Culture
essay
Music
To the tune of dystonia
One day, my hand stopped speaking to my brain. As a doctor and flute player, I had to understand this strange affliction
Lynn Hallarman
essay
Illness and disease
More than pink
The culture around breast cancer is full of positivity and femininity. But it comes at the expense of the marginalised
Philippa Hetherington
essay
War and peace
Chorus of testimony
Anne Frank’s diary is one of thousands of desperate, secret and vivid journals each bearing witness to the reality of war
Nina Siegal
video
Biography and memoir
The busboy who comforted Robert F Kennedy as he lay dying shares his story
3 minutes
video
Biography and memoir
A young autistic man’s heartfelt letter to the beloved mother he lost
12 minutes
video
Family life
The extraordinary story of a Black Holocaust survivor, as told by his daughter
21 minutes
essay
Stories and literature
The diaries of Kafka
By day an insurance official, by night he was an incessant, insomniacal scribe of the space between waking and dreaming
Ross Benjamin
essay
Thinkers and theories
A philosophy of secrets
Jacques Derrida was fascinated by the figure of the Marrano Jew, whose identity could barely be told even to themselves
Peter Salmon
video
Family life
In Rwanda, Sébastien finds traces of personal history in the wake of national tragedy
21 minutes
video
Wellbeing
Through a poetic account of childhood trauma, one woman reclaims her past
28 minutes
essay
Mental health
Under the mkone tree
When I returned to Kenya, where I grew up, I found biomedicine and traditional medicine in conversation about mental health
Priya Basil
essay
Biography and memoir
My blackness
At times I’ve tried to escape it. Other times I’ve embraced it. But at all times, people have attempted to define me by it
Colin Grant
video
Family life
Fifty years ago, a train collided with Jack and Betty’s car. Here’s how they remember it
9 minutes
video
Virtues and vices
From violent criminal to loving parent – a son’s story of his father’s transformation
23 minutes
video
Teaching and learning
Ronald grew up in a New York City library. It was as strange and wondrous as it sounds
3 minutes
video
Biography and memoir
What Akiko saw at the centre of the Hiroshima blast, and the indelible mark it left
15 minutes
video
Art
Can art in a swanky restaurant ever be transcendent? On Rothko’s Seagram Murals
15 minutes
video
Film and visual culture
At the movies with Pauline Kael – in the arthouse cinema where she got her start
19 minutes
video
Music
Nick ponders the life of the mysterious girl whose used CDs shaped his teenage years
5 minutes
essay
Nature and landscape
Nature does not care
Too many nature writers descend into poetic self-absorption instead of the sharp-eyed realism the natural world deserves
Richard Smyth
video
Knowledge
A poet’s ode to the Hubble Telescope – and to her father, who helped to build it
2 minutes
video
Gender and identity
What happened when a gay Black man joined the Metropolitan Police in London
25 minutes
essay
Human rights and justice
Inside ambiguity
We are suspended between the inescapable facts of our lives and what we do to contest them, nowhere more than in prison
Andy West
essay
Archaeology
Nefertiti’s bust
How did this ancient and enigmatic sculpture of a beautiful Egyptian queen end up as fortune’s hostage in Germany?
Joyce Tyldesley