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Culture

Essays and videos on the arts, literature, travel, rituals and celebrations
Two Asian film actors are fighting kung-fu style on the beach dressed in 1970s style casual clothes
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Film and visual culture

Fighting kung fu

From chopsocky films to disco earworms, Asian caricatures have proliferated since the 1970s. Can Hollywood kick the habit?

Stephanie Wong

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Film and visual culture

Exposed

Slum photography was at the heart of progressive campaigns against urban poverty. And it was a weapon against poor people

Sadie Levy Gale

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Physics

A dreamy tribute to the music of Brian Eno, rendered in paint, soap and water

2 minutes

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Anthropology

A riveting collage portrays a century of Inuit history, and envisions a vibrant future

14 minutes

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Food and drink

Crème de la crème

How French cuisine became beloved among status-hungry diners in the United States, from Thomas Jefferson to Kanye West

Kelly Alexander & Claire Bunschoten

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Quantum theory

All possible worlds

Long a matter of philosophical speculation, the idea of multiple realities has been given new artistic licence by physics

Timothy Andersen

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Biology

A dazzling slice-by-slice exploration of wood exposes hidden patterns and hues

2 minutes

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Philosophy of mind

An enigmatic ‘story of consciousness’ told through 19th-century engravings

7 minutes

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History of technology

Who owns history? How remarkable historical footage is hidden and monetised

18 minutes

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Family life

Honey, I sold the kids

We have laws to protect children from factory work. Why aren’t they protected from parents who monetise their lives online?

Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore

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Art

Milk, pity and power

Since antiquity, artists have depicted a perverse scene of a daughter breastfeeding her aged father. What does it mean?

Margie Orford

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Film and visual culture

The old-time cinema experience endures in a quiet corner of Japan

5 minutes

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Stories and literature

The key to a vampire’s immortality? Meeting the anxieties of the moment

15 minutes

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Chemistry

A square inch in a Petri dish becomes a grand stage for chemical transformations

4 minutes

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Art

Edward Hopper came of age with cinema. As an artist, he left a lasting mark on it

12 minutes

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Beauty and aesthetics

What does art do?

Good art, laced with irony, ambiguity and suspense, is not obviously political. That’s what makes it politically interesting

Vid Simoniti

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Subcultures

Life in the buff

Naturists believed nudity was profoundly beneficial to society. In order to spread the message, they took to photography

Annebella Pollen

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Film and visual culture

With human help, AIs are generating a new aesthetics. The results are trippy

9 minutes

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History

Freedom from liquor

Ken Burns’s account of prohibition tells a popular story of booze in America. The historical record is far more sobering

Mark Lawrence Schrad

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Film and visual culture

At the movies with Pauline Kael – in the arthouse cinema where she got her start

19 minutes

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Art

Dizzying discs and obscene wordplay – revisiting Marcel Duchamp’s 1926 film debut

7 minutes

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Stories and literature

Aristotle goes to Hollywood

Today, the ancient Greek storyteller would be winning Oscars. To learn how, turn to the Poetics, his masterwork on writing

Philip Freeman

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Physics

Spectacular fractal patterns emerge when electricity meets a wooden surface

4 minutes

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Physics

This is not an animation: the spectacular sight of magnets meeting a metallic liquid

5 minutes