Grab a copy from newsstands now or get our app to download digital and audio editions. https://newscientist.com/issue/3397/
Our new issue is now online, featuring Fredric Jameson on Ben Pastor, @LalehKhalili on oil, money and democracy, John Lanchester on Wirecard, Andrew O’Hagan on Dolly Parton, @davies_will on the seductions of declinism and a cover by Alexander Gorlizki: http://lrb.co.uk
Excitingly, scientists say that alternative universes are allowed by physics. We find out about the leading multiverse theories, and establish whether they could harbour an alternate version of you.
The TLS (Times Literary Supplement) for July 29, 2022 – @TheTLS, featuring @billmckibben on the future of farming; Bart van Es on Shakespeare’s life and sources; @profrhodrilewis on the sixteenth-century mind; @soniafaleiro on Geetanjali Shree; @mary_leng on straw men – and more.
Budget constraints have gone missing. That presents both danger and opportunity
It is sometimes said that governments wasted the global financial crisis of 2007-09 by failing to rethink economic policy after the dust settled. Nobody will say the same about the covid-19 pandemic. It has led to a desperate scramble to enact policies that only a few months ago were either unimaginable or heretical. A profound shift is now taking place in economics as a result, of the sort that happens only once in a generation. Much as in the 1970s when clubby Keynesianism gave way to Milton Friedman’s austere monetarism, and in the 1990s when central banks were given their independence, so the pandemic marks the start of a new era. Its overriding preoccupation will be exploiting the opportunities and containing the enormous risks that stem from a supersized level of state intervention in the economy and financial markets.
August 2022
Fleeing his father’s empire, an Afghan prince travelled from Kabul to Sindh via Mecca, becoming a fugitive, courtier and pilgrim in the process.
What relevance do the Norman Conquest and the events of 1066 have to contemporary British politics? Everything and nothing.
Early modern methods of execution were carefully calculated to inflict shame upon the condemned.
The Battle of Stalingrad began in August 1942, subjecting its residents to months of living hell. But few doubted that the city was worth defending; its significance to the Soviet project made it too important to abandon.
Activists are combining voter suppression with election conspiracies to capture the state in 2022 and beyond.By Dan Kaufman
Annals of a Warming PlanetLiving Through India’s Next-Level Heat WaveIn hospitals, in schools, and on the streets, high temperatures have transformed routines and made daylight dangerous..By Dhruv Khullar
Below the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico lies a submerged world of extraordinary beauty. Caves once created a subterranean labyrinth that the earliest human settlers seemingly associated with magic. After these passageways flooded at the end of the last Ice Age, they created reservoirs that proved essential for the success of Maya cities. Now a fascinating project is revealing the remarkable range of archaeology preserved in this underworld.
Goddesses and spiritual beings also display an impressive range, in this case of powers. There can be a tendency for modern audiences to focus on a single attribute – Venus as the goddess of love, for instance – but this obscures the remarkable breadth of gifts they could bestow on worshippers. An exhibition examining the nature of feminine power provides an opportunity to consider the divine and the demonised.
If you are the type of person who is loth to invest in firms that pollute the planet, mistreat workers and stuff their boards with cronies, you will no doubt be aware of one of the hottest trends in finance: environmental, social and governance (esg) investing. It is an attempt to make capitalism work better and deal with the grave threat posed by climate change. It has ballooned in recent years; the titans of investment management claim that more than a third of their assets, or $35trn in total, are monitored through one esg lens or another. It is on the lips of bosses and officials everywhere.
Boomers Daily 