Essay/History of Science Science fictions Is the scientific endeavour always a bold and noble quest for truth? Not when it is writing its own history Philip Ball
Essay/Anthropology The scalp from Sand Creek Even after museums return human remains pillaged from a massacre in 1864, can repatriation heal the wounds of history? Chip Colwell
Video/Race The courage and determination that fuelled Wendell Scott, NASCAR’s first black driver 3 minutes
Video/Subcultures Utopian communities rarely last. How have the Hutterites done it over four centuries? 28 minutes
volume_up play_arrow pause Idea/Economics Conspicuous consumption is over. It’s all about intangibles now Elizabeth Currid-Halkett
Essay/Subcultures What is a cult? Cults are exploitative, weird groups with strange beliefs and practices, right? So what about regular religions then? Tara Isabella Burton
Video/Computing & Artificial Intelligence Machine learning is important, but some AIs just want to have fun 57 minutes
Essay/Social Psychology The crisis of expertise Experts are either derided or held up as all-seeing gurus. Time to reboot the relationship between expertise and democracy Tom Nichols
volume_up play_arrow pause Essay/Consciousness & Altered States The mathematics of mind-time The special trick of consciousness is being able to project action and time into a range of possible futures Karl Friston
volume_up play_arrow pause Idea/Cognition & Intelligence What know-it-alls don’t know, or the illusion of competence Kate Fehlhaber
volume_up play_arrow pause Essay/Economics Platonically irrational How much did Plato know about behavioural economics and cognitive biases? Pretty much everything, it turns out Nick Romeo
Essay/Political Philosophy Theory from the ruins The Frankfurt school argued that reason is dangerous, mass culture deadening, and the Enlightenment a disaster. Were they right? Stuart Walton
Video/Illness & Disease Maria’s skin tears open every day but, though her body is fragile, her will is formidable 18 minutes
volume_up play_arrow pause Idea/History For centuries European aristocrats proudly claimed foreign ancestry Blake Smith
Essay/Technology & the Self Natural, shmatural Mother Nature might be lovely, but moral she is not. She doesn’t love us or want what’s best for us Molly Hodgdon
Essay/Meaning & the Good Life End-times for humanity Humanity is more technologically powerful than ever before, and yet we feel ourselves to be increasingly fragile. Why? Claire Colebrook
Video/Gender & Sexuality How a once overlooked civil-rights leader became an icon of gay marriage equality 16 minutes
Essay/Political Philosophy Theory from the ruins The Frankfurt school argued that reason is dangerous, mass culture deadening, and the Enlightenment a disaster. Were they right? Stuart Walton
Video/Space Exploration A tour of Mars assembled from NASA images reveals a wondrous but uninviting planet 5 minutes
Idea/Philosophy of Language Who needs a perfect language? It’s already perfectly imperfect Charlie Huenemann
Essay/Personality First impressions count A judgment of competence is made in a tenth of a second on the basis of facial features. Thus political decisions are made Alexander Todorov
Video/Mood & Emotion Will they or won’t they? Prospective jumpers anguish at the edge of the high dive 16 minutes
volume_up play_arrow pause Idea/Cognition & Intelligence We could all do with learning how to improvise a little better Stephen T Asma
Essay/History Why the Tudors still rule The Tudors are always good box office, but their melodramatic lives distract from a much deeper legacy of civic nationhood Anna Whitelock