All those naked Greeks…
Men in ancient Greek art exercise, fight battles, pursue lovers and mourn lost friends, all without their pants on. Why?
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Physics
Time is an object
Not a backdrop, an illusion or an emergent phenomenon, time has a physical size that can be measured in laboratories
Sara Walker & Lee Cronin
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Mood and emotion
The joy of sulk
Full of implicit rules and paradoxes, sulking is a marvellous example of intense communication without clear declaration
Rebecca Roache
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History of ideas
The post-linguistic turn
Analytic and continental philosophers were once united in their obsession with language. But now new questions have arisen
Crispin Sartwell
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Political philosophy
The Swedish theory of love
All countries must balance the freedom of individuals with the demands of the community. Sweden’s solution is unique
Lars Trägårdh
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Earth science and climate
Deep warming
Even if we ‘solve’ global warming, we face an older, slower problem. Waste heat could radically alter Earth’s future
Mark Buchanan
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Biology
The key to geckos’ unrivalled climbing skills isn’t sticky feet. It’s subatomic
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History
The life of Wanda Półtawska
Her closeness to Pope John Paul furnished him with anti-abortion ideals, fuelled by her survival of the Ravensbrück camp
Joy Neumeyer
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Technology and the self
Greetings from Green Bank – the small town where modern technology is banned
10 minutes
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Stories and literature
What makes John Keats’s ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ so enduringly powerful?
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History of technology
Ingenious librarians
A group of 1970s campus librarians foresaw our world of distributed knowledge and research, and designed search tools for it
Monica Westin
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Social psychology
Don’t let them fool you
The fear of being duped is ubiquitous, but excessive scepticism makes it harder to trust one another and cooperate
Tess Wilkinson-Ryan
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Human evolution
Far from frivolous, cuteness is a powerful – and still mysterious – force of nature
6 minutes
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Economic history
Matrimony and the market
The sexual revolution promised new norms of intimacy based on egalitarianism. So far, only the rich have cashed in
Daniel Tutt
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Dance and theatre
How a Noh mask-maker summons a lifelike face from a single block of wood
16 minutes
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Politics and government
Models of antiquity
Radicals in the Age of Revolution saw the classical world as a common inheritance that could aid their fight for liberty
Francesca Langer
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Family life
On a whirlwind morning, a couple learns if they’re facing an unplanned pregnancy
7 minutes
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Art
The art of rules
Conceptual art often confounds. The key is to understand the rules of the artwork and the aesthetic experiences they yield
Sherri Irvin
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Thinkers and theories
A philosophy of secrets
Jacques Derrida was fascinated by the figure of the Marrano Jew, whose identity could barely be told even to themselves
Peter Salmon
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The ancient world
What wine vessels reveal about politics and luxury in ancient Athens and Persia
16 minutes
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Stories and literature
The sonnet machine
A sonnet contains an emotional drama of illusion and deception, crisis and resolution, crafted to make us think and feel
Timothy Hampton
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Art
David Goldblatt captured the contradictions of apartheid in stark black and white
15 minutes
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Anthropology
How to mourn a forest
The Marind people of West Papua deploy mourning not only to grieve their animal and plant kin but as political resistance
Sophie Chao
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Philosophy of mind
Do we have good reasons to believe in beliefs? A radical philosophy of mind says no
5 minutes
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Physics
Time is an object
Not a backdrop, an illusion or an emergent phenomenon, time has a physical size that can be measured in laboratories
Sara Walker & Lee Cronin
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Space exploration
In the search for life, might alien ocean worlds be a better bet than Earth-like planets?
5 minutes
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Political philosophy
The Swedish theory of love
All countries must balance the freedom of individuals with the demands of the community. Sweden’s solution is unique
Lars Trägårdh
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Philosophy of religion
How a devout Catholic philosopher approaches the problem of evil
8 minutes
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History of ideas
The post-linguistic turn
Analytic and continental philosophers were once united in their obsession with language. But now new questions have arisen
Crispin Sartwell