video
Nature and landscape
California’s landscapes provide endless inspiration for a woodcut printmaker
10 minutes
essay
Gender and identity
Requeering Wilde
Oscar Wilde is an icon of gay liberation from secrecy. But his life and his sexuality were not so simple – nor so binary
Sam Mills
video
Virtues and vices
Why Bennie tried to disappear, and what happened when he was found decades later
16 minutes
essay
Food and drink
Adjust your disgust
The future of food is nutritious and sustainable – if we can overcome our instinctual revulsion to insects and lab-grown meat
Alexandra Plakias
video
Animals and humans
Join seabirds as they migrate, encountering human communities along the way
13 minutes
video
Stories and literature
Two variants of a Hindu myth come alive in an animated ode to Indian storytelling
14 minutes
video
Food and drink
The passage of time is a peculiar thing in a 24-hour diner
14 minutes
video
Art
Background music was the radical invention of a trailblazing composer
17 minutes
video
Anthropology
For an Amazonian female shaman, ayahuasca ceremonies are a rite and a business
30 minutes
essay
Psychiatry and psychotherapy
The art in the analyst’s room
The consulting office reflects the personality of the therapist, while also subtly shaping the experience of their patients
Anna Parker
video
Gender
A filmmaker responds to Lars von Trier’s call for a new muse with a unique application
16 minutes
essay
Computing and artificial intelligence
Chatbots of the dead
We can now create compelling experiences of talking with our dead. Is this ghoulish, therapeutic or something else again?
Amy Kurzweil & Daniel Story
video
Sports and games
Havana’s streets become racetracks in this exhilarating portrait of children at play
5 minutes
video
Design and fashion
A ceramicist puts her own bawdy spin on the folk language of pottery
14 minutes
video
Art
Radical doodles – how ‘exquisite corpse’ games embodied the Surrealist movement
15 minutes
video
Language and linguistics
Why Susan listens to recordings of herself speaking a language she no longer remembers
5 minutes
essay
Stories and literature
The listening gift
It is the dark matter of conversation, the white space around a poem. For Rilke, listening is receiving the divine
Faith Lawrence
video
Home
How an artist transformed a dilapidated hunting lodge into a house made of dreams
8 minutes
essay
Metaphysics
The truth about fiction
What distinguishes fiction from nonfiction? The answer to this perennial question relies on how we understand reality itself
Hannah H Kim
essay
Stories and literature
Elegance and hustle
How French modernists from Proust to Mallarmé were alarmed and inspired by the voracious dynamism of the newspaper world
Max McGuinness
essay
Cognition and intelligence
The power of prayer
Praying is a cognitive practice full of problem-solving resources. You can learn from it even if you don’t want to do it
Eleanor Schille-Hudson
video
Beauty and aesthetics
In art, the sublime is a feedback loop, evolving with whatever’s next to threaten us
9 minutes
essay
Art
Threads of resistance
Knitting and embroidery are laden with stereotypes of domestic femininity – and the subversive potential for protest
Gemma McKenzie
video
Family life
One family’s harrowing escape from postwar Vietnam, told in a poignant metaphor
10 minutes