Contributor(s): Professor David Wengrow | Reflecting on the practices of ancient societies, European or non-European, the Victorian anthropologist Sir James Frazer invited us to suppose that "evidence of superstitious belief and custom" among them should suffice to "disabuse" the modern reader of the notion that they were anything "like us". Today, any consideration of the considerable differences between "their" ways of life and "ours" has to reckon with the scientific consensus that, for at least the last 200,000 years, there has been no major evolutionary development in human capacities: physiologically and neurologically "they" are "us". How, then, should we understand the transition of the human between then and now? How did it all begin, and what does this tell us about our time? In conversation with Simon Glendinning, David Wengrow will explore these questions, and his new book.

The Early History of Humanity: we have never been stupid (until now?)

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Contributor(s): Madhumita Murgia | On the surface a British poet, an UberEats courier in Pittsburgh, an Indian doctor, and a Chinese activist in exile have nothing in common. But they are in fact linked by a profound common experience—unexpected encounters with artificial intelligence.

What it means to be human in a world changed by AI

Contributor(s): Priyanka Kotamraju, Professor Tarun Khaitan, Professor Christophe Jaffrelot, Professor Alpa Shah | In her latest book, The Incarcerations. Professor Alpa Shah finds a shocking case of cyber warfare - hacked emails, mobile phones and implantation of electronic evidence used to make the arrests of the 16 human rights defenders (the BK-16). Delving into the lives of the BK-16, The Incarcerations shows how the case is a bellwether for the collapse of democracy and why these events matter to all of us.

The search for democracy in the world's largest democracy

Contributor(s): Professor Anna Mahtani | In deciding whether to carry out a particular healthcare policy for example, the process for reaching a decision will almost certainly involve a calculation of credences. Drawing from the Philosophy of Language, Anna Mahtani argues that objects of credence are "opaque". It matters then how the relevant object is described or designated.

From probabilities to decisions

Contributor(s): Gary Stevenson, Rebecca Gowland | Whilst studying at LSE, Gary won a competition run by a bank: "The Trading Game". The prize: a golden ticket to a new life, as the youngest trader in the whole city. A place where you could make more money than you'd ever imagined. Where your colleagues are dysfunctional maths geniuses, overfed public schoolboys and borderline psychopaths, yet they start to feel like family. But what happens when winning starts to feel like losing? Would you stick, or quit? Even if it meant risking everything? Gary's book is an outrageous, unvarnished, white-knuckle journey to the dark heart of an intoxicating world - from someone who survived the game and then blew it all wide open.

The trading game

Contributor(s): Professor Judith Butler | Judith Butler confronts the attacks on gender which have become central to right-wing movements today. Global networks have formed "anti-gender ideology movements" dedicated to circulating a fantasy that gender is a dangerous threat to families, local cultures, civilisation – and even "man" himself.

The Early History of Humanity: we have never been stupid (until now?)

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