Culture

Why does contemporary art make for wildly popular blockbusters?

Judith H Dobrzynski

Castles, croquet and kilts: on the tour bus from China through the photo ops of Britain

10 minutes

Utopian communities rarely last. How have the Hutterites done it over four centuries?

28 minutes

How the deaf experience of music can enrich music for everyone

12 minutes

Born of pain, filled with power – a teenage girl’s art that confronts in order to heal

6 minutes

The truth about tarot

Whether divining ancient wisdoms or elevating the art of cold reading, tarot is a form of therapy, much like psychoanalysis

James McConnachie

Deep faith and rough rides – life at an evangelical rodeo Bible camp

23 minutes

Sands of time

The North Sea is rich in signs of what made the modern world. It's also a monument to what awaits us in the Anthropocene

David Farrier

Why do we crave the awful futures of apocalyptic fiction?

5 minutes

Stuck on one idea of truth or beauty? Rhizomes can help

Nicholas Tampio

What’s so new about news?

The interesting thing about news has never been its truth or falsehood but how it explodes our sense of onrushing time

Arthur Asseraf

How to get your kicks in the hermit kingdom of North Korea

Laya Maheshwari

From accents to ‘sleep signing’ – the psychology and the politics of sign language

4 minutes

James Turrell’s singular quest to transform a crater into a natural-light observatory

8 minutes

Now THAT was music

One grim day (when youth is over) you find that new music gets on your nerves. But why do our musical tastes freeze over?

Lary Wallace

Watchers of the earth

Indigenous peoples around the world tell myths which contain warning signs for natural disasters. Scientists are now listening

Carrie Arnold

Should you feel sad about the demise of the handwritten letter?

Siobhan Phillips

Walk the lines

Can walking the city streets still be liberating, when every path is paved with literary quotations and artistic prefiguring?

Will Wiles

Feelings are a better way to discuss architecture than concepts

Timothy Brittain-Catlin

The only line comedy shouldn’t cross is the no-laughter line

Casey Michael Henry

The real Casanova

His name is synonymous with serial seduction but Casanova's memoirs reveal a man greater than the sum of his ‘conquests’

Laurence Bergreen

New York City, 1986 – the grit, the graffiti, the glory

18 minutes

A ski mountain as a stunning ethereal reflection on how we move through nature

14 minutes

Storyhealing

Literature can enthuse medicine, and medicine can inspire literature. They are complementary treatments for being human

Gavin Francis

‘What’s going on?’ How seeking meaning is futile in the Coen Brothers’ universe

8 minutes

Passion, precision and swagger: join an Oscar®-winning flamenco masterclass

29 minutes

‘This is post-traumatic growth’: how one artist painted over her rape

4 minutes

Show me the Monet

How wealthy Americans grew to appreciate the French Impressionist painter – as an artist but also as a financial asset

Ross King

A film that dreams of a poem that dreams of tragedy and love

4 minutes

Whatever you do, don’t call this an ‘interesting’ idea

Simson L Garfinkel