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Culture

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

A glimpse of the world’s heart

I wanted to visit Colombia’s sacred mountains. But there are some places we cannot go – and some things we cannot know

Nick Hunt

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Future of technology

Is this the future of space travel? Take a luxury ‘cruise’ across the solar system

6 minutes

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Art

Earthly delights

Noticing first one then many parrots, peacocks, owls and more birds in Old Master paintings taught me to truly see the world

Leanne Ogasawara

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History of technology

See the Mediterranean as it was captured in some of the earliest surviving photographs

20 minutes

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Rituals and celebrations

Beware the Nalujuit! A rare glimpse into a chilling Labrador Inuit tradition

13 minutes

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The ancient world

Wanderlust of the ancients

The Roman Empire enabled an early version of globalisation that offered travellers adventure, novelty and opportunity

Fabio Fernandes

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Biology

Journey deep into the Philippine forest in search of the world’s largest, rarest eagle

95 minutes

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The ancient world

Our trip to Antioch

Ancient Romans bought mementos to commemorate their travels. These speak eloquently of their world, if we care to listen

Maggie Popkin

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Animals and humans

What the ancient city of Kars looks like from the perspective of its stray dogs

9 minutes

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Travel

Dashing to nowhere

D H Lawrence’s restless travels in Sardinia were a quest for self-knowledge. The real island slipped beneath his notice

William Atkins

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Travel

A postcard from Mumbai, where there’s poetry in getting from A to B

5 minutes

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Travel

The end of travel

Driven by the need for a storied life, I relished the opportunity for endless travel. Is that a moment in time, now over?

Henry Wismayer

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Travel

‘My people!’ A Trinidadian’s love letter to his island, just before its 1962 independence

17 minutes

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Spirituality

Where the rivers meet

Pilgrims have long sought in India’s holiest city an antidote to the modern West, but Varanasi is more dream than reality

Manini Sheker

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Home

The rhythms of rural Thailand, where both food and music are sourced from the ground

15 minutes

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Home

Eccentrics, artists and Luddites find community on a remote Scottish peninsula

26 minutes

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Meaning and the good life

Maria’s life work is counting the pilgrims passing by on Spain’s Camino de Santiago

16 minutes

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Global history

‘Farcical situations’ and culture clashes – when Japan met modern Europe in 1862

18 minutes

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Travel

Fly with me

Jet-age glamour was more than just aesthetic: its promise of motionless movement reshaped perception of time and space

Vanessa R Schwartz

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Pleasure and pain

The ritualised excess of life aboard a cruise ship is tragic and parodic by turns

10 minutes

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Oceans and water

Who was Jack Tar?

He was a patriot and a prisoner, a delegate and a drunk; circling the globe when few Englishmen ever left their home counties

Stephen Taylor

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Anthropology

We are wayfinders

Navigation and spatial awareness sustained humans for tens of thousands of years. Have we lost the trail in modern times?

Michael Bond

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Travel

Postcards from Vladimirskoye – the sleepy town near the ‘Russian Atlantis’

9 minutes

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Travel

‘It’s a journey into slowness’: on the road with a Model-T Ford through Europe in winter

11 minutes