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History
What would Thucydides say?
In constantly reaching for past parallels to explain our peculiar times we miss the real lessons of the master historian
Mark Fisher
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The environment
Emergency action
Could civil disobedience be morally obligatory in a society on a collision course with climate catastrophe?
Rupert Read
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Home
Return of the descendants
I migrated to my ancestral homeland in a search for identity. It proved to be a humbling experience in (un)belonging
Jessica Buchleitner
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Economic history
Credit card nation
Americans have always borrowed, but how exactly did their lives become so entangled with the power of plastic cards?
Sean H Vanatta
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Metaphysics
The enchanted vision
Love is much more than a mere emotion or moral ideal. It imbues the world itself and we should learn to move with its power
Mark Vernon
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Knowledge
What is ‘lived experience’?
The term is ubiquitous and double-edged. It is both a key source of authentic knowledge and a danger to true solidarity
Patrick J Casey
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Human rights and justice
My elusive pain
The lives of North Africans in France are shaped by a harrowing struggle to belong, marked by postcolonial trauma
Farah Abdessamad
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Thinkers and theories
Philosophy is an art
For Margaret Macdonald, philosophical theories are akin to stories, meant to enlarge certain aspects of human life
Peter West
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Neuroscience
How to make a map of smell
We can split light by a prism, sounds by tones, but surely the world of odour is too complex and personal? Strangely, no
Jason Castro
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Religion
Conscientious unbelievers
How, a century ago, radical freethinkers quietly and persistently subverted Scotland’s Christian establishment
Felicity Loughlin
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History of technology
Why America fell for guns
The US today has extraordinary levels of gun ownership. But to see this as a venerable tradition is to misread history
Megan Kang
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Psychiatry and psychotherapy
The therapist who hated me
Going to a child psychoanalyst four times a week for three years was bad enough. Reading what she wrote about me was worse
Michael Bacon