Humans

Feature-length animation Away was created solely by film-maker Gints Zilbalodis. The writing, animation and soundtrack are all uncomplicated, and the storytelling is all the better for it, says Simon Ings

Humans 18 November 2020

Away tells the story of a boy pursued by a strange, humanoid figure
Subliminal Films

Film
Away
Gints Zilbalodis
At selected cinemas, with a digital release in early 2021
A BARREN landscape at sun up. From the cords of his deflated parachute, dangling from the twisted branch of a dead tree, a boy slowly wakes to his surroundings, just as a figure appears out of the dawn’s dreamy desert glare. Humanoid but not human, faceless yet inexpressibly sad, the giant figure shambles towards the boy, bends and, though mouthless, tries somehow to swallow him.
The boy unclips himself from his … More

Talia Lavin went undercover to join white supremacy groups that were abusing her online. Her book, Culture Warlords, makes for difficult reading

Humans 11 November 2020
By Donna Lu
White nationalists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017
Reuters/Stephanie Keith

Culture Warlords: My journey into the dark web of white supremacy
Talia Lavin
Octopus Books
Book
TALIA LAVIN awoke one day to discover a group of white supremacists using encrypted messaging app Telegram to discuss if she was “too ugly to rape”. A few weeks earlier, unknown to its members, she had joined the group.
The writer and former New Yorker magazine fact checker didn’t feel prominent enough to warrant such vile comments. “I was mostly just a loudmouth on Twitter. Why was I taking up real estate in … More

Hugs, handshakes and air kisses serve the same crucial purposes as animal greetings like sniffing, eye poking and buttock grabbing

Humans 11 November 2020
By David Robson
We crave physical contact with family to reaffirm our bonds
Willie B. Thomas/Getty Images

ON 9 MARCH, Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, called a press conference to discuss his country’s response to the covid-19 pandemic. “From now on, we stop shaking hands,” he declared – before promptly reaching out his hand to greet an expert on infectious diseases.
Many of us can empathise. Social distancing sounds innocuous, but this year we have discovered how hard it can be in practice. Touchy-feely greetings, such as handshakes, hugs, kisses and nose rubbing, are deeply embedded in many cultures. These gestures aren’t merely learned, however. Look to the animal kingdom and you will see that many species – especially highly social ones – perform physical rituals when they approach each other. If our urges to touch one another in greeting seem instinctual, it is because they are.
Greetings adopted by animals can be very different to our own – they include eye poking and other gestures that might make you squirm – but understanding these behaviours can give us an insight into human salutations. Examining the evolution of greetings throws light on the subtle ways they lubricate social interactions and also helps to explain why they are so diverse. As we are a super-social species, it isn’t surprising that many of us are struggling to adjust to the new normal. But the good news is that we are proven masters at adapting our greetings to fit new situations.
Will our greetings change for good as a result of covid-19?
Andreu Dalmau/Epa-Efe/Shutterstock

Animal encounters
Mammals tend to use scents to suss each other out, which explains why … More

A young woman, buried with stone weapons 9000 years ago in what is now Peru, has led to a reassessment of the role women played as hunters across the Americas in prehistory More

When inundated with disinformation, conspiracy theories and total nonsense, how can children learn about science? By listening to Tumble, a fantastic family podcast

Humans 4 November 2020
By Simon Ings
Tumble is a science podcast aimed at children, but parents will enjoy it too
Getty Images/Johner RF

Tumble
Tumble Science Podcast for Kids

SHOULD we teach our children scientific facts about the world, or should we teach them to do science?
The answer, obviously, is both. Yet when physics, chemistry and biology struggle for independent spaces in the school timetable, it may be too much to hope that, along with the facts, children are being given any real idea of what science is like.
Teaching both the letter and spirit of science has always been difficult. I only acquired a … More

ReadThe Comedy of Error has evolutionary ecologist Jonathan Silvertown sharing old jokes and the latest science in his account of how humour evolved, why laughter is contagious and how being funny makes us sexier.

Being Human

Visit
Being Human, the University of London’s annual festival of the humanities, moves partly online this year with digital exhibitions, workshops, quizzes, talks and debates from 12 to 22 November. This year’s theme is “New Worlds”.
Listen
The Seekers Podcast, a playful and interactive series from theatre group The Wardrobe Ensemble, lets children aged 3 to 8 and their families join explorers … More

Amazon Prime’s Truth Seekers from Sean of the Dead duo Simon Pegg and Nick Frost is a mash up of British comedy and ghost hunting. Let’s hope the series becomes today’s Ghostbusters, says Emily Wilson

Humans 4 November 2020
By Emily Wilson
Elton (Samson Kayo, left) and Gus (Nick Frost) hunt ghosts
Colin Hutton/Stolen Pictures/Amazon Studios

Truth Seekers
Jim Field Smith
Amazon Prime Video
COMEDY duo Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have specialised at writing and starring in movies (Shaun of the Dead, The World’s End) that stir together warm, beautifully drawn British comedy and classic horror themes. Their latest outing, a TV series called Truth Seekers, arises from that same delightful tradition.
The truth seekers of the title are a gang who rove around England investigating the paranormal. Given that, I queried with my editors at New Scientist why I … More

By Ian Morse
Some residents of San Francisco are in water poverty
Wenjie Dong/Getty Images

Widening wealth gaps in some of the richest cities in the US have produced a rise in the number of households without running water.
Public information suggests that about half a million households in the US – about 1.1 million people – live without piped water, which places them in “plumbing poverty”. Surveys also show that 73 per cent of these households are found in metropolitan areas.
To investigate further, Katie Meehan at King’s College London – previously at the University of Oregon – and her colleagues analysed US census data, and information relating to the country’s 50 largest metropolitan areas collected during the government’s American Community Survey between 2013 and 2017.

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This showed that San Francisco in California, Portland in Oregon and Austin in Texas are among the cities with the highest rates of plumbing poverty. New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco – among the wealthiest US cities – recorded the most overall residents without complete plumbing.
Meehan and her colleagues say there is a strong connection between this plumbing poverty and growing income inequality in cities.

They found that for every 10 per cent increase in income inequality in the 50 largest metropolitan areas, measured using a standard statistical metric called the Gini coefficient, households were 1.5 times more likely to lack “complete plumbing” – defined as a house supplied by both hot and cold piped water with a bath or shower used only by the occupants.
“In areas that are characterised by income inequality, we see some of the highest rates of plumbing poverty,” says Meehan.
What’s more, people without access to piped water were significantly more likely to be living in rented accommodation and to be using more than of a third of their income to pay rent.

Urban households headed by black people were almost 35 per cent more likely to lack piped water compared with households headed by non-Hispanic white people.
Although surveys suggest that there are almost half a million US households without water access, Meehan says this is likely to be an undercount, because census surveys routinely have trouble recording renters, the homeless, and black people.
“I think that conditions of water access will actually deteriorate, and the places where I think it will get worse are not the places we may first think of, like the San Franciscos, the Portlands or the Los Angeleses,” she says.
Focusing on individual cities and households will help reveal what exactly is causing water insecurity, says Meehan. “That’s the next step in research.”
Journal reference: PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2007361117
More on these topics: More