essay
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
essay
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
essay
Thinkers and theories
Our tools shape our selves
For Bernard Stiegler, a visionary philosopher of our digital age, technics is the defining feature of human experience
Bryan Norton
essay
Biology
The cell is not a factory
Scientific narratives project social hierarchies onto nature. That’s why we need better metaphors to describe cellular life
Charudatta Navare
essay
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
video
Wellbeing
Born in China, Zee seeks a gender-affirming life in the American Midwest
11 minutes
essay
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
video
Chemistry
Why do the building blocks of life possess a mysterious symmetry?
12 minutes
video
Rituals and celebrations
A whale hunt is an act of prayer for an Inuit community north of the Arctic Circle
8 minutes
essay
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
video
Cosmology
Tiny, entangled universes that form or fizzle out – a theory of the quantum multiverse
11 minutes
essay
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
video
Music
The peculiar beauty of a song caught between composition and improvisation
3 minutes
essay
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
video
Rituals and celebrations
A beginner’s guide to a joyful Persian tradition of spring renewal and rebirth
3 minutes
essay
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
essay
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
video
Astronomy
The history of astronomy is a history of conjuring intelligent life where it isn’t
34 minutes
essay
Religion
Conscientious unbelievers
How, a century ago, radical freethinkers quietly and persistently subverted Scotland’s Christian establishment
Felicity Loughlin
video
Politics and government
How it looked to Afghan women to see the Taliban return to power
33 minutes
essay
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
video
Love and friendship
Love looks a bit different for a chain-smoking couple in a small apartment
11 minutes
essay
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
essay
Consciousness and altered states
A reader’s guide to microdosing
How to use small doses of psychedelics to lift your mood, enhance your focus, and fire your creativity
Tunde Aideyan
video
Metaphysics
Simple entities in universal harmony – Leibniz’s evocative perspective on reality
4 minutes
essay
Ethics
The scourge of lookism
It is time to take seriously the painful consequences of appearance discrimination in the workplace
Andrew Mason
video
Biography and memoir
Passed over as the first Black astronaut, Ed Dwight carved out an impressive second act
13 minutes
essay
Economic history
The southern gap
In the American South, an oligarchy of planters enriched itself through slavery. Pervasive underdevelopment is their legacy
Keri Leigh Merritt