Ed Lake
Editorial Director, Profile Books
Ed Lake is an editorial director at Profile Books and former deputy editor of Aeon. He spent five years at The Daily Telegraph before moving to the Middle East to work on The National, where he was deputy editor on the Review section. He is interested in the philosophy of science, the history of political thought, and novels in which a dreamer wakes into a world transformed. He lives in north London.
Written by Ed Lake
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Computing and artificial intelligence
The info moralist
Persecuted little guy, or powerful revolutionary – what sort of wunderkind was Aaron Swartz?
Ed Lake
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Cosmology
Bang or whimper?
We’re still here, which means we have a vacancy for an apocalypse scenario. The one we choose could be revealing
Ed Lake
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Future of technology
Tales on Dark Mountain
Is there anything left for the green movement to do but assuage its grief in ritual and myth?
Ed Lake
Edited by Ed Lake
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Ecology and environmental sciences
It’s not easy being green
If rational persuasion fails to make people behave environmentally, could rituals and a dash of guilt do a better job?
Stephen Cave & Sarah Darwin
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Family life
If babies were randomly allocated to families would racism end?
Howard Rachlin & Marvin Frankel
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Language and linguistics
Naughty words
What makes swear words so offensive? It’s not their meaning or even their sound. Is language itself a red herring here?
Rebecca Roache
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Film and visual culture
Fantasy North
The top of the globe has always meant fantasy, myth, adventure. What explains the icy northern grip on our imagination?
E R Truitt
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Information and communication
Doing more with less: the economic lesson of Peak Paper
John Quiggin
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Ethics
High five!
Why, in the entire history of human life, did awesomeness become the great virtue of our age (and suckiness its vice)?
Nick Riggle
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Film and visual culture
Dispatches from the ruins
The human world has become bafflingly complex and strangely fragile making apocalypse the easiest thing to imagine
Frank Bures
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Childhood and adolescence
What every dictator knows: young men are natural fanatics
Joe Herbert
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Political philosophy
It’s not presidents but pressure groups who lead US politics
Erik Loomis
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Biotechnology
Biohackers should produce a microbial uberfood for the world
Dawn Field
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Ageing and death
Ask the aged
Who better to answer questions about the purpose of life than someone who has been living theirs for a long time?
Karl Pillemer
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Mood and emotion
The hunger mood
Hunger isn’t in your stomach or your blood-sugar levels. It’s in your mind – and that’s where we need to shape up
Michael Graziano