Professor Justin Smith-Ruiu on how magic mushrooms gave him a deeper understanding of ideas he’d studied for decades ...

Rather than being permanently entombed in a peaceful resting place, these royal bones were about to transform into one of the ...

Tse explores similar themes in City Like Water (also translated by Bruce), the first and longest piece in her 2020 short ...

Beyond Belief: How Evidence Shows What Really Works (Princeton) by Helen Pearson Helen Pearson’s Beyond Belief: How Evidence Shows What Really Works tells a story that is at once reassuring and ...

In his 1976 debut volume, Richard Dawkins pioneered the concept of the “selfish gene” – the idea that genes propagate themselves through whatever mechanisms necessary, thus explaining phenomena such ...

Female longing is having a cultural moment and midlife women are taking the limelight. Confounding societal expectations that older women should fade into sexual invisibility or conform to a selfless ...

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 ...

This article is a preview from the Winter 2017 edition of New Humanist. Death is a fundamental feature of our lives. Fear of death has been present in most cultures for a very long time. It is a basic ...

This piece accompanies Marcus Chown’s feature on the discovery of cosmic background radiation, from the Spring 2015 edition of New Humanist. Perhaps the most famous accidental discovery of all is ...

If you feel pressure about your body, you’re not alone. Women have always had it bad – but now the health and beauty industries are coming for men, too. And the pressures are constantly deepening. In ...

Samira Ahmed is a journalist and BBC radio presenter.

Adults play on water slide set up in Bristol, May 2014. Credit: Alamy It’s late summer and the afternoon sun is beating off Shoreditch’s sheer glass facades and gum-littered pavements. My colleagues ...