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Culture

Essays and videos on the arts, literature, travel, rituals and celebrations

Architecture Art Biography and memoir Dance and theatre Design and fashion Film and visual culture Food and drink Home Music Nature and landscape Rituals and celebrations Sports and games Stories and literature Subcultures Travel

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Ancient stone statues depicting a standing and a reclining Buddha against a natural rock backdrop.

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Philosophy of religion

Compassionate time

On his final journey through Asia, Thomas Merton found some peace in the dialectic between refusing the world and loving it

Drew Calvert

A wooden cabin on a grassy hill with a mountainous backdrop and cloudy sky in the distance.

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Knowledge

Why it takes more than a lifetime to truly understand a single meadow

11 minutes

Photo of an elderly man with a bald head and moustache wearing a suit and tie, smiling against a light-coloured, blurred background.

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War and peace

‘She is living on in many hearts’ – Otto Frank on the legacy of his daughter’s diary

12 minutes

A painting depicting a group of people in a room, with a man painting and a young girl in the centre, dressed in ornate clothes.

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Art

Why Diego Velázquez needed a lifetime to paint his enigmatic masterpiece

31 minutes

A person’s hands pouring olive oil into a row of wine glasses with people blurred in the background at a tasting event.

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Food and drink

The flavour of mechanisation

Olive oil was revered and cherished by the ancients. But its distinctive peppery taste is really a modern invention

Massimo Mazzotti

Painting of two anthropomorphic peacocks in 18th-century attire in front of a stately home surrounded by trees.

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Beauty and aesthetics

Is beauty natural?

Charles Darwin was as fascinated by extravagant ornament in nature as Jane Austen was in culture. Did their explanations agree?

Abigail Tulenko

A man views a holographic projection of a child in shorts running in a forest setting; office equipment surrounds him.

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Technology and the self

A haunting scene from ‘Minority Report’ inspires a voyage into time and memory

7 minutes

Illustration of a person reading a book with glowing hot air balloons and mountains emerging from the pages.

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Physics

The city of wisdom

Don’t be intimidated by physics: it is made of stories and metaphors. Learn these and the field will open up to you

Jamie Zvirzdin

Illustration of a saucepan on a stove with raw meat and ginger, a pot lid is nearby on the right.

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Family life

The stream-of-consciousness thoughts and memories that emerge while cooking a meal

5 minutes

Ancient mosaic depicting two figures with instruments on a blue stone background.

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Food and drink

The fermented crescent

Ancient Mesopotamians had a profound love of beer: a beverage they found celebratory, intoxicating and strangely erotic

Tate Paulette

Painting of people playing dodgeball around a square pool with ripples in vibrant colours, long shadows cast on the ground.

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Film and visual culture

A lush animated opus evokes the frenzied pace of modern life

4 minutes

A painting of two girls with long hair each holding peacock feathers standing in front of a textured, muted background.

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Family life

The precious family keepsakes that hold meaning for generations

10 minutes

Blurry photo of a person lying back with head tilted, set against a red and dark background.

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Sex and sexuality

Sex and death

Our culture works hard to keep sex and death separate but recharging the libido might provide the release that grief needs

Cody Delistraty

A smiling elderly man in a cluttered electronics shop with various gadgets and boxes surrounding him.

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Home

The joy of clutter

The world sees Japan as a paragon of minimalism. But its hidden clutter culture shows that ‘more’ can be as magical as ‘less’

Matt Alt

Close-up photo of a wooden mask with fur eyebrows, hollow eyes, a rounded mouth opening and long black hair against a dark background.

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Anthropology

Witches around the world

The belief in witches is an almost universal feature of human societies. What does it reveal about our deepest fears?

Gregory Forth

Vintage advertising poster for ‘Cocaine Toothache Drops’ featuring two children playing happily, building a house from sticks, in front of a house with a wooden fence.

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Subcultures

An undulating thrill

Once lauded as a wonder of the age, cocaine soon became the object of profound anxieties. What happened?

Douglas Small

Close-up of a man smiling and interacting closely with a puppet of an old man wearing a black beret, both faces nearly touching.

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Art

A puppeteer makes sense of an overwhelming world by shrinking it down to size

5 minutes

Photo of a person wearing large sunglasses with outdoor scenery reflected, resting their fingers on their chin in a thoughtful pose.

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Ethics

Main character syndrome

Why romanticising your own life is philosophically dubious, setting up toxic narratives and an inability to truly love

Anna Gotlib

A child peeking over the back of a horse in a grassy open field with a distant horizon and a slightly cloudy sky.

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Anthropology

Does Mogi’s future lie with her horses on the Mongolian steppe, or in the city?

16 minutes

Photo of people in a forest, some kneeling and examining plants, others standing and walking, all surrounded by lush greenery.

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Food and drink

The joy of foraging

Offering an escape from industrial foods, foraging nourishes the soul and body, but it needs democratic access to the land

Nikita Sud

A colourful mural depicting a Mexican American family, a Mexican American woman being tackled by a white policeman, and a stadium resembling a U F O descending from the sky.

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Art

The sprawling mural that depicts an unflinching people’s history of Los Angeles

7 minutes

A woman in casual attire walking by a large weaving loom with black threads in a bright, clean room

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Design and fashion

When luxury is good

The waste and exploitation of fast fashion shouldn’t blind us to the joys of making beautiful clothing with care

Roger Tredre

Black-and-white drawing of labourers working in a warehouse, overlaid with the text “Marks of weakness, marks of woe” in yellow.

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Art

In his poem ‘London’, William Blake crafted a bleak vision of the city he loved

9 minutes

Photo of a doll with curly red hair, blue eyes, and a large maroon hat, wearing a double string of pearls and a red dress.

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Rituals and celebrations

Tender, yet creepy

Dolls help children create wonderfully vivid and imaginative worlds, while also serving as unsettling reminders of the abyss

Tishani Doshi