We are just one branch of a diverse human family tree. Aside from Neanderthals, who were they – and why did we replace them?

Smallpox went from a feared killer to a fading memory. Its eradication is one of humanity’s greatest collective triumphs ...

An optical poem featuring audio of W H Auden’s ode to trees paired with art from the Met and outdoor footage of New York state ...

The brain is much less like a machine than it is like the murmurations of a flock of starlings or an orchestral symphony ...

First the rush, then the reality – how a cryptocurrency pyramid scheme spread faster than a virus in a sleepy Georgia town ...

The world’s isms – capitalism, socialism, fascism and so on – explored through the analogy of your mum doing the washing ...

A captivating story from Aardman Animations about a ‘little thief’ turned career criminal who just can’t break the habit ...

is associate lecturer in moral, legal and political philosophy at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. He is the author of The Ethics of State Responses to Refugees (2024).

For all the promise and dangers of AI, computers plainly can’t think. To think is to resist – something no machine does We can split light by a prism, sounds by tones, but surely the world of odour is ...

is a philosopher specialising in language. He is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at the Department of Philosophy at Uppsala University in Sweden.