Philosophy
essay
Stories and literature
Great books are still great
Read with love, rather than critical distance, the classics can provide tools to subvert oppressive hierarchies
Roosevelt Montás
essay
Economics
The biggest picture
No wonder we cannot agree on how globalisation works and whether it’s a good thing. All the stories we have are flawed
Anthea Roberts & Nicholas Lamp
essay
Mood and emotion
Feeling, in situ
What if emotions are not universal and hardwired but exquisite acts of meaning-making specific to context and culture?
Elitsa Dermendzhiyska
essay
Philosophy of religion
Reincarnation now
Modern mindfulness strips Buddhism of its spiritual core. We need an ethics of reincarnation for an interconnected world
Avram Alpert
video
Cosmopolitanism
A pop-up charity shop in a luxury department store melds art, commerce and justice
10 minutes
essay
Nations and empires
Roving revolutionaries
Moving between the Russian, Iranian and Young Turk revolutions, cosmopolitan Armenians helped usher in the 20th century
Houri Berberian
idea
Language and linguistics
Why learning a new language is like an illicit love affair
Marianna Pogosyan
idea
Stories and literature
Chaucer was more than English: he was a great European poet
Marion Turner
idea
Cognition and intelligence
What happens to cognitive diversity when everyone is more WEIRD?
Kensy Cooperrider
idea
Love and friendship
Love in a time of migrants: on rethinking arranged marriages
Farhad Mirza
idea
History
A history of true civilisation is not one of monuments
David Wengrow
idea
Language and linguistics
Raising a multilingual family is hard – what makes it work?
Olga Mecking
idea
Music
Was Cairo’s grand opera house a tool of cultural imperialism?
Adam Mestyan
essay
Political philosophy
A history of alienation
In the postwar period it was understood to be the fundamental malaise of modern life. Why aren’t we ‘alienated’ any more?
Martin Jay
idea
Economic history
How Orwell used wartime rationing to argue for global justice
Bruce Robbins
idea
Economics
Everyone in the world should be taxed on their energy footprint
Iason Athanasiadis
idea
Cosmopolitanism
When I help you, I also help myself: on being a cosmopolitan
Massimo Pigliucci
essay
Philosophy of language
The death of languages
Endangered languages have sentimental value, it’s true, but are there good philosophical reasons to preserve them?
Rebecca Roache
essay
Nations and empires
Why nation-states are good
The nation-state remains the best foundation for capitalism, and hyper-globalisation risks destroying it
Dani Rodrik
essay
Stories and literature
Readers of the world unite
How markets, Marx, and provincial elites created world literature to fight both empire and nationalism
Martin Puchner
essay
Nations and empires
Les Anglo-Saxons
Not just American or British, the Anglo-Saxon is a mirror to Frenchness: the country’s alter-ego and most feared enemy
Emile Chabal
idea
Mathematics
Global cooperation depends on the strength of local connections
Benjamin Allen
essay
Cities
Common ground
When we think of urban public space in terms of competing rights, we create a battleground. Is there a better way to share?
Farhan Samanani
idea
Stories and literature
This is the Muslim tradition of sci-fi and speculative fiction
Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad