Why do people in different countries speak different languages?

Feb 07, 2020 05:59 am UTC| Insights & Views Life

Humans have long been puzzled by the existence of different languages. A long time ago, people took guesses or made up stories to explain this. You might know the tale of the Tower of Babel (have a look at a famous...

No food, no fuel, no phones: bushfires showed we're only ever one step from system collapse

Feb 07, 2020 05:57 am UTC| Insights & Views Life

This summers bushfires were not just devastating events in themselves. More broadly, they highlighted the immense vulnerability of the systems which make our contemporary lives possible. The fires cut road access, which...

How two women pulled off a medieval manuscript heist in post-war Germany

Feb 07, 2020 05:56 am UTC| Life

Seventy-five years ago, in February 1945, during the Second World War, Allied forces bombed the magnificent baroque city of Dresden, Germany, destroying most of it and killing thousands of civilians. In central Dresden,...

Britain's European food connection pre-dates the EU and will survive Brexit

Feb 04, 2020 13:10 pm UTC| Insights & Views Life

The EU and the UK are now negotiating the terms of their new relationship after Brexit. Food supply problems are a very real potential problem, but we are also having a food-related identity crisis: what will happen to our...

Over-parenting teaches children to be entitled – let them fail and learn to be resilient instead

Feb 04, 2020 12:29 pm UTC| Insights & Views Life

During the last couple of decades, new types of parents have emerged. From the anxiously involved helicopter parents to the pushy tiger mums, these differing styles all have one thing in common: they tend to involve...

A Finnish phenomenon: Where students learn how to ask, not only answer, questions

Feb 04, 2020 12:20 pm UTC| Insights & Views Life

All four teacher unions in Ontario are in the midst of labour unrest. Teachers in Ontario have long had the right to strike, and when the province threatened this right in 2012, the courts upheld it. While the list...

Charles Dickens: newly discovered documents reveal truth about his death and burial

Feb 04, 2020 12:19 pm UTC| Insights & Views Life

When Charles Dickens died, he had spectacular fame, great wealth and an adoring public. But his personal life was complicated. Separated from his wife and living in a huge country mansion in Kent, the novelist was in the...