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Society

Essays and videos on social issues, history, political life and the future
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Anthropology

A glimpse of the world’s heart

I tried to go to a sacred place atop a mountain. But there are some places we cannot go – and some things we cannot know

Nick Hunt

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Art

The irreverent duo who thumbed their noses at the Soviet Union and the US art world

11 minutes

The International Space Station is seen at an angle through a window against the darkness of space
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Space exploration

The skyhook solution

Space junk surrounds Earth, posing a dangerous threat. But there is a way to turn the debris into opportunity

Angelos Alfatzis

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Computing and artificial intelligence

A scientist’s poor eyesight helped fuel a revolution in computer ‘vision’

9 minutes

A close-up shot of one woman holding and comforting another grief-stricken woman
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Ageing and death

Witness the pain

When loved ones are traumatically lost, bereaved families become accidental activists by turning grief into grievance

Chris Bobel

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Race and ethnicity

Battling implicit bias

Training is a cheap solution to a hard problem. It is the systems that allow for biased behaviour that need to change

Jeffrey To

A woman in a pink coat and carrying a pink umbrella walks past a protestor carrying a yellow placard appealing to people to use cash
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Economics

Going cashless

It’s not in the interests of the ordinary person but it’s not a conspiracy either. A cashless society is a system run amok

Brett Scott

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Future of technology

Is this the future of space travel? Take a luxury ‘cruise’ across the solar system

6 minutes

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Fairness and equality

A tragicomic account of how the Los Angeles Police Department blew up a city block

19 minutes

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Stories and literature

A French Creole folktale nearly lost to time is given new, gorgeously animated life

6 minutes

A figure is silhouetted in an older style apartment block window at night. In the distance are taller modern tower block apartments
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Cities

The haunting of modern China

In Nanjing, Hong Kong and other Chinese cities, rapid urbanisation is multiplying a fear of death and belief in ghosts

Andrew Kipnis

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Deep time

When algae met fungi – the hidden story of life’s most successful partnership

4 minutes

A woman and two children dressed in traditional First Nations clothing stand in front of a teepee structure
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Language and linguistics

Language is medicine

For First Nations people, health is not a matter of mechanical fitness of the body, but of language, identity and belonging

Erica X Eisen

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Personality

Why cleaning up crime scenes requires a rare mix of grit and empathy

9 minutes

Two fashionably dressed women in modern style hijabs descend steps beneath a blue sky
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Religion

Secularism in Iran

Postcolonial intellectuals and Iran’s rulers agree that secularism is just Western imperialism in disguise. They are wrong

Patrick Hassan & Hossein Dabbagh

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Cities

Sick city

My dad grew up in Robert Moses’s New York City. His story is a testament to how urban planning shapes countless lives

Katie Mulkowsky

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Ecology and environmental sciences

From helicopter flybys to trail cameras, there’s no one way to count a wolf

8 minutes

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Art

Why a forcefully phallic portrait of Henry VIII is a masterful work of propaganda

6 minutes

A shirtless man in jeans lies sleeping beside his 1970s era car on the sandy beach
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Work

Disengage

Modern life subjects us to all-consuming demands. That’s why we should reflect on what it means to step away from it all

David J Siegel

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Sports and games

A unique project frames college football as an intricately choreographed mass ritual

7 minutes

Human figures beneath a glass dome watch the launch of a rocket from the surface of Mars
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Space exploration

The final ethical frontier

Earthbound exploration was plagued with colonialism, exploitation and extraction. Can we hope to make space any different?

Philip Ball

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video

The ancient world

Meet the absentee gods and nefarious spirits of ancient Mesopotamia

6 minutes

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Family life

Against her father’s warnings, Debra resolves to learn about his time in Auschwitz

4 minutes

Many figures in traditional dress are gathered beneath a structure from which hang paper lists. In the foreground are horses. The colours are muted with age
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essay

Education

The exam that broke society

Keju, China’s incredibly difficult civil service test, strengthened the state at the cost of freedom and creativity

Yasheng Huang