The power of the ‘C’ word
Saying the word ‘cancer’ changes a person’s life and can lead to overtreatment and fear. Is the word too hot to use at all?
Popular this month
essay
Technology and the self
The unseen
Our crisis of work and technology is one in which too many people feel that nobody sees them as a fellow human being
Allison J Pugh
essay
Gender
Taliban bride
Women in Afghanistan are prisoners in their own homes. This is the story of Marjan, married at 12 to a Taliban fighter
Zala & Asad Nariman
essay
Evolution
Empire of flight
They have big brains, long childhoods and sociable, curious minds. So why haven’t birds developed complex culture?
Antone Martinho-Truswell
essay
Virtues and vices
Awkward silences
What is it about lulls in conversation that make them so very uncomfortable? It has to do with how we connect with each other
Rebecca Roache
essay
Religion
An unholy alliance
In the 1930s, the rise of Nazism brought centuries of animosity between Europe’s Catholics and Protestants to an end. Why?
Udi Greenberg
video
Mathematics
Spiral into the ‘golden ratio’ – and separate the myths from the maths
4 minutes
essay
Biology
Memories without brains
Certain slime moulds can make decisions, solve mazes and remember things. What can we learn from the blob?
Matthew Sims
video
Art
A young Rockefeller collects art on a fateful journey to New Guinea
7 minutes
video
Engineering
How water-based clocks revolutionised the way we measure time
10 minutes
essay
Death
Freedom over death
Death is a certainty. But choosing how and when we depart is a modest opportunity for freedom – and dignity
Michael Cholbi
video
Consciousness and altered states
What do screens depicting serene natural scenes mean to those living in lock-up?
12 minutes
essay
Thinkers and theories
The French liar
René Descartes, the founder of modern philosophy, was furiously condemned by his contemporaries. Why did they fear him?
Sandrine Parageau
video
Anthropology
Margaret Mead explains why the family was entering a brave new world in this 1959 film
29 minutes
essay
Architecture
The replica and the original
Architectural copies of lost structures require reckoning with history and heritage. At what cost is the past rebuilt?
Elizabeth Kostina
essay
The future
Homo crustaceous
‘Everything becomes crab’ is more than an absurd meme. The crab is a deep symbol of our devil’s bargain with technology
Michael Garfield
video
Demography and migration
In California’s farmlands, immigrant workers share their stories of toil and hope
17 minutes
essay
History of ideas
From scattered traces
How the ideas circulating among one noblewoman’s coterie in 16th-century Dubrovnik anticipated modern feminist thought
Luka Boršić
video
Ageing and death
Memories of friends and neighbours light the streets of a seaside village in England
11 minutes
essay
Neurodiversity
Rethinking adult ADHD
The diagnostic category of adult ADHD is becoming more inclusive. That’s not the same as it being overdiagnosed
Margaret Sibley
video
History of science
How we came to know the size of the Universe – and what mysteries remain
26 minutes
essay
Design and fashion
Walk in these
Shoes are deeply personal, literally moulded to our lives. But they create our social lives as much as express them
Matthew McCormack
essay
Music
The beat of goombay
Diasporas are made of vast constellations of countless people, fused together through memory, meaning – and music
Salwa Halloway
video
Ecology and environmental sciences
Join endangered whooping cranes on their perilous migratory path over North America
6 minutes
essay
Virtues and vices
Awkward silences
What is it about lulls in conversation that make them so very uncomfortable? It has to do with how we connect with each other
Rebecca Roache
video
Knowledge
Why David Deutsch believes good explanations are the antidote to bad philosophy
10 minutes
essay
Gender
Taliban bride
Women in Afghanistan are prisoners in their own homes. This is the story of Marjan, married at 12 to a Taliban fighter
Zala & Asad Nariman
video
Architecture
A lush tour of Fallingwater – the Frank Lloyd Wright design that changed architecture
14 minutes
essay
History of science
Injury and inhibition
The misunderstood story of Phineas Gage shows that we need a new way of understanding the experiences of brain injury survivors
Ben Platts-Mills