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Essays

Longform Essays written by serious and creative thinkers on philosophy, psychology, science, society and culture

Photo of a car’s interior at night with motion blur, showing a driver’s arm steering through illuminated streets.

essayIllness and disease

Katie’s story

Frontotemporal dementia is rare and ruthless. When it robbed Katie of her husband at 33, his story became her life’s work

Lynn Hallarman

Painting of three 18th-century men in discussion, one holding an illustration. A dog lies on the floor.

essayVirtues and vices

David Hume vs literature

Hume distrusted literature and worked to discredit character sketches as legitimate forms of philosophy

Katie Ebner-Landy

A scientist standing a large metal tunnel with hexagonal gold mirrors at the end of it.

essayCosmology

The Big Bang’s big gaps

The current theory for the origin of the Universe is remarkably successful yet full of explanatory holes. Expect surprises

Jim Baggott

An arid landscape with rocky ground, sparse green shrubs and distant hills under a cloudy sky.

essayProgress and modernity

The shadow of prosperity

A shrub meant to end hunger now chokes Kenya’s farmlands. It’s a parable of how visions of progress can outgrow their promises

Samuel F Derbyshire

A large, colourful mural on a building, depicting people, with two individuals walking by on the pavement.

essayChildhood and adolescence

Society needs hope

Youths around the world are in a profound crisis of despair. Adults must help them to believe that the future will be better

Carol Graham

Silhouette of a bird on a branch against a golden sunset sky.

essayAnimals and humans

Life thrums with music

Listen to the boundless sounds of nature, the great animal orchestra, whose songs imbue the world with fresh meaning

Jay Griffiths

Illustration of a robotic nanodevice navigating in a blood vessel with red and white blood cells.

essayFuture of technology

Techno-pipe dreams

Thirty years ago, nanotech was about to change everything. Let’s not get tricked again by Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

Philip Ball

Ancient Chinese painting of a scholar in robes resting on a mat outdoors by cliffs and sparse vegetation on brown silk canvas.

essayMetaphysics

Essence is fluttering

As Zhuangzi saw, there is no immutably true self. Instead our identity is as dynamic and alive as a butterfly in flight

Alexander Douglas

A woman and four children inside a car, under an orange sky. A boy is in the driver’s seat, the woman in the passenger seat.

essayMetaphysics

Reality is evil

Everything eats and is eaten. Everything destroys and is destroyed. It is our moral duty to strike back at the Universe

Drew M Dalton

People relaxing in a lush garden with inflatable flamingos and laptops by a pool.

essayProgress and modernity

Authenticate thyself

Data has created a new and paradoxical social order: the promise of emancipation is made possible by classifying everything

Marion Fourcade & Kieran Healy

Photo of an astronaut beside a large boulder on the Moon’s surface with lunar rover in the background against a dark sky.

essayPalaeontology

Life happened fast

It’s time to rethink how we study life’s origins. It emerged far earlier, and far quicker, than we once thought possible

Michael Marshall

Vintage black and white photo of a woman in a garden sitting beside a large urn with a sleeping dog lying nearby.

essayFamily life

Glorious and mundane

I once exalted in the extraordinary. But as I’ve learned from Virginia Woolf, indelible beauty is also found in the everyday

Diana Saverin