Society

Cars beneath the ground

The explosion of automobiles shaped cities and lives. But an enduring problem remains: where to put them when they’re parked

Alfie Robinson

A catchy tune explains the world’s ‘isms’ – according to your mum doing the laundry

5 minutes

Demonology

By turns benign and malign, powerful and vulnerable, earthbound and aerial, daimons across the world resemble one another

David Gordon White

Surreal, dazzling visuals form an Iranian expat’s tribute to defiance back home

10 minutes

The vanishing of youth

The precipitous decline of birthrates throughout the world poses a serious threat to humanity. What is to be done?

Victor Kumar

Vikings on the Silk Roads

The Norse ravaged much of Europe for centuries. They were also cosmopolitan explorers who followed trade winds into the Far East

Neil Price

Methodical banality

Like today’s large language models, 16th-century humanists had techniques to automate writing – to the detriment of novelty

Hannah Katznelson

Struggling to wake

After a murderous kidnapping in Nigeria, I launched a campaign to put a stop to the abductions. Why did no one listen?

Ayisha Osori

On the Norwegian coast, a tree is transformed into a boat the old-fashioned way

6 minutes

One man’s quest to save an orphaned squirrel, as narrated by David Attenborough

14 minutes

Hags, seductresses, feminist icons – how gender dynamics manifest in witches

13 minutes

Shame and revolution

Vietnam’s potent and storied anticolonialism is founded upon a unique sense of national shame

Kevin D Pham

On unstable ground

A ‘great reshuffle’ of the land is underway. It will force us to reconsider traditional ideas of property and ownership

Michael Albertus