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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

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

video

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.

video

Art

Why Diego Velázquez needed a lifetime to paint his enigmatic masterpiece

31 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

Black-and-white photo of a woman holding her child on a stone pier, with small wooden boats and a shoreline in the background.

essay

Film and visual culture

The risk of beauty

W Eugene Smith’s photos of the Minamata disaster are both exquisite and horrifying. How might we now look at them?

Joanna Pocock

Painting of a rural street on a dark night featuring a two-storey white farmhouse, a red barn, powerlines, and a bright light in the centre.

essay

Sleep and dreams

Spinning the night self

After years of insomnia, I threw off the effort to sleep and embraced the peculiar openness I found in the darkest hours

Annabel Abbs

Two older women wearing hats and sunglasses raise their arms in celebration at a street parade, with a purple background.

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Sex and sexuality

From secret crushes to self-acceptance – a joyful chronicle of ‘old lesbian’ stories

29 minutes

Aerial view of a large pipeline construction site with machinery and vehicles cutting through green fields and hills under a partly cloudy sky.

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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

A young girl in a pink dress stands on a step, holding the hand of an adult. Four adults are partially visible around her.

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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

Handwritten notes in black ink on an open notebook, with red and black corrections.

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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

Mist-covered city skyline with a calm, reflective body of water in the foreground under a grey sky.

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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

Four young girls in dresses smile outside, with one holding a small cat.

video

Biography and memoir

Preserving memories of a Japanese internment camp, and the land where it stood

8 minutes

Illustration of a child sitting with their head down and knees up, next to a toy box with a teddy bear sticking out. An adult’s legs, dressed in a red skirt and brown shoes, are visible seated nearby on the right.

essay

Psychiatry and psychotherapy

The therapist who hated me

Going to a child psychoanalyst four times a week for three years was bad enough. Reading what she wrote about me was worse

Michael Bacon

The astronaut Ed Dwight in an orange jumpsuit smiles while holding a white helmet against a clear blue sky background.

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Biography and memoir

Passed over as the first Black astronaut, Ed Dwight carved out an impressive second act

13 minutes

Artwork depicting a family group composed of angular lines and triangles, some but not all coloured, on a paper background

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Family life

A patchwork family

After my marriage failed, I strove to create a new family – one made beautiful by the loving way it’s stitched together

Lily Dunn

A man lies down with his head on a miniature model of buildings and streets, blending into the tiny, urban scene at night.

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Biography and memoir

The unique life philosophy of Abdi, born in Somalia, living in the Netherlands

29 minutes

Illustration of three scouts in uniforms with red neckerchiefs, one wearing a hat. They have different facial expressions and are sitting in a row.

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Childhood and adolescence

Striking shadow puppetry illuminates a skater kid’s memories of Boy Scout camp

12 minutes

A photo collage with stone buildings, a wooden door, a metal gate, and residential structures with plants in the background.

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Technology and the self

A ‘virtual outing’ on Google Maps reveals a treasured image from Diego’s past

6 minutes

Person on a roof, using a shovel to clear deep snow while more snow falls off the edge, against a snowy, cloudy sky backdrop.

video

Nature and landscape

What it’s like to care for Yellowstone during its quietest – and coldest – months

13 minutes

Close-up of a man with a long beard and shoulder-length hair, smiling slightly with a contemplative expression, black and white photograph.

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Thinkers and theories

On knowing who he was

Alan Watts, for all his faults, was a wildly imaginative and provocative thinker who reimagined religion in a secular age

Christopher Harding

Woman holds a baby while standing on a stone spiral path in a forested area with trees and greenery in the background.

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Biography and memoir

As her world unravels, Pilar wonders at the ‘sacred geometry’ that gives it structure

20 minutes

Surreal artwork of a human head. The top section contains an open book and clouds, the bottom section has deep water with sharks, all set in an abstract background.

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Stories and literature

Saved by Infinite Jest

Bereft and suicidal, I lay on my sofa. Only David Foster Wallace’s novel kept me tethered to life, and still does

Mala Chatterjee

A portrait of a smiling Black woman in a garden, sitting on a white plastic lawn chair, with leafy plants, flowers, and a wooden fence in the background.

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Biography and memoir

A gentle soul in an oppressive land – Bonnie’s story of life in America

11 minutes

A woman sits alone in a Parisian cafe with a glass of wine, while the neighbouring tables are full of socialising groups

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Love and friendship

Loved, yet lonely

You might have the unconditional love of family and friends and yet feel deep loneliness. Can philosophy explain why?

Kaitlyn Creasy

A flock of birds fly over a wide expanse of marshland and a river at dusk.

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Biography and memoir

Flat places

Whenever I stand in a flat landscape, I feel myself becoming weightless, taken out of my childhood full of painful nothing

Noreen Masud