A Glitch in the Matrix review – deep-dive into simulation theory

Using animation, archive and clips from the movie franchise, Rodney Ascher’s genre-bending doc gives philosophers and kooks space to explain why we are living in a synthetic world

Rachel Clarke: ‘NHS staff are burning with frustration and grief at this second wave’

The palliative care doctor and author on a year of Covid in UK hospitals and her hopes for the vaccine

The Dig review – Sutton Hoo excavation romance is none too deep

Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes unearth an Anglo-Saxon burial ship, but leave their emotions interred, in this robustly English drama

Words Fail Us by Jonty Claypole review – the positive case for ‘speech disorders’

A writer with a stutter offers a thought-provoking defence of disfluency and takes a sideswipe at Freud

The Knowledge Machine by Michael Strevens review – how science works

A fascinating and timely history of how science developed via the achievement of pursuing only observation and experiment (not politics)

Kindred by Rebecca Wragg Sykes review – a new understanding of humanity

In this impressive reassessment Neanderthals emerge as complex, clever and caring, with a lot to tell us about human life

Adam Kay: ‘We should talk to kids about sex and alcohol. Everything goes wrong when people close up’

The comedian, whose diaries of his years as a junior doctor became a bestseller, talks about the ‘astonishing’ efforts of the NHS in 2020, and his new guide to the body for children

Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency; What Would Nature Do? – review

A bromide-laden view of the threats to the planet, by Ruth DeFries, is less convincing than Andreas Malm’s call for an urgent reform of capitalism

Isaac Newton notes almost destroyed by dog sell for £380,000

Scientist’s occult investigations into the Great Pyramid of Egypt, dating from the 1680s, are believed to have been burned when his dog Diamond upset a candle

Following the science: the writers who have made sense of Covid

When R numbers have been daily news, and medical officers have shared platforms with politicians, Gaia Vince reflects on a challenging and exhilarating year of being a science writer

The Snow Ball by Brigid Brophy review – a swirling, sensual feast

This timely reissue of Brophy’s 1964 masterpiece transports us to a New Year’s Eve masquerade ball full of romance and eroticism

UK’s public libraries record another year of cuts, with yet more on the way

Falls in funding were matched by drops in borrowing, with budgets for next year set to fall by an average of 14%

The Human Cosmos by Jo Marchant review – learn from the stars

From Palaeolithic paintings to astrophysics … a glittering history takes in explorers, aliens and a world vanishing from view

‘Positivity’: a short history of the word, from cheer to Covid

Theologians in the 17th century referred to ‘the positivity of sin’ but these days courage is a plus in the face of adversity

Camilla Pang: ‘You have to acknowledge the hilarity of what it is to be human’

Prize-winning author Camilla Pang talks about her autism and ADHD diagnoses and her desire to challenge myths about neurodiversity