Society

Amid massive urbanisation and modernisation, rural Japan persists in idiosyncratic corners

30 minutes

Agony in the agora

Democracy, by nature, is a contest between clashing political desires. That is why the public square matters so much

Saul Frampton

Populism now divides, yet once it united the working class

Adrienne Petty

Painted frame by frame, a vivid animation restores a history lost to deportation

6 minutes

The quitting economy

When employees are treated as short-term assets, they reinvent themselves as marketable goods, always ready to quit

Ilana Gershon

Two young Bushmen grapple with the possibility of transitioning to modern lives

29 minutes

The amazing and awful outcome of releasing 1.5 million balloons into the sky

7 minutes

America’s hidden philosophy

When Cold War philosophy tied rational choice theory to scientific method, it embedded the free-market mindset in US society

John McCumber

Moderation may be the most challenging and rewarding virtue

Aurelian Craiutu

Concentration camps reveal the nature of the modern state

Dan Stone

An immigrant mother and her daughter finally explore the things they had left unsaid

5 minutes

Law in the Jungle

The ultimate ‘outsider’ space, the Jungle refugee camp in Calais became its own society, the no-borders idea made real

Natasha King

Ancient ruins keep being ‘discovered’: were they ever lost?

Christopher Begley

Of money and morals

Moneylending has been taboo for most of human history. So how did usury stop being a sin and become respectable finance?

Alex Mayyasi

The American housewives who sought freedom in Soviet Russia

Julia Mickenberg

Common ground

When we think of urban public space in terms of competing rights, we create a battleground. Is there a better way to share?

Farhan Samanani

Return of the grotesque

The postmodern carnival has arrived, and there are good reasons to prefer François Rabelais’s version

Robert D Zaretsky

What we’ve done with our world, from ingenuity to devastation – in two kinetic minutes

2 minutes

‘Here we are all the same’

The US Constitution guaranteed freedom of religion, but the fight for religious equality was only just beginning

Richard D Brown

Even the ancient Greeks thought their best days were history

Johanna Hanink

The island where 50 million crabs roam free and refugees are trapped in limbo

21 minutes

The future is emotional

Human jobs in the future will be the ones that require emotional labour: currently undervalued and underpaid but invaluable

Livia Gershon

Preventing the all-consuming sound pollution of modern life starts with listening to nature

10 minutes

The bloodstained leveller

Throughout history, plagues and wars have left greater equality in their wake. Can we get there again without violence?

Walter Scheidel

The strange story of inventing the ‘bastard’ in medieval Europe

Sara McDougall

The courage and determination that fuelled Wendell Scott, NASCAR’s first black driver

3 minutes

The Nazis as occult masters? It’s a good story but not history

Peter Staudenmaier

The scalp from Sand Creek

Even after museums return human remains pillaged from a massacre in 1864, can repatriation heal the wounds of history?

Chip Colwell

Conspicuous consumption is over. It’s all about intangibles now

Elizabeth Currid-Halkett

What is a cult?

Cults are exploitative, weird groups with strange beliefs and practices, right? So what about regular religions then?

Tara Isabella Burton