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Essays

Longform Essays written by serious and creative thinkers on philosophy, psychology, science, society and culture
Painting of a man on a rocky cliff overlooking a foggy mountainous landscape, with a walking stick in hand.

essay

Art

Out of the fog

It’s a ‘failed painting’ that obscures the profound power of German Romanticism. Why do we love the ‘Wanderer’ so much?

Gianluca Didino

People collecting water from a makeshift station in a camp, surrounded by orange netting and tents in the background.

essay

Ethics

Moral refuge

You can believe in border control yet protect those fleeing to safety. So what is our ethical obligation to refugees?

Bradley Hillier-Smith

A murmuration of starlings forming a large, swirling shape in the early evening sky above silhouetted trees.

essay

Neuroscience

The entangled brain

The brain is much less like a machine than it is like the murmurations of a flock of starlings or an orchestral symphony

Luiz Pessoa

A silhouetted figure sitting on a chair behind frosted glass partitions in a waiting room with overhead lights.

essay

Illness and disease

Permission to be ill

It took months for my functional neurological disorder to finally be diagnosed. It’s a condition that must be recognised

Kevin Aho

A colourful underground car park with numbered pillars and painted lanes with directional arrows.

essay

Cities

Cars beneath the ground

The explosion of automobiles shaped cities and lives. But an enduring problem remains: where to put them when they’re parked

Alfie Robinson

Abstract digital collage with classical statue overlayed by red lines, geometric shapes and layered images on a textured background.

essay

Stories and literature

Our narrative prison

The three-act ‘hero’s journey’ has long been the most prominent kind of story. What other tales are there to tell?

Eliane Glaser

Ancient Chinese painting of a man under a tree with a trail of smoke coming from his mouth containing scenes of various figures, surrounded by miniature figures.

essay

Religion

Demonology

By turns benign and malign, powerful and vulnerable, earthbound and aerial, daimons across the world resemble one another

David Gordon White

A man looking up from the driver’s seat of a yellow vehicle with an open window and side mirror visible.

essay

Philosophy of language

Extraterrestrial tongues

Imagining how aliens might communicate prepares us for first contact and illuminates the nature of our own languages

Nikhil Mahant

Painting of a girl with a pearl earring in an ornate frame, viewed by three people in a gallery setting.

essay

Art

The ecstatic swoon

As Stendhal knew, the reason for art is to make you feel. Do not try to grasp the artwork: allow it to grasp you instead

Robert D Zaretsky

An elderly couple sit beside a child standing next to a canal with bare trees behind them. The man talks to the child and has a walking stick beside him.

essay

Demography and migration

The vanishing of youth

The precipitous decline of birthrates throughout the world poses a serious threat to humanity. What is to be done?

Victor Kumar

Medieval painting of soldiers in armour on a boat and horseback near a fortress with Cyrillic script above.

essay

Global history

Vikings on the Silk Roads

The Norse ravaged much of Europe for centuries. They were also cosmopolitan explorers who followed trade winds into the Far East

Neil Price

A satirical painting of a giant man being fed with spoons by tiny attendants.

essay

Information and communication

Methodical banality

Like today’s large language models, 16th-century humanists had techniques to automate writing – to the detriment of novelty

Hannah Katznelson