essayAnthropology
Spider divination
Life is complicated. In Cameroon, initiated diviners read the messages of spiders to untangle possible futures
David Zeitlyn
essayVirtues and vices
Awkward silences
What is it about lulls in conversation that make them so very uncomfortable? It has to do with how we connect with each other
Rebecca Roache
essayHistory of science
Incredible testimonies
In the 1980s, thousands of Americans began to suspect they may have been abducted by aliens. What happened?
Greg Eghigian
essayComparative philosophy
A cure for individualism
It runs deeply through the Western outlook, hailed and condemned in equal measures. For a corrective, look to Confucius
Tim Connolly
essayIllness and disease
Permission to be ill
It took months for my functional neurological disorder to finally be diagnosed. It’s a condition that must be recognised
Kevin Aho
essayStories and literature
Our narrative prison
The three-act ‘hero’s journey’ has long been the most prominent kind of story. What other tales are there to tell?
Eliane Glaser
essayReligion
Demonology
By turns benign and malign, powerful and vulnerable, earthbound and aerial, daimons across the world resemble one another
David Gordon White
videoValues and beliefs
Why a single tree, uprooted in a typhoon, means so much to one man in Hanoi
7 minutes
videoMeaning and the good life
Leading 1950s thinkers on the search for happiness in trying times
29 minutes
essayMetaphysics
Many worlds, many selves
If it’s true that we live in a vast multiverse, then our understanding of identity, morality and even God must be reexamined
Emily Qureshi-Hurst
essayValues and beliefs
My leap across the chasm
After years of debate and contemplation, I’ve come to think a heretical form of Christianity might be true. Here’s why
Philip Goff
videoBioethics
Is it ethical to have a second child so that your first might live?
10 minutes
essayHistory of ideas
All that we are
The philosophy of personalism inspired Martin Luther King’s dream of a better world. We still need its hopeful ideas today
Bennett Gilbert
essayMeaning and the good life
Beyond authenticity
In her final unfinished work, Hannah Arendt mounted an incisive critique of the idea that we are in search of our true selves
Samantha Rose Hill
essayNations and empires
Chastising little brother
Why did Japanese Confucians enthusiastically support Imperial Japan’s murderous conquest of China, the homeland of Confucius?
Shaun O’Dwyer
essayStories and literature
Do liberal arts liberate?
In Jack London’s novel, Martin Eden personifies debates still raging over the role and purpose of education in American life
Nick Romeo
videoRituals and celebrations
A beginner’s guide to a joyful Persian tradition of spring renewal and rebirth
3 minutes
essayStories and literature
Terrifying vistas of reality
H P Lovecraft, the master of cosmic horror stories, was a philosopher who believed in the total insignificance of humanity
Sam Woodward
essayThinkers and theories
A man beyond categories
Paul Tillich was a religious socialist and a profoundly subtle theologian who placed doubt at the centre of his thought
Ted Farris
essayPolitical philosophy
The battles over beginnings
Niccolò Machiavelli’s profound insights about the violent origins of political societies help us understand the world today
David Polansky
videoLove and friendship
After his son’s terrorist attack, Azdyne seeks healing – and his granddaughter
25 minutes
videoValues and beliefs
A Zen Buddhist priest voices the deep matters he usually ponders in silence
5 minutes
videoReligion
Hear from blasphemes, sceptics and free-thinkers in this ‘tour of medieval unbelief’
52 minutes
videoArt
The irreverent duo who thumbed their noses at the Soviet Union and the US art world
11 minutes