ..read more

The rise of China is one of the most remarkable stories of our times, and perhaps one which will define the 21st century. The country, with the second-largest population in the world, often features in the western imagination as a financial and political antagonist, a communist-capitalist ideological chimera – and, to some, a possible roadmap to the future. But in 2024, China is facing a number of problems. Its economy is entering troubled waters, with a real estate bubble close to bursting and demographic collapse all but inevitable (a direct result of the now abandoned “one child policy ..read more

HowTheLightGetsIn is the world’s largest ideas and music festival, taking place from 24-27 May in Hay-on-Wye. As a long-standing festival partner, we’ve curated a series of interviews and articles with some of the fascinating expert speakers. To read more on the rise of geopolitical conflict and decline of liberalism, check out our interviews with foreign correspondent Christina Lamb and political philosopher John Ralston Saul. We’re also offering an exclusive 20% discount on tickets to all of our readers, with the code NEWHUM24. Don't miss out on discounted tickets here. Isabel Hilton is a j ..read more

Space: The Human Story (Cornerstone) by Tim Peake Out of the billions of humans on our planet, only 676 have been to space. Being such a select few, it’s easy to see them as superhuman – but in his new book British astronaut Tim Peake shows the real, messy, perfectly imperfect human side of crewed spaceflight. From the Space Race’s beginnings in the 1950s to our current ambitious plans for visiting Mars, Peake reveals some of the quirky tales, (figuratively) down-to-Earth jokes and day-to-day experiences of astronauts. Although space exploration is an epic task, it’s still done by people at t ..read more

HowTheLightGetsIn is the world’s largest ideas and music festival, taking place from 24-27 May in Hay-on-Wye. As a long-standing festival partner, we’ve curated a series of interviews and articles with some of the fascinating expert speakers. To read more on the rise of geopolitical conflict and decline of liberalism, check out our interview with foreign correspondent Christina Lamb. We’re also offering an exclusive 20% discount on tickets to all of our readers, with the code NEWHUM24. Don't miss out on discounted tickets here. John Ralston Saul is a Canadian writer, political philosopher and ..read more

A brand-new 4x4 snakes its way through the dimly lit tunnels of Brazil’s oldest underground lithium mine. The mine is run by the Brazilian Lithium Company (CBL) in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais, known for its wealth of minerals, lush green valleys and colonial-era towns. I’m surrounded by bustling activity: trucks scooping out materials from inside the mountain, horns blaring as other vehicles snake around the many bends. Like an ant colony, each person below ground has a specific job while contributing to a collective project: the extraction of hard rock containing lithium. Uses for ..read more

You’ll be familiar with the scene. A hard-nosed cop, a nervous suspect, the slow scratching of needles. In the hundred years since it was invented, the polygraph machine – or lie detector – has oozed into every crevice of America’s justice system and popular culture, appearing in true crime documentaries, blockbuster movies and daytime TV shows, as well as interrogation rooms. What you might not know, however, is that lie detectors are increasingly being used in the UK too. A lack of transparency from police forces means it’s difficult to know exactly how the polygraph is being used, and to ..read more