Alison George

Forget roads, drones are the future of goods transport

In rural parts of the world, building a reliable road infrastructure seems nigh impossible. Matternet co-founder has another idea: vast networks of drones

The Age of Inequality: Who are the 1 per cent?

In the US and the UK, the richest percentile control a huge proportion of wealth. Who are these super rich?

Kopimism: the world's newest religion explained

Isak Gerson is spiritual leader of Kopimism, devoted to file-sharing. We asked him to explain the religion – and if Julian Assange is a high priest

What righteousness really means

Exploring the tribal world of US politics, moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt found that self-righteousness is an essential part of being human

Shopping on the dark net

What did a random shopper bot buy when it was let loose on the hidden internet? We asked its creator Carmen Weisskopf

Free online MIT courses are an education revolution

Online learning is the biggest shake-up of education since the advent of the printing press, says Anant Agarwal , an MIT computing expert

The yuck factor: disgust's surprising power

You know it when you feel it, but disgust is affecting you in unexpectedly subtle ways too, discovers Alison George

Lester Brown: The food bubble is about to burst

The worlds food harvest is unsustainably inflated, warns the president of the Earth Policy Institute

David Attenborough on our crowded planet

The veteran TV naturalist loves humans as much as other wildlife – but not when global populations are out of control

7 billion and counting

Overpopulation is often singled out as the root problem facing the planet. If only it were that simple