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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

LatestPopular

Photo of a framed picture with colourful string art overlays, featuring plants in the foreground and other photos around.

video

Values and beliefs

Why a single tree, uprooted in a typhoon, means so much to one man in Hanoi

7 minutes

Digital artwork of a skull with holographic elements and text overlays on a dark background.

video

Consciousness and altered states

‘I want me back’ – after a head injury, Nick struggles with his altered reality

7 minutes

Ancient stone sculpture of a reclining female figure on a smooth surface against a grey background.

essay

Thinkers and theories

The truth about love

In Plato’s Symposium, Socrates shared a theory of love from the teachings of a ‘non-Athenian woman’. Who was she really?

Armand D’Angour

A man holding a baby and a woman nearby, a person in the foreground is blurred.

video

Wellbeing

Children of the Rwandan genocide face a unique stigma 30 years later

20 minutes

Black and white photo of oil workers handling equipment on a rig, with oil splashing out from the pipe they are holding.

essay

Gender

Does testosterone make men?

In probing whether there are basic sex differences in humans, a psychologist and a biologist agree to seriously disagree

Cordelia Fine & Carole Hooven

Photo of the Phaistos Disc, an ancient clay tablet with spiral symbols, on a black background.

essay

Language and linguistics

The lonely life of a glyph-breaker

The heroic days of deciphering hieroglyphics and cuneiform make for great stories, but will we ever see that happen again?

Francesco Perono Cacciafoco

Two men on stage acting, one holds an apple on a stick and looks through two glass lenses held by the other man, in dramatic lighting.

essay

Dance and theatre

What actors know

Acting is an ancient and intrinsically human way to establish vibrant connections with one another. And it’s available to us all

John Britton

Photo of two boys sitting in a dilapidated room surrounded by debris with a view of an overgrown outside through a broken wall.

video

War and peace

Two Ukrainian boys’ summer unfolds just miles from the frontlines

22 minutes

Four girls sitting on a riverbank, sitting in two groups of two; three upright and one lying down, with backpacks and bags nearby.

essay

Neurodiversity

Autism’s missing women

Long believed to be particularly associated with males, new research is revolutionising our understanding of autism

Gina Rippon

Collage image of a smiling woman in patterned dress with colourful wavy borders set on a beach background.

video

Love and friendship

Never marry a man you love too much, and other views on romance in Sierra Leone

5 minutes

Sepia-toned photo of a person in formal Victorian attire, standing with a slightly tilted head, against an ornate backdrop.

essay

Gender and identity

Requeering Wilde

Oscar Wilde is an icon of gay liberation from secrecy. But his life and his sexuality were not so simple – nor so binary

Sam Mills

An older man in a red cap and printed T-shirt looking into the distance.

video

Virtues and vices

Why Bennie tried to disappear, and what happened when he was found decades later

16 minutes

A child in a pink raincoat jumping in a puddle on a city street on a rainy day with terraced houses in the background.

essay

Philosophy of mind

Suffused with causality

Humans have a superpower that makes us uniquely capable of controlling the world: our ability to understand cause and effect

Mariel Goddu

Black-and-white photo of a person looking at vintage Honeywell 200 computer tape drives labelled A and B.

video

History of technology

Curious singles and tech sceptics – what ‘computer dating’ looked like in 1966

6 minutes

A cupcake with pink icing topped with mealworms, surrounded by other cupcakes.

essay

Food and drink

Adjust your disgust

The future of food is nutritious and sustainable – if we can overcome our instinctual revulsion to insects and lab-grown meat

Alexandra Plakias

video

Cognition and intelligence

A father forgets his child’s name for the first time in this poetic reflection on memory

4 minutes

Dried ground leaves being poured from a scoop into a container indoors.

essay

Addiction

The kratom question

Millions are turning to an unregulated herbal extract to curb their opioid addiction. But do the risks outweigh the benefits?

Xi Chen

A young girl with curly hair applies makeup in front of a ring-lit mirror, her reflection visible.

video

Technology and the self

The commodified childhood – scenes from two sisters’ lives in the creator economy

14 minutes

Black and white photo of man standing in front of a massive industrial tunnel with a Jeumont sign.

essay

Neuroscience

Why nothing matters

It took centuries for people to embrace the zero. Now it’s helping neuroscientists understand how the brain perceives absences

Benjy Barnett

Photo of a crowd with a focused young woman looking to the side, surrounded by blurred faces in the foreground.

essay

Personality

The highly sensitive person

Those with this little-known trait think more deeply and feel more empathy. But they also deal with significant challenges

Elaine Aron

Photo of a woman meditating by a fire in a dimly lit room with artwork on the walls and others seated in the background.

video

Anthropology

For an Amazonian female shaman, ayahuasca ceremonies are a rite and a business

30 minutes

Photo of two surgeons in blue scrubs and masks focused on a procedure, with one surgeon’s glasses reflecting the surgery.

essay

Medicine

When I lost my intuition

For years, I practised medicine with cool certainty, comfortable with life-and-death decisions. Then, one day, I couldn’t

Ronald W Dworkin

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