Blue-eyed Buddhist
The story of a working-class radical from Ireland who became a celebrated monk and challenged the British Empire in Asia
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History
Freedom from liquor
Ken Burns’s account of prohibition tells a popular story of booze in America. The historical record is far more sobering
Mark Lawrence Schrad
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Addiction
Why we crave
The neuroscientific picture of addiction overlooks the psychological and social factors that make cravings so hard to resist
Zoey Lavallee
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Knowledge
A sliver of reality
Science and mathematics may never fully capture the physical universe. Are there hard limits to human intelligence?
David H Wolpert
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Subcultures
Life in the buff
Naturists believed nudity was profoundly beneficial to society. In order to spread the message, they took to photography
Annebella Pollen
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Consciousness and altered states
Seeing and somethingness
An evolutionary approach to consciousness can resolve the ‘hard problem’ – with radical implications for animal sentience
Nicholas Humphrey
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Ageing and death
‘It’s not beautiful, but it’s interesting’ – an ageing nude model surveys her body
4 minutes
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Evolution
Fortune favours the shrewd
Attaining and maintaining power lies at the heart of almost all animal societies. And it’s as devious as human politicking
Lee Alan Dugatkin
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Astronomy
Raw solar-storm footage is the punk-rock antidote to sleek James Webb imagery
6 minutes
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Biology
Dazzling timelapse shows how microbes spoil our food – and sometimes enrich it
22 minutes
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Subcultures
The utopian machine
For children like me, growing up in an utopian community, life was a bewildering chaos of freedom and indoctrination
Susanna Crossman
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Ethics
An animator wonders: can you ever depict someone without making them a caricature?
10 minutes
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Human rights and justice
Exhuming the truth
Thousands of victims of political executions lie in anonymous graves. Forensics offers hope for the ‘forgotten’ ones
Nicole Iturriaga
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Cities
Inside the unique London community built by residents to defy housing discrimination
21 minutes
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Subcultures
Life in the buff
Naturists believed nudity was profoundly beneficial to society. In order to spread the message, they took to photography
Annebella Pollen
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Film and visual culture
With human help, AIs are generating a new aesthetics. The results are trippy
9 minutes
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Addiction
Why we crave
The neuroscientific picture of addiction overlooks the psychological and social factors that make cravings so hard to resist
Zoey Lavallee
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History
From manners to mud – two women recall coming of age in Victorian London
10 minutes
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Thinkers and theories
Democracy or apocalypse
Eric Voegelin and Hans Kelsen fled the Nazis. In the US, they clashed over the nature of modernity and government
David Dyzenhaus
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Gender and identity
The joys and complications of raising a baby without gender in a binary world
12 minutes
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History of technology
Care from afar
For over a century telemedicine has promised healthcare for all. But will it ever replace seeing a human being in person?
Jeremy A Greene
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Animals and humans
Happy the person
She has deep emotions, complex social needs and a large, elephant brain. Her legal personhood should be recognised too
Lori Marino
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Sports and games
Bodies, bikes and groovy music propel this stylish classic film from 1965
17 minutes
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Religion
Sisters in dharma
In Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim nation, Parwati Soepangat pioneered a Buddhist feminist theology with deep roots
Jack Meng-Tat Chia
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Art
Can art in a swanky restaurant ever be transcendent? On Rothko’s Seagram Murals
15 minutes
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Ethics
Collective wrongs
Even when individual perpetrators and victims are dead, states and institutions have a responsibility to make restitutions
Joshua Stein
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Biology
Like pop music, humpback whale songs spread, mutate, and fall out of fashion
9 minutes
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Religion
The Calvinist conquest
In the 17th century, Dutch proselytisers set out for Asia, Africa and the Americas. The legacy of their travels endures
Charles H Parker
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The ancient world
Why did the Romans create a massive, entirely impractical map of their empire?
7 minutes