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Psychology

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

How might the dreamworlds of other animals differ from our own?

8 minutes

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Stories and literature

The diaries of Kafka

By day an insurance official, by night he was an incessant, insomniacal scribe of the space between waking and dreaming

Ross Benjamin

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Neuroscience

A thickness in the air

The spooky sensation that someone or something else is right there haunts us all. But what does this felt presence mean?

Ben Alderson-Day

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Sleep and dreams

The dreams of animals

The psychic lives of nonhuman dreamers reveal colours, harmonies and beauties of which we had little inkling until now

David M Peña-Guzmán

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Fairness and equality

Poor sleep

Being on-call, out-of-sync and underslept is not just personal but a pervasive political injustice. Bold change is needed

Jonathan White

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Sleep and dreams

Ancestral dreams

We’re not the only beings that dream. What visions might sleep bring to a cell, an insect, a mollusk, an ape?

Sidarta Ribeiro

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Sleep and dreams

Inside your dreamscape

Dream-hacking techniques can help us create, heal and have fun. They could also become tools of commercial manipulation

Adam Haar Horowitz, Robert Stickgold & Antonio Zadra

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Sleep and dreams

Why do we sleep?

Adults sleep less than babies. Sperm whales sleep less again. A new mathematical theory unlocks the mysteries of slumber

Van Savage & Geoffrey West

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Sleep and dreams

Nightmares becalmed

I’m a dream engineer. Through touch, scent and sound, we help people rescript the dramas of their sleeping lives

Michelle Carr

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Sleep and dreams

In exile from the dreamscape

We live in a wake-centric world that devalues dreaming, yet we need to experience dreams to be our authentic selves

Rubin Naiman

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Neurodiversity

The work of a sleepwalking artist offers a glimpse into the fertile slumbering brain

4 minutes

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Sleep and dreams

Here’s to naps and snoozes

American work culture, seeping around the globe, threatens to ruin the pleasures and benefits of public, communal sleep

Todd Pitock

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Sleep and dreams

Chocolate, monsters and mothers – surreal glimpses of our most common dreams

2 minutes

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Sleep and dreams

Down with the larks: on the virtues of sleeping like a sloth

Joel Frohlich

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Sleep and dreams

The lucid dreaming playbook: how to take charge of your dreams

Denholm Aspy

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Sleep and dreams

Our dreams have many purposes, changing across the lifespan

Patrick McNamara

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Sleep and dreams

How sound and smell cues can enhance learning while you sleep

Sadie Witkowski

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History

The empire dreamt back

To help rule its empire, Britain turned to psychoanalysis. But they weren’t willing to hear the truth it told

Erik Linstrum

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Politics and government

American dreaming 3.0

Embrace dreams as a counter to the naive realism of politics today, and they could become a potent democratic force

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

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Sleep and dreams

Sleepwalking is the result of a survival mechanism gone awry

Phil Jaekl

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Stories and literature

Leonard Cohen turns an erotic fantasy that wasn’t into a sleepless night’s work

6 minutes

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Sleep and dreams

How the 24-hour society is stealing time from the night

Leon Kreitzman

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Sleep and dreams

Dreams and revelations

The world’s great religions and spiritual journeys emerged from dreams and visions. Neurochemistry tells us how

Patrick McNamara

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Sleep and dreams

Falling for sleep

When wakefulness is seen as the main event, no wonder so many have trouble sleeping. Can we rekindle the joy of slumber?

Rubin Naiman