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Subcultures

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

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A surfer in a wetsuit emerging from a large turquoise wave with white foam crashing around.

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

Photo of a diner interior seen through a window with patrons seated at tables and a counter under hanging lights.

videoFood and drink

The passage of time is a peculiar thing in a 24-hour diner

14 minutes

Surreal abstract painting with eyes, lips and leaf shapes in soft colours on paper.

videoArt

Radical doodles – how ‘exquisite corpse’ games embodied the Surrealist movement

15 minutes

Vintage advertising poster for ‘Cocaine Toothache Drops’ featuring two children playing happily, building a house from sticks, in front of a house with a wooden fence.

essaySubcultures

An undulating thrill

Once lauded as a wonder of the age, cocaine soon became the object of profound anxieties. What happened?

Douglas Small

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.

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

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

videoSubcultures

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.”

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

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

videoFood 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.

videoThe 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.

videoLanguage 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.

videoArchaeology

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.

videoSubcultures

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.

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

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

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

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

videoSports 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.

videoSubcultures

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.

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

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

videoSubcultures

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’.

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

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

videoNature 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.

videoSubcultures

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 against a deep blue sky.

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

Black-and-white photo of a band performing on stage surrounded by a confused chaos of people.

videoPublic health

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

27 minutes

A hand placing a chess pawn among other pawns on a chessboard.

videoHuman rights and justice

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

17 minutes