From greenhouse to hothouse: the language of climate change
Feedback effects could spark irreversible global warming, says scientists. But what does use of the word ‘hothouse’ imply?
Book clinic: which books best capture our relationship with animals?
Carl Safina’s educated anthropomorphism and Alex Preston’s vivid bird portraits are the wild stuff to illuminate our place in the natural world
Traces on George Orwell letter suggest he caught TB from Spanish hospital
Scientist claims it is likely that the illness that killed the novelist was contracted after he was wounded in the Spanish civil war
Know thyself… by writing your first novel
Dig deep inside, battle self-doubt and become the person you know you can be. Richard Skinner on the healing powers of writing a novel
The Re-Origin of Species by Torill Kornfeldt review – bringing extinct animals back to life
The ‘de-extinction’ of vanished wild animals, from the woolly mammoth to the Pyrenean ibex, raises deep questions about our relationship to nature
Copycats and Contrarians review – should we follow the herd?
What’s behind our tendency to go with the crowd, sensible thinking or emotion? And what are its dangers?
Dr Seuss’s Lorax ‘inspired by orange Kenyan monkeys’
Moustachioed animals’ relationship with whistling thorn acacia trees resembles that of the Lorax with truffulas, researchers say
The Art of Logic by Eugenia Cheng review – the need for good arguments
From debates about same-sex marriage to white privilege … A book of pure maths applied to the real world makes the case for thinking more clearly and logically in politics
Country diary: metamorphosis in a museum tower
Oxford: For 70 years, researchers have been watching ‘particularly hideous’ young swifts turn into long-winged angels
Books to get inside your head: Tim Parks picks the smartest books about the brain
Is consciousness internal, readable, even uploadable? Does it exist in the external world? Here are some mind-bending reads that have the answers
Keep on moving: the bizarre dance epidemic of summer 1518
Five centuries ago, the world’s longest rave took place in Strasbourg – a ‘plague’ of dancing that was fatal for some. What caused it? Art, poetry and music of the time can provide some clues
Listen and weep: ‘Audiobooks outdo films in emotional engagement’
UCL study backed by Audible finds unconscious responses to the same book scenes, witnessed in adaptations across different media, are strongest in the auditory format
Einstein’s travel diaries reveal ‘shocking’ xenophobia
Private journals kept by the scientist and humanitarian icon show prejudiced attitudes towards the people he met while travelling in Asia
The Reason I Jump: autism memoir becomes a theatre-maze in Scotland
Autistic performers share their own stories in an outdoor production which turns Naoki Higashida’s remarkable book into a journey through a labyrinth
Charles Mann: ‘The relationship between population and consumption is not straightforward’
The science journalist’s new book boils decades of environmental debate down to the starkly contrasting approaches of two key figures