essaySports and games
The secret
At the heart of surfing, whether you’re a kook or a famous charger, is the pursuit of moments so pure they clean you out
M M Owen
videoFood and drink
The passage of time is a peculiar thing in a 24-hour diner
14 minutes
videoArt
Radical doodles – how ‘exquisite corpse’ games embodied the Surrealist movement
15 minutes
essaySubcultures
An undulating thrill
Once lauded as a wonder of the age, cocaine soon became the object of profound anxieties. What happened?
Douglas Small
essayConsciousness and altered states
Acid media
How perforated squares of trippy blotter paper allowed outlaw chemists and wizard-alchemists to dose the world with LSD
Erik Davis
videoSubcultures
Drop into London’s eclectic skate scene, where newbies and old-timers find community
5 minutes
essaySubcultures
Of memes and magick
Bending a mysterious world to your will was the goal of esoteric practices. Now it’s the unashamed aim of the tech titans
Tara Isabella Burton
videoFood and drink
Is a ‘gastronomic society’ dinner the height of decadence, or an act of artistry?
11 minutes
videoThe environment
Tree-sit with activists as they fight industrial logging from 100 feet above the ground
25 minutes
videoLanguage and linguistics
A master palindromist spells out his 40-year ‘love affair with reversibility’
6 minutes
videoArchaeology
From Roman pots to glass eyes, the shore of the river Thames teems with surprises
8 minutes
videoSubcultures
The cast of ‘misfit toys’ who keep life on an idyllic tourist island afloat
7 minutes
essaySubcultures
The utopian machine
For children like me, growing up in an utopian community, life was a bewildering chaos of freedom and indoctrination
Susanna Crossman
essaySubcultures
Life in the buff
Naturists believed nudity was profoundly beneficial to society. In order to spread the message, they took to photography
Annebella Pollen
videoSports and games
Bodies, bikes and groovy music propel this stylish classic film from 1965
17 minutes
videoSubcultures
Living off-grid on a remote Scottish island is a mix of rejection and acceptance
13 minutes
essaySubcultures
The great regression
To understand why so many adults are acting just like children, don’t blame Millennials – look to Japan in the 1990s
Matt Alt
videoSubcultures
Bad puns, regrettable costumes, and other joys of collecting kitschy album art
13 minutes
essaySubcultures
The dropout: a history
The dropout was not just a hippy-trippy hedonist but a paranoid soul, who feared brainwashing and societal control
Charlie Williams
videoNature and landscape
An afternoon with hobbyist diamond miners in Arkansas is a thing of rare beauty
16 minutes
videoSubcultures
What do tropical fish make of the strange creatures who love them so?
14 minutes
essayPleasure and pain
Apocalypse, please
The COVID-19 pandemic, like other catastrophes before it, got some of us hooked on phobic energy and terror. Why?
Travis Alexander
videoPublic health
When two punk bands came to a psychiatric hospital, beautiful chaos ensued
27 minutes
videoHuman rights and justice
The buzzes, clanks and whirrs of prison life form a meditation on freedom
17 minutes