Dr Karl Kruszelnicki: ‘Having been beaten unconscious really changes your life’

Australia’s favourite doctor-scientist-engineer talks recreational drugs, forgiveness and his extraordinary life

‘I had found gold before, but not like this’: four of the most splendid treasures salvaged from shipwrecks

The underwater archaeologist Mensun Bound recounts some of the astonishing relics he has seen, as detailed in his new co-authored book, Wonders in the Deep

Dorset ‘Stonehenge’ under Thomas Hardy’s home given protected status

Enclosure found under late novelist’s garden is older than Salisbury monument and wins national recognition

The Many Lives of James Lovelock by Jonathan Watts – man of many myths

A splendid, fearless biography of the ‘gullible genius’ who popularised Gaia theory

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari review – rage against the machine

The author of the bestselling Sapiens offers a penetrating critique of the insidious dangers of machine learning and its capacity to manipulate the truth

Physicist MV Ramana on the problem with nuclear power

Nuclear is costly, risky and slow, Ramana says. Why then, he asks in his new book, do governments still champion it?

Philosophy professor Jeffrey J Kripal: ‘Thinking about a UFO as some kind of extraterrestrial spaceship is naive’

The academic and author draws on quantum mechanics, English romantic philosophy and mysticism to explore a new theory of mind that embraces the paranormal

‘In Britain, we are still astonishingly ignorant’: the hidden story of how ancient India shaped the west

The flow of knowledge from India to Europe on everything from maths to astronomy has gone unacknowledged by historians

I learned the language of computer programming in my 50s – here’s what I discovered

A writer with no technical background recounts his incredible journey into the realm of coding and its lessons about the modern world

Can you judge the tech bros by their bookshelves?

A list of book choices by the Silicon Valley titans offers little more than a blank page with respect to real insights into their mindset

I did MDMA therapy before it was legal. For me it was transformative – but I have some concerns

I didn’t think I would ever break the law to try alternative medicine. But as Australia finds itself at the forefront of the therapy, I’m in a unique position

Becoming Earth by Ferris Jabr review – our planet: a living, breathing, mutating miracle

The US-based journalist has fashioned a wide-ranging and thought-provoking study of how everything from microbes to mammoths transformed our world into a living organism

In brief: The Newsmongers; The Night in Venice; Vital Organs – review

An informed history of tabloid journalism; an atmospheric Edwardian-era mystery set in Italy; and a riotous study of famous people’s body parts

Hidden figures: giving history’s most overlooked mathematicians their due

A new book looks at the contributions made by women and people of colour, whose stories have often been forgotten

Philospher Peter Godfrey-Smith: ‘To some extent, our planet would be better off without humanity’

With the bestselling Other Minds, the philosopher dramatically changed our view of octopuses. Now, concluding his trilogy about the evolution of intelligence, he shows how animal life has shaped the planet itself