The accidental beekeeper
The gift of a half-wanted hive took me into the world of bees, kept and wild: a place of generosity and attentiveness
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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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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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History
History by numbers
Is history a matter of individual agency and action, or of finding and quantifying underpinning structures and patterns?
Claire Lemercier & Claire Zalc
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Evolution
What on earth is a xenobot?
The more we understand how cells produce shape and form, the more inadequate the idea of a genomic blueprint looks
Philip Ball
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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
video
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
video
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
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Biology
A touch of moss
Inside a rainforest or on the city pavement, moss asks so little yet offers so much: a tactile encounter with time itself
Nikita Arora
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Human rights and justice
The staggering cruelty of Ireland’s Church-run ‘mother and baby homes’
18 minutes
essay
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
video
History of ideas
Peter Singer charts the path from Hegelian philosophy to Marxist revolution
43 minutes
essay
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
essay
History
History by numbers
Is history a matter of individual agency and action, or of finding and quantifying underpinning structures and patterns?
Claire Lemercier & Claire Zalc
video
War and peace
A peace activist’s harrowing account of nuclear war is a visceral case for disarmament
26 minutes
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The environment
Here’s to the aquapolis
Unkempt, beguiling and lacking conventional geometry, wetlands bring a roguish, raffish wildness to the city
Tom Blass
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Physics
An interstellar voyage explores the ‘paradox’ of twins separated by light years
6 minutes