essay
Nature and landscape
Land loneliness
To survive, we are asked to forget that our lands and bodies are being violated, policed, ripped up, silenced, sacrificed
Kelsey Day
video
Food and drink
Local tensions simmer amid a potato salad contest at the Czech-Polish border
14 minutes
video
Knowledge
An Indigenous myth and a geological survey elicit two ways of knowing one place
4 minutes
essay
Music
A novel kind of music
So-called ‘classical’ music was as revolutionary as the modern novel in its storytelling, harmony and depth
Joel Sandelson
video
Technology and the self
How the magic of photography brought Victorian England closer to the spirit realm
16 minutes
video
Home
An artist endeavours to bring the Moon down to Earth in a ritual of yearning
5 minutes
video
Information and communication
An animation built from road signs is a whirlwind study of flash communication
2 minutes
video
Art
Creating art that was aware of itself – and the viewer – made Manet the first modernist
15 minutes
essay
Biography and memoir
The adoption paradox
Even happy families cannot avoid the reality – my reality – that adoption is predicated on transacting the life of a child
Fiona Sampson
essay
Thinkers and theories
Paper trails
Husserl’s well-tended archive has given him a rich afterlife, while Nietzsche’s was distorted by his axe-grinding sister
Peter Salmon
video
War and peace
A century later, can poetry help us make sense of the First World War’s horrors?
9 minutes
video
Life stages
What Michelangelo’s late-in-life works reveal about his genius – and his humanness
13 minutes
essay
Pleasure and pain
Eulogy for silence
Tinnitus is like a constant scream inside my head, depriving me of what I formerly treasured: the moments of serene quiet
Diego Ramírez Martín del Campo
video
Biography and memoir
Preserving memories of a Japanese internment camp, and the land where it stood
8 minutes
video
Making
Trek to a remote Himalayan village where artisans craft teapots fit for kings
11 minutes
essay
Beauty and aesthetics
All aquiver
The Decadent movement taught that you should live your life with the greatest intensity – a dangerous and thrilling challenge
Kate Hext
essay
Sports and games
Performance-enhancing vices
Selfishness channels ambition, envy drives competition, pride aids the win. Does it take a bad person to be a good athlete?
Sabrina Little
video
Stories and literature
To capture grief in poetry is to describe the ineffable. Here’s why Tennyson did it best
8 minutes
video
Childhood and adolescence
The unique fellowship between teens and young puffins on a remote Icelandic island
20 minutes
essay
Ageing and death
Peregrinations of grief
A friend and a falcon went missing. In pain, I turned to ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’ – and found a new vision of sorrow and time
Emily Polk
video
Animals and humans
Why be dragons? How massive, reptilian beasts entered our collective imagination
58 minutes
video
Rituals and celebrations
Flirtation, negotiation and vodka – or how to couple up in 1950s rural Poland
5 minutes
essay
Stories and literature
Her blazing world
Margaret Cavendish’s boldness and bravery set 17th-century society alight, but is she a feminist poster-girl for our times?
Francesca Peacock
video
Biology
How the world’s richest reds are derived from an innocuous Mexican insect
5 minutes