Video/ Design & Fashion Fast fashion: for an e-commerce model in China, 150 outfits in 13 hours is a day’s work 6 minutes
Essay/ Cultures & Languages Black Achilles The Greeks didn’t have modern ideas of race. Did they see themselves as white, black – or as something else altogether? Tim Whitmarsh
Essay/ Stories & Literature Communist robot dreams Tech flourished in communist Bulgaria and so did a body of science fiction asking vital philosophical questions Victor Petrov
Video/ Food & Drink ‘The next best thing to a sexual fantasy’ – hanging out at London’s all-night bagel bakery 10 minutes
Idea/ Stories & Literature In the gap between writer and reader the novel comes to life Claire Fuller
Video/ Design & Fashion The weird wonders of combining 3D printing with the maths of pinecones and sunflowers 4 minutes
Essay/ Subcultures The spirit molecule The theory that the brain produces its own psychedelic compound provokes pop-culture enthusiasm and scientific controversy Graham St John
Video/ Dance & Theatre The extraordinary physical and mental demands of performing Sichuan opera 5 minutes
Idea/ Cultures & Languages Why greeting-card clichés are utterly empty yet full of meaning Daniel Fraser
Essay/ Stories & Literature Thus spake Albert You probably know a quote from him. He probably never said it. How did Einstein become a touchstone of all that is wise? Andrew Robinson
Essay/ Cultures & Languages Did Homo erectus speak? Early hominins who sailed across oceans left indirect evidence that they might have been the first to use language Daniel Everett
Video/ Subcultures Caspar Salmon trawls for the strange truth behind a fishy family legend 14 minutes
Idea/ Cultures & Languages We need the singular ‘they’ – and it won’t seem wrong for long Stephanie Golden
Video/ Cultures & Languages Why lip-reading is like ‘putting together a puzzle without all the pieces’ 4 minutes
Video/ Architecture & Landscape Time-lapse transforms stained-glass light into a stunning kaleidoscopic display 4 minutes
Video/ Film & Television From shifting perspectives to shaping scenes, how sound design can carry a film 9 minutes
Video/ Art Floating from room to room, a soap bubble mysteriously avoids its fate at every turn 10 minutes
Essay/ Stories & Literature The good guy/bad guy myth Pop culture today is obsessed with the battle between good and evil. Traditional folktales never were. What changed? Catherine Nichols
Video/ Art The intricate, ancient bronze-casting process that ends with a satisfying crunch 4 minutes
Video/ Food & Drink Reclaiming the dignity and spiritual roots of chocolate production in Mexico 4 minutes
Video/ Stories & Literature The African-American poet who travelled 1,200 miles to Harvard, only to be thrown in jail 4 minutes