essay
Pleasure and pain
Me versus myself
I work against myself through procrastination, distraction and addiction. Why do I consistently sabotage my own life?
Eliane Glaser
essay
Archaeology
Beyond kingdoms and empires
A revolution in archaeology is transforming our picture of past populations and the scope of human freedoms
David Wengrow
essay
Meaning and the good life
Philosophy was once alive
I was searching for meaning and purpose so I became an academic philosopher. Reader, you might guess what happened next
Pranay Sanklecha
essay
Biography and memoir
The adoption paradox
Even happy families cannot avoid the reality – my reality – that adoption is predicated on transacting the life of a child
Fiona Sampson
essay
Human reproduction
Baby talk
When babies are born, they cry in the accent of their mother tongue: how does language begin in the womb?
Darshana Narayanan
video
Food and drink
Local tensions simmer amid a potato salad contest at the Czech-Polish border
14 minutes
essay
History of ideas
All that we are
The philosophy of personalism inspired Martin Luther King’s dream of a better world. We still need its hopeful ideas today
Bennett Gilbert
video
Technology and the self
A filmmaker finds a tactile beauty in the creation of her prosthetic leg
11 minutes
video
Knowledge
An Indigenous myth and a geological survey elicit two ways of knowing one place
4 minutes
essay
Music
A novel kind of music
So-called ‘classical’ music was as revolutionary as the modern novel in its storytelling, harmony and depth
Joel Sandelson
essay
Psychiatry and psychotherapy
Decolonising psychology
At times complicit in racism and oppression, psychology has also been a fertile ground for radical and liberatory thought
Rami Gabriel
video
Biology
Beetles take flight at 6,000 frames per second in this perspective-shifting short
9 minutes
essay
Meaning and the good life
Beyond authenticity
In her final unfinished work, Hannah Arendt mounted an incisive critique of the idea that we are in search of our true selves
Samantha Rose Hill
video
War and peace
A war meteorologist’s riveting account of how the Allies averted a D-Day disaster
6 minutes
essay
Politics and government
Governing for the planet
Nation-states are no longer fit for purpose to create a habitable future for humans and nature. Which political system is?
Jonathan S Blake & Nils Gilman
video
Physics
What does it look like to hunt for dark matter? Scenes from one frontier in the search
7 minutes
essay
Anthropology
The Ju/’hoansi protocol
Hunter-gatherer societies are highly expert in group deliberation and decision-making which respects both difference and unity
Vivek V Venkataraman
essay
Genetics
We are not machines
Welcome to the new post-genomic biology: a transformative era in need of fresh metaphors to understand how life works
Philip Ball
video
Technology and the self
How the magic of photography brought Victorian England closer to the spirit realm
16 minutes
essay
Progress and modernity
In praise of magical thinking
Once we all had knowledge of how to heal ourselves using plants and animals. The future would be sweeter for renewing it
Anna Badkhen
video
Neuroscience
Dog vision is a trendy topic, but what can we really know about how they see?
11 minutes
video
Home
An artist endeavours to bring the Moon down to Earth in a ritual of yearning
5 minutes
essay
History of ideas
Baffled by human diversity
Confused 17th-century Europeans argued that human groups were separately created, a precursor to racist thought today
Jacob Zellmer
essay
Archaeology
Beyond kingdoms and empires
A revolution in archaeology is transforming our picture of past populations and the scope of human freedoms
David Wengrow
video
Information and communication
An animation built from road signs is a whirlwind study of flash communication
2 minutes
essay
Meaning and the good life
Philosophy was once alive
I was searching for meaning and purpose so I became an academic philosopher. Reader, you might guess what happened next
Pranay Sanklecha
video
Biology
An elegy for a dying microbe explores what we really mean by ‘death’
9 minutes
essay
History of technology
Learning to love monsters
Windmills were once just machines on the land but now seem delightfully bucolic. Could wind turbines win us over too?
Stephen Case