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The week is the most artificial and recent of our time counts yet it’s impossible to imagine our shared lives without it
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Sleep and dreams
Inside your dreamscape
Dream-hacking techniques can help us create, heal and have fun. They could also become tools of commercial manipulation
Adam Haar Horowitz, Robert Stickgold & Antonio Zadra
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Animals and humans
Promethean beasts
Far from being hardwired to flee fire, some animals use it to their own ends, helping us understand our own pyrocognition
Ivo Jacobs
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Medicine
The body is not a machine
Modern biomedicine sees the body as a closed mechanistic system. But illness shows us to be permeable, ecological beings
Nitin K Ahuja
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Thinkers and theories
Why philosophy needs myth
Some see Plato as a pure rationalist, others as a fantastical mythmaker. His deft use of stories tells a more complex tale
Tae-Yeoun Keum
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Gender
Are men animals?
Diagnosing men as violent and oversexed beasts is tempting but it’s a regressive idea built on dubious analogies
Matthew Gutmann
video
Religion
How the Hindu myth of Annapurna, goddess of food, connects sustenance with spirituality
5 minutes
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Architecture
Being in a building
One of the great buildings of the Renaissance reminds us that buildings are made to be explored, smelled and even tasted
David Karmon
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
Who, exactly, authored this AI-generated spin on Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo?
5 minutes
video
Gender and identity
LGBTQ+ retirees celebrate their hard-earned self-acceptance at a belated prom night
14 minutes
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Animals and humans
Promethean beasts
Far from being hardwired to flee fire, some animals use it to their own ends, helping us understand our own pyrocognition
Ivo Jacobs
video
Biology
Peering into the eerie world of plankton reveals a variety of vital creatures
3 minutes
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Psychiatry and psychotherapy
The humane asylum
As a society we are failing people with severe, persistent mental illness. It’s time to reimagine institutional care
Madeleine Ritts & Daniel Rosenbaum
video
Biography and memoir
Meet the Liverbirds! The bittersweet tale of Liverpool’s all-female answer to the Beatles
16 minutes
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Gender and identity
George Sand’s boots
How the rebellious novelist left behind her provincial self to learn about life, charging around Paris dressed as a man
Belinda Jack
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Sleep and dreams
Inside your dreamscape
Dream-hacking techniques can help us create, heal and have fun. They could also become tools of commercial manipulation
Adam Haar Horowitz, Robert Stickgold & Antonio Zadra
video
Mental health
When crushes become crushing – how to know if you’re in a ‘limerent episode’
4 minutes
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Palaeontology
This riotous life
There’s no rhythm to mass extinctions, no pattern to evolutionary recovery. Life bursts forth, in cacophonous adaptation
Riley Black
video
Music
Take in the sounds of silence via this unique performance of John Cage’s infamous piece
5 minutes
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Bioethics
We are all frail
We should be able to acknowledge that disabilities can cause pain and suffering without disabled people feeling dehumanised
Tom Shakespeare
video
Travel
‘My people!’ A Trinidadian’s love letter to his island, just before its 1962 independence
17 minutes
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Future of technology
Learn from machine learning
The world is a black box full of extreme specificity: it might be predictable but that doesn’t mean it is understandable
David Weinberger
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Space exploration
Decolonising the cosmos
Instead of treating Mars and the Moon as sites of conquest and settlement, we need a radical new ethics of space exploration
Ramin Skibba
video
Wellbeing
A unique theatre performance explores what touch means in an age of lockdown
17 minutes
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Medicine
The body is not a machine
Modern biomedicine sees the body as a closed mechanistic system. But illness shows us to be permeable, ecological beings
Nitin K Ahuja
video
Archaeology
A Viking axe struck a Newfoundland tree in the year 1021. Here’s how scientists proved it
7 minutes
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Cities
Cities that grow themselves
They are spreading like branching plants across the globe. Should we rein cities in or embrace their biomorphic potential?
Josh Berson
video
Human rights and justice
When the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence canonised Derek Jarman
24 minutes
essay
Thinkers and theories
Why philosophy needs myth
Some see Plato as a pure rationalist, others as a fantastical mythmaker. His deft use of stories tells a more complex tale
Tae-Yeoun Keum