Philosophy
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Consciousness and altered states
Kind of confusing
Is consciousness like jazz, something hard to pin down? Or is it more like the biology of dolphins, odd but natural?
Tim Bayne
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Mathematics
Spiral into the ‘golden ratio’ – and separate the myths from the maths
4 minutes
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Illness and disease
The power of the ‘C’ word
Saying the word ‘cancer’ changes a person’s life and can lead to overtreatment and fear. Is the word too hot to use at all?
Benjamin Chin-Yee
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Biology
Memories without brains
Certain slime moulds can make decisions, solve mazes and remember things. What can we learn from the blob?
Matthew Sims
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Death
Freedom over death
Death is a certainty. But choosing how and when we depart is a modest opportunity for freedom – and dignity
Michael Cholbi
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Thinkers and theories
The French liar
René Descartes, the founder of modern philosophy, was furiously condemned by his contemporaries. Why did they fear him?
Sandrine Parageau
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Architecture
The replica and the original
Architectural copies of lost structures require reckoning with history and heritage. At what cost is the past rebuilt?
Elizabeth Kostina
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History of ideas
From scattered traces
How the ideas circulating among one noblewoman’s coterie in 16th-century Dubrovnik anticipated modern feminist thought
Luka Boršić
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Virtues 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
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Knowledge
Why David Deutsch believes good explanations are the antidote to bad philosophy
10 minutes
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Architecture
A lush tour of Fallingwater – the Frank Lloyd Wright design that changed architecture
14 minutes
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Political philosophy
The allure of autarky
Liberal thinkers are shocked that nations are once again isolating from the world. The real surprise would be if they didn’t
Ben Chu
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Economics
A tour of New York’s gaudiest neighbourhood with the Marxist geographer David Harvey
13 minutes
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History of science
Incredible testimonies
In the 1980s, thousands of Americans began to suspect they may have been abducted by aliens. What happened?
Greg Eghigian
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Comparative philosophy
What is Ethiopian philosophy?
Riven by two competing schools of thought, the future of philosophical enquiry in Ethiopia stands at a crossroads
Fasil Merawi
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Philosophy of science
Why philosophy of physics?
Some physicists reject philosophy as a distraction from ‘real’ science but it is in fact both useful and beautiful
James Read
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History of science
A nasogenital tale
A bizarre theory (and a gory surgery) in fin-de-siècle Vienna help us get a grip on how science and medicine actually work
Urte Laukaityte
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Archaeology
Deep time and the revenant
In enigmatic burials, crafted to bind the bodies within, we can see how truly ancient our fears of the undead must be
Rebecca Batley
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Childhood and adolescence
‘Do worms cry?’ – and other questions collected from the mind of a curious child
4 minutes
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Oceans and water
An oceanic tempo
An appreciation of the immensity embedded in the ocean’s cycles offers a way to reimagine our relationship with time
James Bradley
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Philosophy of mind
‘Am I not at least something?’ A surreal dive into Descartes’s Meditations
3 minutes
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Comparative 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
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History of science
Meet the Quaker pacifist who shattered British science’s highest glass ceilings
14 minutes
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Human rights and justice
Levelling the world
Gerrard Winstanley led a small band of radicals whose vision of justice encompassed the globe and continues to inspire
Rowan Wilson