essay
Family life
Honey, I sold the kids
We have laws to protect children from factory work. Why aren’t they protected from parents who monetise their lives online?
Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore
essay
Earth science and climate
The return of silvopasture
This ancient practice, nurturing animals and trees in an ecological system, fights climate change and restores the land
Liz Carlisle & Niki Mazaroli
essay
Thinkers and theories
The sage and his foibles
Scholars cannot agree whether the letters of Plato are fake or genuine. Is this just a symptom of misplaced reverence?
James Romm
essay
Human rights and justice
Lydia Maria Child, abolitionist
Taking up arms against slavery, the famous novelist foreshadowed the vexed role of the white woman activist today
Lydia Moland
essay
Metaphysics
Are coincidences real?
I am an unequivocal rationalist and yet I still want to see something strange and wonderful in life’s weird coincidences
Paul Broks
essay
Education
Unschooling
It takes nerve to go against the grain and take your child out of school. But, for some, that’s when learning really starts
Naomi Fisher & Heidi Steel
essay
Thinkers and theories
The scar of identity
Alexandre Kojève was an immense influence on many French thinkers. What was so compelling about his lectures on Hegel?
Samantha Rose Hill
essay
Consciousness and altered states
Stuck with the soul
The idea of the soul is obviously a nonsense, yet its immaterial mysterious nature has deep hooks in the human psyche
David P Barash
essay
Art
Milk, pity and power
Since antiquity, artists have depicted a perverse scene of a daughter breastfeeding her aged father. What does it mean?
Margie Orford
essay
Language and linguistics
The problem with English
Is Earth’s most-spoken language a living ‘gift’ or a many-headed ‘monster’? Both views distract us from the real dilemma
Mario Saraceni
essay
Gender and identity
A manly divorce
Straight men rarely write about the end of their marriages. Our enduring ideas about gender explain this silence
Joshua Coleman
essay
Religion
At the Kremlin in 1943
Stalin presented Orthodox leaders with a proposal: the Soviet state that had destroyed their Church would bring it back
Kathryn David