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Political philosophy
Democracy entails conflict
Democracy is a system of politics that has disagreement at its heart. But how do we stop conflicts becoming destructive?
Rochelle DuFord
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Sleep and dreams
The dreams of animals
The psychic lives of nonhuman dreamers reveal colours, harmonies and beauties of which we had little inkling until now
David M Peña-Guzmán
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Psychiatry and psychotherapy
Bad therapy
Some psychotherapeutic approaches are not only ineffective, they’re actively harmful. We’re now starting to identify them
Yevgeny Botanov, Alexander Williams & John Sakaluk
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Thinkers and theories
Philosopher of the apocalypse
From the ashes of the Second World War, Günther Anders forecast a new catastrophe: technology would overwhelm its creators
Audrey Borowski
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Earth science and climate
A new Earth rises
How did the planet replace the nation-state to become the prime political object of the 21st century?
Erik Isberg
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Mood and emotion
When hope gets in the way
Hope is usually seen as a positive agent of change that spares us from pain. But it can also undermine healing and growth
Santiago Delboy
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Human rights and justice
Breakfast with the Panthers
It wasn’t all young men and guns: the Black Panther Party’s programs fed more hungry kids than the state of California
Suzanne Cope
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Animals and humans
Against human exceptionalism
In a tight spot, you’d probably intuit that a human life outweighs an animal’s. There are good arguments why that’s wrong
Jeff Sebo
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Biology
The split-body problem
Why we need to stop thinking about parents, offspring and sex when we try to understand how life reproduces itself
Gunnar O Babcock
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The environment
The power of shit
Our excrement is a natural, renewable and sustainable resource – if only we can overcome our visceral disgust of it
Lina Zeldovich
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Computing and artificial intelligence
AI’s first philosopher
Alan Turing was a pioneer of machine learning, whose work continues to shape the crucial question: can machines think?
Sebastian Sunday Grève
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Anthropology
Primitive communism
Marx’s idea that societies were naturally egalitarian and communal before farming is widely influential and quite wrong
Manvir Singh