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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

Illustration of a child holding a shell to their ear with a bird singing on a branch amidst abstract greenery and flowers.

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Bioethics

The cochlear question

As the hearing parent of a deaf baby, I’m confronted with an agonising decision: should I give her an implant to help her hear?

Abi Stephenson

A man floating in the sea beneath a dramatic, stormy sky with large, dark clouds.

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Technology and the self

We need raw awe

In this tech-vexed age, our life on screens prevents us from experiencing the mysteries and transformative wonder of life

Kirk Schneider

A man views a holographic projection of a child in shorts running in a forest setting; office equipment surrounds him.

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Technology and the self

A haunting scene from ‘Minority Report’ inspires a voyage into time and memory

7 minutes

Illustration of a saucepan on a stove with raw meat and ginger, a pot lid is nearby on the right.

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Family life

The stream-of-consciousness thoughts and memories that emerge while cooking a meal

5 minutes

Photo of shattered glass with multiple cracks against a black background.

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Philosophy of mind

Rage against the machine

For all the promise and dangers of AI, computers plainly can’t think. To think is to resist – something no machine does

Alva Noë

A painting of two girls with long hair each holding peacock feathers standing in front of a textured, muted background.

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Family life

The precious family keepsakes that hold meaning for generations

10 minutes

Blurry photo of a person lying back with head tilted, set against a red and dark background.

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Sex and sexuality

Sex and death

Our culture works hard to keep sex and death separate but recharging the libido might provide the release that grief needs

Cody Delistraty

3D rendering of a green, abstract, textured structure resembling dense tangled fibres on a black background.

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Neuroscience

This intricate map of a fruit fly brain could signal a revolution in neuroscience

2 minutes

Black and white photo of a group of people standing outdoors on a slope by a pond with trees and bushes in the background.

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Religion

The script creator

Pau Cin Hau dreamt of an alphabet for a language that had never been written down. So began the religion of Laipianism

Bikash K Bhattacharya