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Culture

Essays and videos on the arts, literature, travel, rituals and celebrations
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Technology and the self

An artist swaps her head with everyday objects in a musing on consumerism

4 minutes

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Film and visual culture

An augmented-reality filter reveals the hidden movements all around us

7 minutes

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Film and visual culture

Stop-motion origami unfurls in a playful exploration of how senses overlap

3 minutes

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Film and visual culture

The truth of photographs

It’s often said that a successful picture ‘captures the essence’ of a subject. But a great photograph does so much more

Daniel Star

Silhouetted figures stand beside a car looking up at a starry night sky
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Space exploration

Uncertain contact

The detection of alien life won’t be obvious. It’ll be partial and inconclusive: a perfect task for the scientific method

Jaime Green

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