Philippa Kaur

Noah Baumbach’s version of Don DeLillo’s award-winning novel may reflect the book’s complexity, but ultimately it could well justify fears the book is unfilmable

Humans

9 January 2023

By Gregory Wakeman
A scene from White Noise, showing, from left to right, Greta Gerwig (Babette), May Nivola (Steffie), Adam Driver (Jack), Samuel Nivola (Heinrich) and Raffey Cassidy (Denise)WILSON WEBB / NETFLIX ©2022
White Noise
Noah Baumbach
Netflix, selected cinemas, including UK’s ICA on 5 January
White Noise is brimming with ideas. And why wouldn’t it be? This film is the latest from writer-director Noah Baumbach, who created The Squid and The Whale and Marriage Story, smart, painful satires chronicling the breakdown of relationships.
Baumbach adapted White Noise from the eponymous book (which won author Don … More

Stone Age people in Europe appear to have recorded the reproductive habits of animals with markings on cave paintings, hinting at the early origins of writing

Humans

4 January 2023

By Alison George
Cave painting from Lascaux, France, showing a bull marked with a sequence of linesJoJan/Wikipedia/CC-BY-4.​0
Stone Age people living in Europe 20,000 years ago may have devised a simple form of writing to record the habits of the animals they hunted, according to a study of mysterious symbols on artefacts and cave walls. If confirmed, this would push back the earliest known appearance of a proto-writing system by at least 10,000 years.
At least 400 caves in Europe, such as Lascaux and Chauvet in France and Altamira in Spain, have … More

New Scientist’s weekly round-up of the best books, films, TV series, games and more that you shouldn’t miss

Humans

4 January 2023

HBO/Warner Media
Watch
The Last of Us moves from award-winning video game to TV show, with Pedro Pascal (pictured above) as Joel Miller, a smuggler who escorts a teenage girl, Ellie (Bella Ramsey), across a post-apocalyptic US. On HBO from 15 January.

Read
Emotional Ignorance by neuroscientist Dean Burnett tracks the author’s journey after the death of his father from covid-19, as he explores where our emotions come from and what purpose they serve. On sale from 12 January.
Paul Craft/shutterstock
Visit
The Science of Dreams reveals how and why we dream, and how to enhance our … More

We pay little attention to the feeling of awe, but, as Dacher Keltner’s new book argues, it can make our lives more meaningful – and could even help us engage with huge problems like the climate crisis

Humans

4 January 2023

By Sarah Phillips
Mountain peaks are a sure way to create feelings of aweTetra Images, LLC/Alamy
Awe
Dacher Keltner (Allen Lane)
IN JANUARY 2019, when Dacher Keltner was present at his younger brother Rolf’s bedside during the last moments of his life, he felt many things. Perhaps the most surprising was awe: “I felt small. Quiet. Humble. Pure. The boundaries that separated me from the outside world faded.”
Awe is something that Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, has now considered extensively. In 1988, when he asked his mentor Paul Ekman … More

Annalee Newitz’s new novel examines the dark side of “uplifting” animals to a state of self-awareness – and asks whose intelligence is being used as the template, finds Sally Adee

Humans

4 January 2023

By Sally Adee
Terraforming means creating human values as much as physical placesTithi Luadthong/shutterstock
The Terraformers
Annalee Newitz (Tor Books on sale 2 February)
IN A deep future tens of thousands of years from now, animals have been brought into the so-called Great Bargain: in saving Earth from the consequences of the Anthropocene, a deal has been struck between all creatures, and humans now include everyone in managing the shared land.
But to participate, you need to be a person, and for that you must pass an intelligence assessment. So while relations between species look … More

Honeycomb, or cinder toffee, isn’t difficult to make, but it reveals the complex science involved in transforming sugar into confectionery, explains Sam Wong

Humans

28 December 2022

By Sam Wong
Getty Images/iStockphoto
HONEYCOMB, or cinder toffee, is simple to make, but is a great example of the complex science involved in transforming sugar into confectionery.
The process begins by heating sugar and water. While pure water boils at 100°C (212°F), the boiling point of a sugar solution is higher. As the solution boils, water evaporates, but the sugar remains, increasing the concentration and raising the boiling point further. At 170°C (338°F), the sugar starts to caramelise: the molecules break apart and recombine, turning it brown and producing delicious flavour molecules.
By measuring the temperature of a boiling sugar … More

From new seasons of The Mandalorian and Severance to a much-anticipated adaptation of The Three-Body Problem, settle in for some stellar shows next year

Humans

28 December 2022

By Bethan Ackerley
Mark Scout (Adam Scott) in Severance.Atsushi nishijima
IN THE waning days of 2022, with little to do but gorge on Christmas leftovers, I find myself thinking about the coming year. Because sincere self-reflection is beyond me, however, all those thoughts concern television – and so I have amassed a non-exhaustive list of the nine shows I am most looking forward to in 2023.
If any TV series gives me hope for the medium’s future, it is Severance, an unsettling workplace dramedy that debuted on Apple TV+ in February. We followed Mark Scout … More

When did hominins start cooking? It might be earlier than we thoughtWe know for certain cooking isn’t unique to our species and that it was going on 750,000 years ago. The evidence of hominins deliberately exposing their food to heat is being pushed back further all the time, finds Michael Marshall More