The three-act ‘hero’s journey’ has long been the most prominent kind of story. What other tales are there to tell?

Demonology

By turns benign and malign, powerful and vulnerable, earthbound and aerial, daimons across the world resemble one another

David Gordon White

A catchy tune explains the world’s ‘isms’ – according to your mum doing the laundry

5 minutes

Surreal, dazzling visuals form an Iranian expat’s tribute to defiance back home

10 minutes

The vanishing of youth

The precipitous decline of birthrates throughout the world poses a serious threat to humanity. What is to be done?

Victor Kumar

Vikings on the Silk Roads

The Norse ravaged much of Europe for centuries. They were also cosmopolitan explorers who followed trade winds into the Far East

Neil Price

Methodical banality

Like today’s large language models, 16th-century humanists had techniques to automate writing – to the detriment of novelty

Hannah Katznelson

Struggling to wake

After a murderous kidnapping in Nigeria, I launched a campaign to put a stop to the abductions. Why did no one listen?

Ayisha Osori

On the Norwegian coast, a tree is transformed into a boat the old-fashioned way

6 minutes

One man’s quest to save an orphaned squirrel, as narrated by David Attenborough

14 minutes