The easiest way to represent our planet is as it is: with a globe—a sphere. But things get complicated when we need to represent it on a flat surface—a sheet of paper or a screen—to create what we know as a map. The answer to "Which is the most accurate map of the world?" or "Which world map is most similar to reality?" is confusing: all of them or none. Any cartographic projection of our planet is a simulation, a tool for a specific purpose.

On average, a plastic bag is used for only 12 minutes, but it can take more than 300 years to fully decompose. According to the OECD's Global Plastics Outlook, in just two decades, annual plastic waste production worldwide has doubled, from 180 million tonnes to over 350 million. Plastic waste is projected to nearly triple worldwide by 2060: half of all this waste will still be landfilled, and less than a fifth will be recycled.

In medical schools around the world, there is a book that is frequently cited. It is the manualFarreras Rozman: Internal medicine. It has been published continuously since 1929, is periodically updated, and has already accumulated 20 editions. It's not a paperback edition—it has 2,952 pages—and it's not cheap either: it costs 208 euros in paperback and 158 euros in electronic format. It is published by Elsevier, a publishing house that is little known to the general public, but which holds the title of being the one that moves the most money worldwide. In 2023 alone, it had a turnover of 5.654 billion euros, according to the ranking of the 50 largest publishing houses in the world, published by the consulting firm Ruediger Wischenbart. This is 1.1 billion euros more than legendary names like Penguin Random House and up to six times more money than Planeta, which occupies 22nd place worldwide, with a turnover of 959 million euros. Who is behind this group and how has it managed to become the global king of the sector?

In the last two weeks three spacecraft have arrived on Mars: one from China, one from the United Arab Emirates and one from the United States. Mars is therefore on the media agenda. All this coincides by chance with the inauguration next Thursday, February 25, of the exhibition Mart. El mirall vermell ('Mars. The red mirror') at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB). "In fact, we've been working on this exhibition for two and a half years", explains Juan Insúa, the curator of the show. "It was scheduled to open in November, but the pandemic has delayed everything", he says, which has made the exhibition coincide with the Martian news. But Mart. The Mirall Vermell goes far beyond this chance opportunity. The sciences and the humanities need each other more and more", Insúa argues, "so this exhibition, like all the projects I do, is born from a third culture perspective".