Just as the US seems to be turning away from trying to make contact with extra-terrestrial life, China has built a huge custom radio dish for the very purpose. The author visits the dish, examines China’s long history of astronomy and reviews its current attempts to drive scientific innovation.
The story of an extraordinary feat that took place in 1978 – the first ascent of Everest without supplementary oxygen. One of the final great barriers in human endurance was conquered by two strong characters known as “the terrible twins”.
A history of the seminal strategy computer game provides insight into the process of creation, development using ever-evolving technologies, and how to create sequels when your first edition spans all of human history.
A look at Aung San Suu Kyi’s response to the Rohingya crisis.
A piece looking at the issues at stake in today’s Catalan independence referendum, how we arrived at this point, and what might be next.
Whilst we look for alien life on other planets, this piece examines ctenophores – creatures closer to home that are “profoundly different from any other animal on Earth” – so much so in fact that they may be on an entirely different evolutionary path to their planetary cohabitants.
Months of interviews with over 25 escapees from North Korea reveal that life under the “Great Successor” is every bit as grim as under his predecessors.
A piece that analyses Austen’s writing to try to understand her success in the “Darwinian struggle for literary immortality”.
This eloquent piece looks at the sexual harassment allegations against Senator Al Franken and uses them as a springboard to examine humanity’s long history of identifying trustworthiness as a male trait and duplicity as its female counterpart – via Aristotle, Galen, Jezebel, Cassandra, Hamlet and others.