Psychology
video
Teaching and learning
Ronald grew up in a New York City library. It was as strange and wondrous as it sounds
3 minutes
video
Life stages
An unvarnished, poetic account of a new mother’s struggle to breastfeed
3 minutes
essay
Stories and literature
The honesty of pornography
Often vilified as a weapon of male supremacy, pornography in fact has much to tell us about ourselves and our culture
Kathleen Lubey
video
Evolution
Why making if-then connections might be the key to consciousness
5 minutes
video
Subcultures
The cast of ‘misfit toys’ who keep life on an idyllic tourist island afloat
7 minutes
video
Ageing and death
When his elderly parents make a suicide pact, Doron struggles to accept their choice
19 minutes
video
Biography and memoir
What Akiko saw at the centre of the Hiroshima blast, and the indelible mark it left
15 minutes
essay
Mental health
The helpful delusion
Evidence is growing that mental illness is more than dysfunction, with enormous implications for treatment
Justin Garson
video
Knowledge
Yes, the Inuit have dozens of words for snow – but what does each one mean exactly?
6 minutes
essay
History of ideas
The invention of free love
Percy Shelley thought romantic love freed men and women from the strictures of monogamy, but did it free them equally?
Neil McArthur
video
Technology and the self
One woman prepares for the risky solitude of Georgia O’Keeffe’s American West
8 minutes
video
The ancient world
Sappho’s homoerotic poetry was beloved in ancient Greece – and burned centuries later
5 minutes
video
Dance and theatre
From calluses to burnt shoes, the elegance of ballet is built from the ground up
4 minutes
video
Gender and identity
Timothée built his identity around his absent father. What happens when they meet?
17 minutes
video
Addiction
From back pain to addiction – one man’s struggle with opioids, as told to his sister
14 minutes
video
Work
Catch those idle moments of connection between coworkers on a smoke break
10 minutes
essay
Stories and literature
Leave them alone
Parenting advice from D H Lawrence: don’t smother your children with love. They are more sagacious than you think
Lara Feigel
video
Ageing and death
‘It’s not beautiful, but it’s interesting’ – an ageing nude model surveys her body
4 minutes
essay
Consciousness and altered states
Seeing and somethingness
An evolutionary approach to consciousness can resolve the ‘hard problem’ – with radical implications for animal sentience
Nicholas Humphrey
essay
Subcultures
The utopian machine
For children like me, growing up in an utopian community, life was a bewildering chaos of freedom and indoctrination
Susanna Crossman
video
Ethics
An animator wonders: can you ever depict someone without making them a caricature?
10 minutes
essay
Subcultures
Life in the buff
Naturists believed nudity was profoundly beneficial to society. In order to spread the message, they took to photography
Annebella Pollen
video
Film and visual culture
With human help, AIs are generating a new aesthetics. The results are trippy
9 minutes
essay
Addiction
Why we crave
The neuroscientific picture of addiction overlooks the psychological and social factors that make cravings so hard to resist
Zoey Lavallee