Pau Cin Hau dreamt of an alphabet for a language that had never been written down. So began the religion of Laipianism ...

Mapping a fruit fly’s multitudinous neural pathways is a promising step towards a better understanding of the human brain ...

The world sees Japan as a paragon of minimalism. But its hidden clutter culture shows that ‘more’ can be as magical as ‘less’ ...

Like ‘the property room of an opera house of a vanished civilisation’: the first thrilling glimpse inside Tutankhamun’s tomb ...

Medicine aims to return bodies to the state they were in before illness. But there’s a better way of thinking about health ...

Mental health campaigns place huge trust in people’s ability to act as therapists. But when should professionals step in?

The belief in witches is an almost universal feature of human societies. What does it reveal about our deepest fears?

In 2009, the ‘balloon boy’ incident captivated American television audiences – what did it reveal about profit-driven news?

For a young girl living in 1980s Tehran, the small intrigues of everyday life take centre stage against a backdrop of war ...

It’s a beautiful world … when you’re free’: two teens grapple with how to live an authentic life in this vintage short ...

DNA is nature’s highly efficient mechanism for data storage. Now, scientists are taking note to address our storage crisis ...

is the director of the Yau Mathematical Sciences Center at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China and professor emeritus at Harvard University in Massachusetts, US. He is the co-author, most recently, ...