Book of the dayScience and nature booksReviewThis magisterial account of human behaviour journeys from immediate brain response back to long-term social causes. It also suggests we have no free will You reach out to touch someone’s arm, or perhaps you pull a trigger. What made that happen? In this extraordinary survey of the science of human behaviour, the biologist Robert Sapolsky takes the reader on an epic journey backwards through time, and through different scientific disciplines.

Larry David Bernie Sanders and Larry David find out they're related – video Henry Louis Gates Jr, the host of Finding Your Roots on PBS, says the show ‘couldn’t have scripted’ the discovery that the actor and comedian Larry David and Senator Bernie Sanders are related. The episode where the two learned they are distant relatives aired Tuesday on the show’s season four premiere. David has impersonated Sanders on Saturday Night Live.

CultureObituaryFrank Delaney obituaryIrish author, arts broadcaster, scholar and literary prize judge who delighted in being called ‘the most eloquent man in the world’The author and broadcaster Frank Delaney, who has died aged 74 after suffering complications from a stroke, liked to think of himself as a democratiser of the written and spoken word. In 1978 he launched his Bookshelf programme on BBC Radio 4, and in the following six years interviewed more than 1,000 authors on the programme, including John Updike, Margaret Atwood, Stephen King, Christopher Isherwood and Anthony Burgess.

‘The first time we slept together, we were like two teenagers, and not in a good way.’ Photograph: Jonathan Storey/Getty Images‘The first time we slept together, we were like two teenagers, and not in a good way.’ Photograph: Jonathan Storey/Getty ImagesFamilyTell no one, put nothing in writing, pay in cash, don’t drink, and keep off the phone. How to have an affair for nine years and get away with it

Short storiesReviewMorrissy recalls Joyce’s Dubliners in these compassionate stories of sex, death and temps perdu in Irish middle-class suburbia The jacket description is somewhat coy. It is termed “an exploded novel” (whatever that is), “stories” that are “linked”, a “collection” that has a “strong narrative arc, very similar to that of a novel”. There are 18 stories, but they could equally be regarded as chapters because Prosperity Drive is novelistic in intent.

Volodymyr ZelenskiyZelenskiy slams Trump’s rhetoric on stopping the war as ‘very dangerous’Ukrainian leader invited Trump to Ukraine but says if he returns to White House he could make unilateral concessions to Russia The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, fears that if Donald Trump returns to the White House next year he could make unilateral concessions to Russia that override Ukraine’s interests and branded the former US president’s claims he could stop the war in 24 hours as “very dangerous”.

PoetryReviewFady Joudah is moved by a posthumous collection from Mahmoud DarwishSome time will have to pass before "resistance" or "the political" are no longer the first words uttered in discussons of Mahmoud Darwish's writing in English. But how much time? Ruth Padel reminds us in her perceptive introduction to A River Dies of Thirst, where she pairs Seamus Heaney with Darwish, that so far "nothing [has] let up for Palestine". Yet the issue is not simply one of "

Birds This article is more than 13 years oldCarnivorous fish blamed for grebe's extinction in MadagascarThis article is more than 13 years oldGlobal assessment of the conservation status of birds says loss of Alaotra grebe brings total number of extinct species to 132A grebe from Madagascar has become extinct after carnivorous fish were introduced to the lakes where it lived, experts said today as they warned that one-eighth of bird species now face extinction.

Capita This article is more than 5 months oldCyber-attack to cost outsourcing firm Capita up to £25mThis article is more than 5 months oldGroup, which runs services for NHS, councils and military, reports loss of almost £68m for first half of year Capita expects to take a financial hit of as much as £25m as a result of a cyber-attack that began in March, pushing the outsourcing group to a pre-tax loss of almost £68m for the first half of the year.

Russia This article is more than 10 years oldThis article is more than 10 years oldKGB's former spy chief in Britain says he has no regrets about betraying the Soviet Union as he likens Putin to MussoliniThree decades ago, Oleg Gordievsky was dramatically smuggled out of the Soviet Union in the boot of a diplomatic car. A strident figure of a man, he passed to the British vital details of Moscow's espionage operation in London.