The quest for an elixir of youth is never-ending. Yet there are surprising predictors linked to longer and more enjoyable lives: how much one earns, how healthy one is and how one spends one’s time. Neuroscientist Daniel Glaser discusses the joys and injustices of growing old with health equity expert Michael Marmot and the authors of two new books on ageing, Lynne Segal and Anne Karpf.

Jeremy Gavron’s searching account of his mother, who was rarely talked about after her death, documents the too-short life of this extraordinary woman, as he pieces together the events and pressures that led to Hannah Gavron’s suicide when he was just four. Jeremy Gavron discusses his deeply personal and moving memoir with columnist, writer and sociologist Anne Karpf.

Darian Leader and Emma Tarlo unveil some of the mysteries of our bodies. Psychoanalyst Darian Leader’s Hands: What We Do with Them – and Why is a fascinating odyssey through the history of what human beings do with their hands, drawing examples from popular culture, art history, psychoanalysis, technology and clinical research. Anthropologist Emma Tarlo’s book Entanglement: The Secret Lives of Hair is full of surprising revelations and penetrating insights, from fashion and beauty to re...

In Rick Gekoski’s Darke, the protagonist eschews the outside world, turning to philosophers and poets to make sense of humanity’s tragic essence. But just as he prepares to abjure life entirely, he is offered a chance of salvation. Jeremy Gavron’s Felix Culpa, is a stylistically experimental noir fiction, posing the question: whose stories deserve to be told? And whose words should do the telling?