In a massive, long-term study of 17,000 civil servants, an almost unbelievable conclusion emerged: the status of a person's job was more likely to predict their likelihood of a heart attack than obesity, smoking or high blood pressure.

The interaction of genetic and external influences makes my behaviour unpredictable, but not undetermined. In the gap between those words lies freedom.

Prosperity has brought complications. Our lives are busier, faster, more stressful. They're nostalgic for a simpler, slower time.

Society works not because we have consciously invented it, but because it is an ancient product of our evolved predispositions. It is literally in our nature.

Simple determinism, whether of the genetic or environmental kind, is a depressing prospect for those with a fondness for free will.

The genome is a book that wrote itself, continually adding, deleting and amending over four billion years.

Trade is 10 times as old as farming.