The most common serious pregnancy complication arises due to an ancient conflict between mothers and fathers. Itcould have ended badly in so many ways. My friend, let’s call her Amy, in vibrant mid-twenties health, could not have been more ready…
Compared with our closest relatives, the common chimpanzee and the bonobo, humans are pretty good at focusing exclusively on one mate at a time.
Just how exclusively, however, is the subject of endless tabloid gossip, culture-war sabre-rattling, and scientific debate. The answer seemed to be that most people are exclusive most of the time, but new evidence has thrown the question wide open again.
Australia is gearing up for what looks to be a mighty battle over freedom of speech. Recent commentary about what a sports star can and cannot post on social media platforms has reignited the controversy. Many people and organisations are…
I find myself thinking a lot about sex robots these days. In this, I am far from alone. Over the last few years, the dolls and toys that people keep in the very darkest recesses of their closets have found…
How do sex differences arise? Few questions animate as much disagreement and contention, in everyday society and in academic study. For as long as the question has been asked, the answers have fallen between two extremes: sex differences arise innately,…
Move over Nate Silver! The statistician and author of The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – But Some Don’t may have called 49 out of 50 states right in the 2012 US Presidential election. But today…
Today, millions of very nervous adults are furtively checking sites like “Have I been Pwned” to check if their account details at Ashley Madison have been leaked. Others are checking if their partners or acquaintances had accounts. The hacking and…
What gets you out of bed in the morning? Before morning has broken, and some time before blackbird has spoken, songbirds rise for sex. And a clever new experiment reveals just how important it is for male songbirds not to…
Many scholars of Renaissance art tell us that Botticelli’s Birth of Venus captures the tension between the celestial perfection of divine beauty and its flawed earthly manifestation. As classical ideas blossomed anew in 15th-century Florence, Botticelli could not have missed…
Are people naturally monogamous, polygamous or promiscuous? It’s one of those questions that most people feel quite confident in answering. Ask a few people and you’re likely to come up with a variety of contradictory answers, each delivered with considerable…