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Society

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

Societies of perpetual movement

Why do hunter-gatherers refuse to be sedentary? New answers are emerging from the depths of the Congolese rainforest

Cecilia Padilla-Iglesias

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Global history

One ship, many stories

How a single, unglamorous, workaday merchant vessel tells the history of the 19th-century world in many violent chapters

Boyd Cothran & Adrian Shubert

Three motorcyclists are riding on an empty road winding through English moorland beneath a blue sky
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Stories and literature

Citizens

Devon, 1970s: I’m a rector’s son, hanging out with Boz the biker. My life is about to open up – what does it promise for him?

Tim Pears

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Demography and migration

One story, in a sea of millions, of swimming from China to freedom in Hong Kong

14 minutes

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Demography and migration

Asians in early America

Asian sailors came to the west coast of America in 1587. Within a century they were settled in colonies from Mexico to Peru

Diego Javier Luis

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Economic history

Matrimony and the market

The sexual revolution promised new norms of intimacy based on egalitarianism. So far, only the rich have cashed in

Daniel Tutt

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Archaeology

Finding the First Americans

Archaeology and genetics can’t yet agree on when humans first arrived in the Americas. That’s good science and here’s why

Jennifer Raff

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Demography and migration

How the world’s harshest lockdown hit India’s millions of migrant workers

27 minutes

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Cities

Living closer together

Urban density was once seen as a sign of unhealthiness and poverty. But today it is necessary to make cities sustainable

Max Holleran

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Demography and migration

The ungreat replacement

Workers in the West have indeed been repressed – but not by immigrants. The policies of their own governments are to blame

John Rapley

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Demography and migration

In 1980, two feuding professors bet on the fate of humanity. Who won?

5 minutes

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Demography and migration

Tension, bureaucracy and deep humanity define life aboard a refugee rescue ship

27 minutes

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Political philosophy

How important is white fear?

It’s become a commonplace that demographic anxiety is driving white voters to the far Right. This is dangerously wrong

Mark R Reiff

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Family life

The walls come down on guarded emotions and secrets in an intimate family portrait

16 minutes

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Personality

Meet the British bouncer in LA on an expired visa who has no time for immigrants

10 minutes

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Anthropology

Safety is fatal

Humans need closeness and belonging but any society that closes its gates is doomed to atrophy. How do we stay open?

David Napier

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Demography and migration

The hopes and fears of the migrants selling souvenirs in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower

15 minutes

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Demography and migration

Exiles on Main Street

To respect exiles as real and important political actors, we should get over casting them as saints, threats or victims

Ashwini Vasanthakumar

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Human rights and justice

Gulf slave society

The glittering city-states of the Persian Gulf fit the classicist Moses Finley’s criteria of genuine slave societies

Bernard Freamon

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Cities

How the Barbican brought back living into the working heart of London

22 minutes

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Nature and landscape

Prairies, bison and nuclear warheads – a 2002 postcard from North Dakota

23 minutes

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Love and friendship

Is marriage over?

Marriage is practised in every society yet is in steep decline globally. Is this it for longterm intimate relationships?

Manvir Singh

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Travel

Postcards from Vladimirskoye – the sleepy town near the ‘Russian Atlantis’

9 minutes

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Demography and migration

Chinese New Year is a stunning spectacle of human migration in 3 billion journeys

7 minutes