What to do when that punishing inner voice takes over? When Ethan Kross received a threatening letter, he went into meltdown. For three days the voices in his head incessantly replayed one horrifying scenario after another. He couldn’t stop the chatter in his head, which was ironic, as he is an expert on emotion and self-control. The letter had come after a television appearance, causing Kross to chastise himself for putting his family and himself at risk. Then Kross stumbled across something quite by accident. Instead of his internal monologue repeating “I” all the time, he started to use his ..read more

An evolutionary biologist looks at the future of sex.  According to evolutionary biologist Rob Brooks, the future holds an abundance of artificial intimacy.  New sex technologies, from sex robots to virtual reality porn, will anticipate our every desire. So clever will the algorithms mining our personal data be that they will predict our every need. Dating apps will cut out the time wasted swiping and scrolling, express matching us with life partners we never knew we were meant for. Even further, machines could learn fantasies we never knew we had.  If all th ..read more

A genius book that explains big problems and concepts in an easy to grasp manner. Do you read lots of books and articles about climate change but still find you have only a foggy idea of what it all really means? If so,  How to Avoid a Climate Disaster  will set you on the right path. Bill Gates brings his considerable analytic skills to the planet's biggest and most complicated challenge, translating it into an accessible explainer. All those facts and figures, graphs and computer models, are boiled down to two simple numbers, 51 and zero. Currently we put 51 tonnes of carbon into t ..read more

A cautionary tale about power unchecked. From 1968 to 1995, Colin Manock was South Australia's chief forensic pathologist. During that time, he was there at every crime scene where an autopsy was required. His evidence helped secure some 400 criminal convictions. There was only one problem. A lot of his work as a pathologist was considered substandard. He was also lacking in qualifications, having no training in histopathology – the practice of taking tissue samples from various organs to discern more complex signs of disease or injury. In 1968, Manock had seen an advertisement for the directo ..read more

A fascinating look at how the mind affects the body. Doctor and psychiatrist Jeff Rediger has long been fascinated by the phenomenon known as spontaneous remission or healing, where patients with terminal diagnoses, mostly cancer, but including other diseases, suddenly find themselves healed. Spontaneous healing isn’t well researched in the medical literature; in fact, it’s very much sidelined. Doctors who want to be taken seriously don’t delve too deeply, if at all, into these well documented cases. Since 2003, Rediger has been on a quest to discover more about spontaneous healing, starting h ..read more

Why movement is not only good for our bodies, but for our brains as well. As we all know, our lives are too sedentary. The last century has brought us many labour saving devices – cars and washing machines – but there has been a detrimental effect. We are moving less and less. As  by Caroline Williams shows, this is even having an effect on our cognition. Exercise – whether it be walking, dancing or gardening – helps power up brain function. Sadly, research shows that IQ scores have been dropping over recent decades. Lazy limbs are leading to lazy minds. A book on the benefits of movement ..read more

A fascinating two thousand year history of fasting. For thousands of years, fasting was more religious practice than scientific endeavour. From antiquity to Christianity, people starved themselves in the hope of appeasing their gods. Some philosophers and divines took a more moderate approach, and saw fasting as generally good for mind, body and spirit. But overall fasting, especially under Christianity, was an extreme practice that served little good. Come the 19th century and fasting started to take on a more scientific aspect. It was proven that the body could endure fasting for much l ..read more

How tiny germs made the world as we know it According to Jonathan Kennedy, a teacher in global health, pathogens have played a bigger role in historical events than we give credit for. History's narrative arc is usually described as one of great men and superior civilisations, the world mere putty awaiting the hands of god. But what if it was pathogens – smallpox and malaria for example – that have really given conquering armies their competitive edge? Jonathan Kennedy argues that this is very much the case. From the fate of Neanderthals to the American Civil War, pathogens have played a major ..read more