The creation of global mushroom maps is unearthing new species and teaching us how they support Earth’s ecosystem ...

As big questions go, you can’t get much bigger than “What is the meaning of life?” It is a question that is often modified ...

Hopeful Pessimism (Princeton University Press 2025) by Mara van der Lugt ...

The Landscapes of Science and Religion: What Are We Disagreeing About? (Oxford University Press) by Nick Spencer and Hannah ...

Most scientific breakthroughs take years of research – but often, serendipity provides the final push, as these historic discoveries show .

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 ...

Can the Integrated Education Act help to break the segregation of Catholic and Protestant education in Northern Ireland?

The popular association of atheism with immorality is a particular deterrent for women who have religious doubts, since in Arab society they are expected to be “virtuous” in order to marry. “It is ...

The great Buddha statue in Nha Trang, Vietnam by Petr Ruzicka On paper, Buddhism looks pretty good. It has a philosophical subtlety married to a stated devotion to tolerance that makes it stand out ...

Technology is enabling us to retreat from the outside world. But we should resist the urge – for ourselves and for each other Patrons outside a busy pub in the Yorkshire Dales. Credit: Alamy There ...

Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, discusses her new book, on the importance of fiction to democracy.

Every hero needs an antagonist to define themselves against. For “the West” – the eternal hero of the dominant discourse on international affairs – the antagonist of the hour is Vladimir Putin, a ...