Essays
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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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Human evolution
Out of the forest
We have thought of humans for a century or more as creatures of the savannah, shaped in every way by grassland life. Not so
Patrick Roberts
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Cities
The haunted city
The city, for all its mechanical speed, artificial light and industrialisation, is the most uncanny of human habitats
Azania Imtiaz Khatri-Patel
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Biology
Seeing life
Driven by insatiable curiosity, early histologists revealed the hidden structures of cells in works of sensual artistry
Benjamin Ehrlich
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Language and linguistics
The polyglots of Dardistan
At the crossroads of south and central Asia lies one of the world’s most multilingual places, with songs and poetry to match
Zubair Torwali
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Evolution
Connected-up-brains
Bat friends, monkeys sharing, and humans holding hands: the brains of social animals synchronise and expand one another
Sofia Quaglia
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Philosophy of religion
A God beyond logic
The history of natural theology shows that Intelligent Design and New Atheism both got it wrong, in strangely similar ways
Adam R Shapiro
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The ancient world
Cracking the Cretan code
Linear B has yielded its secrets, but Linear A remains elusive. Can linguistic analysis unlock the meaning of Minoan script?
Ester Salgarella
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Ageing and death
Old not Other
Here’s a puzzle: why do we neglect and disdain the one vulnerable group we all eventually will join? Beauvoir had an answer
Kate Kirkpatrick & Sonia Kruks
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Political philosophy
Democracy entails conflict
Democracy is a system of politics that has disagreement at its heart. But how do we stop conflicts becoming destructive?
Rochelle DuFord
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History
The smile: a history
How our toothy modern smile was invented by a confluence of French dentistry and Parisian portrait-painting in the 1780s
Colin Jones
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Art
Her body is a problem
When 1970s women artists put the female body under the female gaze, why did the critics see only obscene monsters?
Lauren Elkin