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Psychology

Essays and videos offering insights into the self, relationships, cognition and neuroscience

Addiction Ageing and death Childhood and adolescence Cognition and intelligence Consciousness and altered states Family life Gender and identity Language and linguistics Life stages Love and friendship Mental health Mood and emotion Neurodiversity Neuroscience Personality Pleasure and pain Psychiatry and psychotherapy Self-improvement Sex and sexuality Sleep and dreams Social psychology Spirituality Teaching and learning Technology and the self Wellbeing

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A photo of a person walking on a snowy path beside an icy river with floating ice chunks.

essay

Thinkers and theories

The winter of civilisation

Byung-Chul Han’s relentless critiques of digital capitalism reveal how this suffocating system creates hollowed-out lives

Josh Cohen

Photo of children playing in the desert in windy conditions, with sand swirling around them and smiles on their faces.

essay

Childhood and adolescence

Hegemony and childcare

Early childhood development interventions in the Global South is a huge industry built on highly questionable assumptions

Francesca Mezzenzana & Gabriel Scheidecker

Photo of a study with a wooden desk, red curtains, bust sculptures and a leather chair in a well-lit room.

essay

Psychiatry and psychotherapy

The art in the analyst’s room

The consulting office reflects the personality of the therapist, while also subtly shaping the experience of their patients

Anna Parker

Illustration of hands typing on a keyboard with handwritten notes and a man in a sequence of frames.

essay

Computing and artificial intelligence

Chatbots of the dead

We can now create compelling experiences of talking with our dead. Is this ghoulish, therapeutic or something else again?

Amy Kurzweil & Daniel Story

Photo of three boys riding wooden carts down a street in an urban setting, with onlookers in the background.

video

Sports and games

Havana’s streets become racetracks in this exhilarating portrait of children at play

5 minutes

Photo of a person sitting in a dimly lit church with stained glass windows and sun rays filtering through.

video

Spirituality

Through rituals of prayer, a monk cultivates a quietly radical concept of freedom

4 minutes

Vintage film poster with illustrated women underwater surrounded by bubbles text reads “Primitive and Exciting”.

essay

Public health

A very American fear

Moral panics about erotica have coursed through the country’s history. Why do so many Americans think of porn as harm?

Rebecca L Davis

Illustration of two people with closed eyes softly singing into a microphone, featuring simple brushstroke style.

video

Language and linguistics

Why Susan listens to recordings of herself speaking a language she no longer remembers

5 minutes

Painting of a serene night scene with a full moon reflecting on a dark blue lake surrounded by silhouettes of rocks and trees.

essay

Stories and literature

The listening gift

It is the dark matter of conversation, the white space around a poem. For Rilke, listening is receiving the divine

Faith Lawrence

Colourful, whimsical house with ornate details and greenery in foreground, photo taken outdoors in daylight.

video

Home

How an artist transformed a dilapidated hunting lodge into a house made of dreams

8 minutes

Abstract painting of two distorted faces with geometric shapes in orange, purple and brown tones.

essay

Psychiatry and psychotherapy

Psychodynamic nonsense

After decades of practising psychotherapy, I believe it has little foundation in science and often causes harm

Niklas Serning

Photo of three women viewed from behind near a lake with trees. One holds a megaphone and wears a colourful embroidered shirt.

video

Family life

The migrants missing in Mexico, and the mothers who won’t stop searching for them

21 minutes

Illustration of a hand dropping a coin into another hand within an eye-shaped frame on a textured background.

video

Virtues and vices

Why Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith were divided on the virtues of vanity

5 minutes

A masked nurse in scrubs sitting in a hospital waiting area.

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Bioethics

Moral resilience

Nurses experience deep suffering when they can’t act according to their moral compass. Our research shows a way forward

Cynda Hylton Rushton

Photo of a man in a red shirt praying on a church pew, hands clasped, with a notebook beside him in dim lighting.

essay

Cognition and intelligence

The power of prayer

Praying is a cognitive practice full of problem-solving resources. You can learn from it even if you don’t want to do it

Eleanor Schille-Hudson

Illustration of two people observing ants on a forest floor with a textured tree background.

video

Family life

One family’s harrowing escape from postwar Vietnam, told in a poignant metaphor

10 minutes

Black and white photo of British and German First World War soldiers wearing winter uniforms and hats, one with a cigarette, looking at the camera.

video

War and peace

A frontline soldier’s moving account of the fabled ‘Christmas truce’ of 1914

12 minutes

Cartoon of three surgeons wearing scrubs and masks performing surgery on a patient, with surgical lights overhead.

video

Bioethics

What a 1970 experiment reveals about the possibility and perils of ‘head transplants’

6 minutes

A man with a long beard wearing glasses holding a net against a backdrop of a grassy field and cloudy sky.

video

Animals and humans

The wild tale of a young animal keeper, an angry tiger and a torn circle net

10 minutes

A woman on a sofa injecting her abdomen surrounded by stuffed toys on a shelf.

video

Technology and the self

Why single Chinese women are freezing their eggs in California

24 minutes

Young girls dressed in riot police helmets and gear standing outdoors in the rain.

video

Childhood and adolescence

The police camp where tween girls enter a sisterhood of law and order

28 minutes

An adult and two children in a mall atrium, dressed in winter clothing.

essay

Biography and memoir

A grief with no name

As a child, I was torn from a culture that I never knew. It is a loss that defines me, even as I struggle to define the loss

Jelena Markovic

Illustration of a tattooed man from behind looking at a starry sky with trees silhouetted in the foreground.

video

Astronomy

The remarkable innovations inspired by our need to know the night sky

5 minutes

A small animal curled up asleep on brown moss against a black background illuminated by a spotlight.

essay

Biology

Could humans hibernate?

Hibernation allows many animals to time-travel from difficult times to plenty. Could humans learn how to do it too?

Vladyslav Vyazovskiy