essay
Stories and literature
Laboratories of the impossible
By testing the boundaries of reality, Spanish-language authors have created a sublime counterpart to experimental physics
Joshua Roebke
video
History of technology
Replicating Shakespearean-era printing brings its own dramas and comedy
19 minutes
essay
Philosophy of religion
Compassionate time
On his final journey through Asia, Thomas Merton found some peace in the dialectic between refusing the world and loving it
Drew Calvert
essay
Beauty and aesthetics
Is beauty natural?
Charles Darwin was as fascinated by extravagant ornament in nature as Jane Austen was in culture. Did their explanations agree?
Abigail Tulenko
essay
Physics
The city of wisdom
Don’t be intimidated by physics: it is made of stories and metaphors. Learn these and the field will open up to you
Jamie Zvirzdin
essay
Anthropology
Witches around the world
The belief in witches is an almost universal feature of human societies. What does it reveal about our deepest fears?
Gregory Forth
essay
Ethics
Main character syndrome
Why romanticising your own life is philosophically dubious, setting up toxic narratives and an inability to truly love
Anna Gotlib
essay
Rituals and celebrations
Tender, yet creepy
Dolls help children create wonderfully vivid and imaginative worlds, while also serving as unsettling reminders of the abyss
Tishani Doshi
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
video
Meaning and the good life
‘Everydayness is the enemy’ – excerpts from the existentialist novel ‘The Moviegoer’
2 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
War and peace
A century later, can poetry help us make sense of the First World War’s horrors?
9 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
video
Stories and literature
To capture grief in poetry is to describe the ineffable. Here’s why Tennyson did it best
8 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
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
essay
Stories and literature
On Jewish revenge
What might a people, subjected to unspeakable historical suffering, think about the ethics of vengeance once in power?
Shachar Pinsker
video
Stories and literature
Robert Frost’s poetic reflection on youth, as read in his unforgettable baritone
5 minutes
essay
Stories and literature
Do liberal arts liberate?
In Jack London’s novel, Martin Eden personifies debates still raging over the role and purpose of education in American life
Nick Romeo
essay
Stories and literature
Terrifying vistas of reality
H P Lovecraft, the master of cosmic horror stories, was a philosopher who believed in the total insignificance of humanity
Sam Woodward
essay
Stories and literature
The real Miss Julie
Victoria Benedictsson assumed a male identity, achieved literary stardom, and took her own life. Then Strindberg stole it
Elisabeth Åsbrink
essay
Comparative philosophy
Folklore is philosophy
Both folktales and formal philosophy unsettle us into thinking anew about our cherished values and views of the world
Abigail Tulenko
essay
Religion
There was no Jesus
How could a cult leader draw crowds, inspire devotion and die by crucifixion, yet leave no mark in contemporary records?
Gavin Evans