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Photo of a person wearing large sunglasses with outdoor scenery reflected, resting their fingers on their chin in a thoughtful pose.

Main character syndrome

Why romanticising your own life is philosophically dubious, setting up toxic narratives and an inability to truly love

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Ethics

Main character syndrome

Anna Gotlib

Popular this month

A busy beach scene with children on donkeys, people in the sea, a man reading on a sun lounger, and a dog urinating on a sun shade.

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Virtues and vices

Make it awkward!

Rather than being a cringey personal failing, awkwardness is a collective rupture – and a chance to rewrite the social script

Alexandra Plakias

Painting of two men sitting in a barn, one on a bench and the other on a chair, with a horse and pumpkins in the background.

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History of ideas

Philosophy of the people

How two amateur schools pulled a generation of thinkers from the workers and teachers of the 19th-century American Midwest

Joseph M Keegin

A kingfisher underwater catching a fish amid rising bubbles.

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Complexity

Problem-solving matter

Life is starting to look a lot less like an outcome of chemistry and physics, and more like a computational process

David C Krakauer & Chris Kempes

A silhouetted figure walking with a dog through a dimly lit tunnel, contrasting with bright concrete walls in the foreground.

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Psychiatry and psychotherapy

Targeted

For those who hear voices, the ‘broken brain’ explanation is harmful. Psychiatry must embrace new meaning-making frameworks

Justin Garson

A digital painting of abstract shapes and lines featuring colourful spheres with light trails against a wavy background.

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Physics

Chasing ghost particles

Without the neutrino, the Universe might be an empty void. But this inscrutable particle isn’t giving up its secrets easily

Corey S Powell

A child peeking over the back of a horse in a grassy open field with a distant horizon and a slightly cloudy sky.

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Anthropology

Does Mogi’s future lie with her horses on the Mongolian steppe, or in the city?

16 minutes

Photo of people in a forest, some kneeling and examining plants, others standing and walking, all surrounded by lush greenery.

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Food and drink

The joy of foraging

Offering an escape from industrial foods, foraging nourishes the soul and body, but it needs democratic access to the land

Nikita Sud

A man and a woman smiling with their hands on the shoulders of a Neanderthal figure with long hair and a beard but in modern clothes.

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Genetics

Why it took a century to work out that humans interbred with Neanderthals

22 minutes

A colourful mural depicting a Mexican American family, a Mexican American woman being tackled by a white policeman, and a stadium resembling a U F O descending from the sky.

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Art

The sprawling mural that depicts an unflinching people’s history of Los Angeles

7 minutes

A woman in casual attire walking by a large weaving loom with black threads in a bright, clean room

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Design and fashion

When luxury is good

The waste and exploitation of fast fashion shouldn’t blind us to the joys of making beautiful clothing with care

Roger Tredre

Painting of a woman with a sword defending a fort from attackers; other figures fight with swords and wooden poles and carry stones.

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Race and ethnicity

The forging of countries

Two distinct and conflicting forms of nationalism – civic and ethnic – helped create the nation-states of Europe

Luka Ivan Jukić

A person at night placing an object in a large bin labelled ‘TRASH ONLY’ on an empty street lit by streetlights.

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Personality

A ‘dumpster archeologist’ reconstructs strangers’ stories via what they’ve discarded

14 minutes

Photo of an ancient male statue with a cloth draped over his shoulder and arm, three people are sitting on a bench to the side of the statue

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Thinkers and theories

The value of our values

When Nietzsche used the tools of philology to explore the nature of morality, he became a ‘philosopher of the future’

Alexander Prescott-Couch

A woman in a purple jumper, named María Victoria Maldonado, picking berries in a lush green forest.

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Human rights and justice

An unarmed Indigenous group aims to protect their native lands in this stirring portrait

15 minutes

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Complexity

Problem-solving matter

Life is starting to look a lot less like an outcome of chemistry and physics, and more like a computational process

David C Krakauer & Chris Kempes

Black-and-white drawing of labourers working in a warehouse, overlaid with the text “Marks of weakness, marks of woe” in yellow.

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Art

In his poem ‘London’, William Blake crafted a bleak vision of the city he loved

9 minutes

Photo of a doll with curly red hair, blue eyes, and a large maroon hat, wearing a double string of pearls and a red dress.

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Rituals and celebrations

Tender, yet creepy

Dolls help children create wonderfully vivid and imaginative worlds, while also serving as unsettling reminders of the abyss

Tishani Doshi

Black-and-white photo of a woman holding her child on a stone pier, with small wooden boats and a shoreline in the background.

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Film and visual culture

The risk of beauty

W Eugene Smith’s photos of the Minamata disaster are both exquisite and horrifying. How might we now look at them?

Joanna Pocock

Illustration of four adult giraffes, and a young one lying down, with Mount Kilimanjaro and acacia trees in the background.

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Ageing and death

We’re not the only animals that appear to grieve. What are the implications?

6 minutes

Painting of a rural street on a dark night featuring a two-storey white farmhouse, a red barn, powerlines, and a bright light in the centre.

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Sleep and dreams

Spinning the night self

After years of insomnia, I threw off the effort to sleep and embraced the peculiar openness I found in the darkest hours

Annabel Abbs

An ancient, broken clay tablet with a circular design and various inscriptions, displayed on a dark background.

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Archaeology

How researchers finally solved the puzzle of the oldest known map of the world

18 minutes

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History of ideas

Philosophy of the people

How two amateur schools pulled a generation of thinkers from the workers and teachers of the 19th-century American Midwest

Joseph M Keegin

Photo of a man in a wheelchair on a grass field with another man’s hand resting on the wheelchair’s handle.

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Love and friendship

For two brothers who rely on one another, love is a daily act of devotion

11 minutes

Fresco fragment with geometric borders framing curved shapes representing waves crashing upon the shore, partially damaged.

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Nature and landscape

Laughing shores

Sailors, exiles, merchants and philosophers: how the ancient Greeks played with language to express a seaborne imagination

Giordano Lipari

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Virtues and vices

Make it awkward!

Rather than being a cringey personal failing, awkwardness is a collective rupture – and a chance to rewrite the social script

Alexandra Plakias

Illustration of a dodo bird with grey feathers, brown beak, and stubby wings, standing on a grassy, sandy ground.

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Evolution

How – and how not – to think about the role randomness plays in evolution

60 minutes

Black and white photo of four people in sunglasses standing on a terrace overlooking the sea with a hilly coastline in the background.

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Metaphysics

Desperate remedies

In order to make headway on knotty metaphysical problems, philosophers should look to the methods used by scientists

Nina Emery

Wooden model of a sailing ship with multiple masts and detailed rigging on a white background.

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Art

A prisoner in Guantánamo finds some escape in building intricate model ships

6 minutes