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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
essayKnowledge
Socrates would be pleased
With a class of college students and inmates, teaching philosophy in prison is a rowdy, honest and hopeful provocation
Jay Miller
essayArt
Witty wotty dashes
Doodles are the emanations of our pixillated minds, freewheeling into dissociation, graphology, and radical openness
James Reath
essayEthics
Why love matters most
For Iris Murdoch, morality is not about duties and rules but stopping our ego fantasies and attending to others with love
Cathy Mason
essaySports and games
The secret
At the heart of surfing, whether you’re a kook or a famous charger, is the pursuit of moments so pure they clean you out
M M Owen