essay
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
essay
Biology
Memories without brains
Certain slime moulds can make decisions, solve mazes and remember things. What can we learn from the blob?
Matthew Sims
essay
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
essay
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
essay
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
essay
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
essay
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
video
Knowledge
Why David Deutsch believes good explanations are the antidote to bad philosophy
10 minutes
video
Architecture
A lush tour of Fallingwater – the Frank Lloyd Wright design that changed architecture
14 minutes
essay
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
video
Economics
A tour of New York’s gaudiest neighbourhood with the Marxist geographer David Harvey
13 minutes
essay
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
essay
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
essay
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
essay
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
essay
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
video
Childhood and adolescence
‘Do worms cry?’ – and other questions collected from the mind of a curious child
4 minutes
essay
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
video
Philosophy of mind
‘Am I not at least something?’ A surreal dive into Descartes’s Meditations
3 minutes
essay
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
video
History of science
Meet the Quaker pacifist who shattered British science’s highest glass ceilings
14 minutes
essay
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
essay
Art
Out of the fog
It’s a ‘failed painting’ that obscures the profound power of German Romanticism. Why do we love the ‘Wanderer’ so much?
Gianluca Didino
essay
Ethics
Moral refuge
You can believe in border control yet protect those fleeing to safety. So what is our ethical obligation to refugees?
Bradley Hillier-Smith