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Psychology

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

Struggling to learn how to do a backflip, Nikita takes on an unusual training regimen

12 minutes

A graffitti sign in an underpass reads ‘Life is too short to be wasted on the pursuit of happiness’; it is reflected in pooling water underneath
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History of ideas

Whither philosophy?

The discipline today finds itself precariously balanced between incomprehensible specialisation and cheap self-help

Siobhan Lyons

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Self-improvement

Many wisdoms

There are no transcendent insights that rise above human difference. Yet wisdom exists if we look in the right places

Avram Alpert

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Personality

Wesley wants to solve the rooftop mystery – but does he have what it takes?

14 minutes

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Love and friendship

The right person

Contemporary wisdom says that happiness is the measure of a marriage. But is that a harmful way of judging relationships?

Joshua Coleman

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Self-improvement

The art of listening

To listen well is not only a kindness to others but also, as the psychologist Carl Rogers made clear, a gift to ourselves

M M Owen

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Wellbeing

A tender poem doubles as a guide to sitting comfortably in one’s own company

3 minutes

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Social psychology

A harrowing account of a 1970 ‘leadership seminar’ spotlights self-help’s dark side

11 minutes

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Neurodiversity

Workplace diversity isn’t just about equality – it’s a competitive advantage

4 minutes

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Information and communication

The modern world is littered with statistical noise. Here’s how to find the signal

5 minutes

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Cognition and intelligence

No, Mozart isn’t a brain hack for babies – here’s how music really affects intelligence

5 minutes

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Meaning and the good life

Authenticity is a sham

From monks to existentialists and hipsters, the search for a true self has been a centuries-long project. Should we give it up?

Alexander Stern

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Cognition and intelligence

The science of wisdom

Psychological science can now measure and nurture wisdom, superseding the speculations of philosophy and religion

Igor Grossmann

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Self-improvement

Beware of lateral thinking

De Bono’s popular theory is textbook pseudoscience: unsound, untested and derivative of real (unacknowledged) research

Antonio Melechi

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Ethics

At times of suffering, the greatest gift is accompaniment by another

Nicholaos Jones

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Values and beliefs

How the philosophical paradox of aspiration is resolved by a new theory of self-creation

31 minutes

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Social psychology

Do you feel like a fraud after a success? It can mean you’re doing something well

4 minutes

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Education

Why lifelong learning is the international passport to success

Pierre Vandergheynst & Isabelle Vonèche Cardia

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Knowledge

Would you rather have a fish or know how to fish?

Jonny Robinson

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Virtues and vices

Boredom is but a window to a sunny day beyond the gloom

Neel Burton

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Self-improvement

How William James encourages us to believe in the possible

Temma Ehrenfeld

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Stories and literature

Highbrows and self-helpers

Woolf loathed it but it spurred her on. Hemingway drew ideas of manliness from it. Self-help haunted the modernist imagination

Beth Blum

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Neurodiversity

‘A face is a hilly landscape.’ How a face-blind artist paints what she can’t recognise

5 minutes

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Self-improvement

Why speaking to yourself in the third person makes you wiser

David Robson