Audio
essay
Computing and artificial intelligence
The people of the cloud
Hot, strenuous and unsung. There is nothing soft and fluffy about the caretaking work that enables our digital lives
Steven Gonzalez Monserrate
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Meaning and the good life
You’re astonishing!
Life can be better appreciated when you remember how wonderfully and frighteningly unlikely it is that you exist at all
Timm Triplett
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Demography and migration
The ungreat replacement
Workers in the West have indeed been repressed – but not by immigrants. The policies of their own governments are to blame
John Rapley
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Thinkers and theories
Why read Fichte today?
Inspired by Kant, Fichte launched a radical philosophical system based on subjectivity and aspiring to freedom for all
Gabriel Gottlieb
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Mathematics
Imaginary numbers are real
These odd values were long dismissed as bookkeeping. Now physicists are proving that they describe the hidden shape of nature
Karmela Padavic-Callaghan
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Ethics
Through the eyes of another
It’s impossible to shed our individual biases. So the best way to establish objectivity is by taking on new perspectives
Heidi Maibom
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War and peace
The will to fight
Throughout history, the most effective combatants have powered to victory on commitment to core values and collective resolve
Scott Atran
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Anthropology
Keeping our options open
Frantic human activity has reduced both cultural and biological diversity. Now we must protect the dwindling alternatives
Thomas Hylland Eriksen
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Nations and empires
The discontent of Russia
Lenin envisioned Soviet unity. Stalin called Russia ‘first among equals’. Yet Russian nationalism never went away
Joy Neumeyer
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Human evolution
Out of the forest
We have thought of humans for a century or more as creatures of the savannah, shaped in every way by grassland life. Not so
Patrick Roberts
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Cities
The haunted city
The city, for all its mechanical speed, artificial light and industrialisation, is the most uncanny of human habitats
Azania Imtiaz Khatri-Patel
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Biology
Seeing life
Driven by insatiable curiosity, early histologists revealed the hidden structures of cells in works of sensual artistry
Benjamin Ehrlich