Essays
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Family life
Honey, I sold the kids
We have laws to protect children from factory work. Why aren’t they protected from parents who monetise their lives online?
Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore
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Earth science and climate
The return of silvopasture
This ancient practice, nurturing animals and trees in an ecological system, fights climate change and restores the land
Liz Carlisle & Niki Mazaroli
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Thinkers and theories
The sage and his foibles
Scholars cannot agree whether the letters of Plato are fake or genuine. Is this just a symptom of misplaced reverence?
James Romm
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Human rights and justice
Lydia Maria Child, abolitionist
Taking up arms against slavery, the famous novelist foreshadowed the vexed role of the white woman activist today
Lydia Moland
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Metaphysics
Are coincidences real?
I am an unequivocal rationalist and yet I still want to see something strange and wonderful in life’s weird coincidences
Paul Broks
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Education
Unschooling
It takes nerve to go against the grain and take your child out of school. But, for some, that’s when learning really starts
Naomi Fisher & Heidi Steel
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Thinkers and theories
The scar of identity
Alexandre Kojève was an immense influence on many French thinkers. What was so compelling about his lectures on Hegel?
Samantha Rose Hill
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Consciousness and altered states
Stuck with the soul
The idea of the soul is obviously a nonsense, yet its immaterial mysterious nature has deep hooks in the human psyche
David P Barash
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Art
Milk, pity and power
Since antiquity, artists have depicted a perverse scene of a daughter breastfeeding her aged father. What does it mean?
Margie Orford
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Language and linguistics
The problem with English
Is Earth’s most-spoken language a living ‘gift’ or a many-headed ‘monster’? Both views distract us from the real dilemma
Mario Saraceni
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Gender and identity
A manly divorce
Straight men rarely write about the end of their marriages. Our enduring ideas about gender explain this silence
Joshua Coleman
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Religion
At the Kremlin in 1943
Stalin presented Orthodox leaders with a proposal: the Soviet state that had destroyed their Church would bring it back
Kathryn David