This week’s New Stateman is a science special in which Martin Rees, Susan Greenfield, David Attenborough and other leading thinkers answer the biggest question of all: “Are we doomed?” Pick up a copy of the magazine (out today in London and in the rest of the country tomorrow) to read their responses as well as those of the neuroscientist Colin Blakemore, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Andre Geim and the novelist Sunetra Gupta.
Elsewhere in the magazine, Michael Brooks profiles Paul Nurse, the new president of the Royal Society, and Helen Lewis-Hasteley talks to Brian Greene about string theory. Also this week, Dan Hodges asks if Labour needs a little more “control freakery”, David Blanchflower looks at what Britain can learn from the mistakes of Reaganomics, Alice Miles explains why the Chinese cyber attack is the ultimate scare story, and Laurie Penny charts the human cost of welfare reform.
All this, plus A N Wilson on why reading Dante is one of life’s “great intellectual and emotional experiences”, John Gray on the violent birth of the Renaissance and Ryan Gilbey on the quiet dignity of Ayrton Senna.