How Turkey’s Twitter ban backfired
How do you police the internet? It’s a question that most governments are confronting in one way or another, from America’s mass surveillance programme, to Britain’s sentences for Twitter trolls,…
Science & Technology
In pursuit of happiness
A policy revolution is under way to improve our well-being. Are its motives genuine? Niki Seth-Smith reports
How Cosmos moved us all to tears
Neil deGrasse Tyson's remake of Carl Sagan's classic series is worthy of the hype – it even introduced my six-year-old to the vastness of the universe, says Dale DeBakcsy
What on earth is mindfulness?
Cheap and easy to deliver, a new mental health treatment is all the rage. But should we be asking tougher questions about its effectiveness?
Growing up in the Sagan household
Chris Stedman, Assistant Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University and author of the book Faitheist, has a lovely interview on his blog with Nick Sagan, son of Carl and his second…
How farming gave us the iPhone
We live in an age of relentless innovation – and it's all because our ancestors started planting crops, says Marcus Chown
Stephen Hawking challenges conventional thinking on black holes, and other stories – our morning round-up
Stephen Hawking challenges conventional thinking on black holes Stephen Hawking, who was one of the developers of modern black hole theory, has published a new paper in which he says…
Rosetta comet-chaser phones home, and other stories – our morning round-up
Rosetta comet-chaser phones home Rosetta, Europe’s comet-chasing spacecraft, has woken from its slumber. A signal confirming its alert status was received by controllers in Darmstadt, Germany, at 18:17 GMT. Rosetta…
Triple star system ‘can reveal secrets of gravity’, and other stories – our morning round-up
Triple star system ‘can reveal secrets of gravity’ Astronomers have discovered a unique triple star system which could reveal the true nature of gravity. They found a pulsar with two…
Not going to reach my telephone
We worry that new technology is ruining our ability to think – in fact, such fears have been around since the very invention of writing