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Culture

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

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Food and drink

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

11 minutes

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The environment

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

25 minutes

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Language and linguistics

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

6 minutes

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Archaeology

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

8 minutes

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Subcultures

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

7 minutes

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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

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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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Sports and games

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

17 minutes

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Subcultures

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

13 minutes

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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

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Subcultures

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

13 minutes

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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

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Nature and landscape

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

16 minutes

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Subcultures

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

14 minutes

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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

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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

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Human rights and justice

A bus station is the first stop on the road to freedom for former inmates in Texas

14 minutes

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Subcultures

Dented cans, ugly fruit – it’s all tasty (and free) if you’re willing to get your hands dirty

21 minutes