Society

The farmer turned human rights activist who breaks France’s laws to defend its values

25 minutes

Marriage should not come with any social benefits or privileges

Vicki Larson

Democracy needs politeness

Autocrats shouted, cursed, and bullied, while American revolutionaries used politeness as a tool of radical politics

Steven Bullock

Platonically irrational

How much did Plato know about behavioural economics and cognitive biases? Pretty much everything, it turns out

Nick Romeo

What is human capital?

Human capital theory was invented as an ideological weapon in the Cold War. Now it is helping to Uberise the world of work

Peter Fleming

What happens at the all-night corner shop before sunrise

7 minutes

Farming in the middle of the Motor City – a patch of green in the Rust Belt

12 minutes

The taboo of menstruation

All around the world, and throughout history, women have been shamed, sequestered, and medicalised for bleeding regularly

Janie Hampton

How Robert Nozick put a purple prose bomb under analytical philosophy

Brad Baranowski

When faced with so-called ‘progressive business’, stay skeptical

Christian O Christiansen

Monks with guns

Westerners think that Buddhism is about peace and non-violence. So how come Buddhist monks are in arms against Islam?

Michael Jerryson

In the murky waters of climate change, native fishers are among the most vulnerable

7 minutes

Caste lives on, and on

Indian society deludes itself that caste discrimination is a thing of the past, yet it suffuses the nation, top to bottom

Prayaag Akbar

Age of sincerity

In politics, as in militant religion, the performance of sincerity is everything, no matter whether right or wrong

Faisal Devji

Pride, poverty and rapture in an Appalachian mining community where the jobs are gone

25 minutes

‘Continuously, silently screaming’ – the profound agony of solitary confinement

5 minutes

The legend of the Legion

His cap is bleached as white as the bones of a Saharan camel. Is the romance of the French Foreign Legion a cult of death?

Robert Twigger

A much-maligned Mughal

The great king Aurangzeb is among the most hated men in Indian history. A historian claims he’s been unjustly demonised

Audrey Truschke

Eating people is wrong – but it’s also widespread and sacred

Ben Thomas

‘Semper paratus’ – how the organisation of the Roman army made it always ready for war

3 minutes

A nation apologises for wrongdoing: is that a category mistake?

Danielle Celermajer

Why men rape

It’s not a profound mystery, or explained by deep psychosocial complexity. For rapists, rape is easy. And that must stop

Sandra Newman

The slow professor can dish out a more nutritious education

Barbara Seeber & Maggie Berg

War, conflict, bloodshed, upheaval or: how we got to Great Britain

7 minutes

The legal imagination

Hypotheticals, fantastical beings, and a fictional omnibus: legal reasoning is made supple by its use of the imagination

Maksymilian Del Mar

It wasn’t just hate. Fascism offered robust social welfare

Sheri Berman

When nations apologise

National apologies are a big deal: they acknowledge the past to help move everyone forward. No wonder they’re so hard

Edwin Battistella

What do slaveholders think?

It is everywhere illegal yet slavery persists in many corners of the global economy. How do its beneficiaries justify it?

Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick

There’s a Green Card-holder at the heart of Greek philosophy

David V Johnson

‘Brand consultant’? ‘PR researcher’? Why the ‘bullshit jobs’ era needs to end

4 minutes