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Culture

Essays and videos on the arts, literature, travel, rituals and celebrations
Colourful illustration of the Mad Hatter holding a clock showing 13 o’clock. His eyes are spirals. The background is filled with small images of the same character.
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Consciousness 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

A young girl in a helmet and with a skateboard stands in a skatepark. Behind her is a hand-drawn reclining figure.
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video

Subcultures

Drop into London’s eclectic skate scene, where newbies and old-timers find community

5 minutes

Blended images of a historical figure in traditional attire and two women with on-screen text: “POV you in September…” and “Bestie… manifesting will come in 30 minutes.”
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Subcultures

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

A group of men in formal attire sit at a long table, eating from bowls in a patterned room with numerous empty wine glasses.
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video

Food and drink

Is a ‘gastronomic society’ dinner the height of decadence, or an act of artistry?

11 minutes

Person climbing a tall tree using a rope, viewed from the base looking upwards into the canopy of green leaves.
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video

The environment

Tree-sit with activists as they fight industrial logging from 100 feet above the ground

25 minutes

Man lying on an orange sofa reading a document with a yellow notepad, faces partially obscured background.
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video

Language and linguistics

A master palindromist spells out his 40-year ‘love affair with reversibility’

6 minutes

Person in blue coat and wellies, kneeling and picking up items from a pebbled ground, wearing gloves and a wristwatch.
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Archaeology

From Roman pots to glass eyes, the shore of the river Thames teems with surprises

8 minutes

Shirtless youth jumping with arms raised against a blue sky with scattered clouds.
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Subcultures

The cast of ‘misfit toys’ who keep life on an idyllic tourist island afloat

7 minutes

A group of women and children stand in a lush, green meadow holding gardening tools and a lunchbox, with trees in the background.
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essay

Subcultures

The utopian machine

For children like me, growing up in an utopian community, life was a bewildering chaos of freedom and indoctrination

Susanna Crossman

Nude individuals playing a game of doubles tennis on an outdoor court surrounded by a brick wall and trees.
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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

Cyclists in colourful jerseys compete in a road race, surrounded by blurred cars and spectators in the background.
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video

Sports and games

Bodies, bikes and groovy music propel this stylish classic film from 1965

17 minutes

Person in a hooded coat walking through a labyrinth of stones on a grassy landscape, with ferns and distant hills under an overcast sky.
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video

Subcultures

Living off-grid on a remote Scottish island is a mix of rejection and acceptance

13 minutes

Person with short hair and striped shirt, holding a toy aeroplane, wearing denim overalls with a doll in the pocket and red goggles around their neck.
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Subcultures

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

Person holding the “Ellis in Wonderland” album cover by Ray Ellis and his Orchestra, featuring a colourful, whimsical scene.
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video

Subcultures

Bad puns, regrettable costumes, and other joys of collecting kitschy album art

13 minutes

A large community of all ages, some in eccentric clothing, pose around a rustic building numbered 212 under a sign, ‘CHAS. McMILLAN’.
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Subcultures

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

Person sitting on a bucket in a field, with another person digging nearby and trees in the background.
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video

Nature and landscape

An afternoon with hobbyist diamond miners in Arkansas is a thing of rare beauty

16 minutes

Spotted catfish peeking out from a green tube resting on the gravel at the bottom of a blue aquarium.
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video

Subcultures

What do tropical fish make of the strange creatures who love them so?

14 minutes

Silhouette of a person standing at a window inside a dimly lit building at night with deep blue sky background on the left.
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Pleasure 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

Black and white photo of a band performing on stage with seven people, including a singer, guitarist, and backup singers dancing.
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Public health

When two punk bands came to a psychiatric hospital, beautiful chaos ensued

27 minutes

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Human rights and justice

The buzzes, clanks and whirrs of prison life form a meditation on freedom

17 minutes

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The environment

A climate activist living off-grid faces her toughest challenge yet – a new primary school

21 minutes

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Wellbeing

The controversial New Age guru who believed self-love healed all – even AIDS

18 minutes

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Archaeology

New York’s 300-year-old trash becomes treasure in the hands of an urban archaeologist

23 minutes

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History

Rich witches

How a flawed logic of economic scarcity and social climbing spurred witch hunts in early modern Germany

Johannes Dillinger