How do physicists know what will happen in situations that haven’t been tested? How sure can we be that physical laws are constant? Katy Clough explains how we are pushing the limits of what we know about the universe.

Inequality and poverty are bad — almost everyone agrees on that. The solution? A basic income guaranteed to everyone on Earth. Renowned political philosopher Hillel Steiner explains why and how we should implement it.

For decades, Captain America stood at the centre of the liberal consensus in the United States. As political unity began to unravel, so too did the fictional hero’s bipartisan position. In times of political turmoil, what can Captain America tell us about the state of US politics?

As the legendary Italian poet Dante turns 750, what can he tell us about the human experience? Dante scholar John Took takes us through his timeless angst and joy ridden ponderings on love, despair and existence.

The 2000 cult film ‘Dude, where’s my car?’ portrays two young men, Jesse (Ashton Kutcher) and Chester (Seann William Scott), on a journey to find a car. In this episode, UCL philosopher Luke Fenton-Glynn suggests they could have turned to philosophy to find it, and that policy-makers could do the same to tackle hard practical problems such as climate change.

Plans for introducing Artificial Intelligence into the classroom entail mounting hidden cameras to the ceiling, embedding microphones into the tables, and whiteboard holograms springing out of nowhere. It all sounds a little 1984, but how could children’s learning benefit from the integration of AI into schools?

For many people, contemporary art is a strange place where artists are charlatans who take us for fools. But are they really, or should we take them seriously? Miguel Dos Santos tackles the issue.

There’s so much yet to be understood about the cells that make up our own bodies. Martin Knight talks us through one aspect of them, the Primary cilia, where potentially life changing discoveries are being made.

How do computers understand the information we give them in order to complete an action, such as typing a sentence on a keyboard? How will quantum mechanics be used to radically expand the possibilities in today’s computers? Olalla Castro Alvaredo explains the exciting developments in a fast changing field.

Dust in the air is nothing new. But for the Amazon rainforest, dust from the Sahara is crucial for its survival. How does this happen though? Ian Ashpole explains the phenomenon.

Those on the autism spectrum experience the sensory world very differently to others. Melissa Bovis, Doctor of Nanomedicine, teamed up with autistic artist Jon Adams to explore the causes of these sensory differences in autistic people.

If you were to throw a baseball, physicists could tell you what its trajectory would be. The same goes for an electron in classical mechanics. But what happens when we move onto the quantum scale? Suddenly, predicting the path of particles becomes much more complex. Euan McLean explains how physicists are creating spacetime simulations to solve this problem.

Acclaimed writer Henry James spent his life filling countless notebooks with ideas for stories he never wrote. Professor Philip Horne’s journey into James’ most peculiar inklings led him to bring these stories to life.

Warfare has given rise to an invisible killer, one that was first discovered in World War I, attacking soldiers even after they had returned home to their families. Historian of science Emily Mayhew takes us to Paris in the early 20th century to tell the story of the woman who pioneered research on this invisible killer.

The Muslim veil has been both condemned as an object of female oppression and upheld as a feminist symbol. Political and cultural tensions have played out on the surface of this controversial garment, marking the female body as a battlefield. Katarzyna Falecka explores the role of the veil during the Algerian War of Independence, with a special focus on women’s agency.

Is William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon the real author of the Shakespearean plays? The so-called anti-Stratfordians think not. The Shakespeare scholar René Weis disagrees and presents three pieces of evidence against conspiracy theories.

We normally think cells in our body have their own specific functions, but stem cells are different — they have the potential to become any type of cell. Davide Danovi takes us through the science of stem cells, and introduces us to their new home: the stem cell hotel.

In the 19th century, a forger of medieval art created works that today are more valuable unmasked than they would be if they were still thought to be originals. Medieval culture scholar Mary Wellesley takes us through the detective-like story of the woman who uncovered his deception.

One of the most complex and finely-tuned ways of communicating emotion in humans are facial expressions. Social psychologist Eva Krumhuber fills us in on the latest research and takes us from the Oscars to the quest to create ever more realistic robots.

Human memory is an intriguing thing. On the one hand, we forget things all the time. On the other, there are things we never seem to forget. How could this be though? Memory researcher Flavia Schechtman Belham explains.

The Earth is over 4 billion years old, but land animals have only existed on our planet for the past 500 million years. Why didn’t animal life on land emerge sooner? And why did it emerge at all? The Earth scientist Philip Pogge von Strandmann has the answers.

Whilst the gap year has come to enjoy increasing popularity in recent years, it is no new phenomenon. Throughout the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, the young elite of England and France undertook travels to and from the European continent, broadening their cultural horizons whilst reaffirming their patriotic superiority. What did these ‘Grand Tours’ look like, and what can they tell us about the modern ‘gap year’?