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Society

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

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

4 minutes

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Global history

The polycrisis

Is this the word we need to describe unprecedented convergences between ecological, political and economic strife?

Ville Lähde

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Environmental history

Masts like a forest

How the trees of China – fir, camphor, ironwood and nanmu – were used to build an empire that lasted for centuries

Ian M Miller

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Ecology and environmental sciences

In an ancient English rainforest, John creates charcoal and cultivates growth

12 minutes

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Anthropology

Memories within myth

The stories of oral societies, passed from generation to generation, are more than they seem. They are scientific records

Patrick Nunn

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Environmental history

Disturbance

How atomic doomsday experiments, fuelled by Cold War fears, shaped then shook ecologists’ faith in self-healing nature

Laura J Martin

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Global history

Ever more land and labour

Centuries of capitalism saw the global countryside ruthlessly converted into cheap commodities. But at what cost?

Sven Beckert & Ulbe Bosma

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Environmental history

Dancing with water

As storms, droughts and floods become more intense, what can the world learn from Japan’s profoundly wet history?

Giulio Boccaletti

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Earth science and climate

The Antarctic paradox

The most protected place on Earth has become one of the most threatened – and threatening. Can its problems be solved?

Alejandra Mancilla & Peder Roberts

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Earth science and climate

A new Earth rises

How did the planet replace the nation-state to become the prime political object of the 21st century?

Erik Isberg

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The environment

The power of shit

Our excrement is a natural, renewable and sustainable resource – if only we can overcome our visceral disgust of it

Lina Zeldovich

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Environmental history

Contaminated kinship

If your hometown were beset with toxic dust, like Australia’s Broken Hill, would you feel any less connected to it?

Lilian Pearce

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Design and fashion

The Waste Age

Recognising that waste is central, not peripheral, to everything we design, make and do is key to transforming the future

Justin McGuirk

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The environment

The miracle of the commons

Far from being profoundly destructive, we humans have deep capacities for sharing resources with generosity and foresight

Michelle Nijhuis

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Environmental history

Human crap

We are demigods of discards – but our copious garbage became a toxic burden only with the modern cult of ‘disposability’

Gabrielle Hecht

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The environment

Slow hope

Climate change is an emergency but despair is not the answer. The world is full of untold stories of people-powered change

Christof Mauch

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Deep time

The planet is burning

Wild, feral and fossil-fuelled, fire lights up the globe. Is it time to declare that humans have created a Pyrocene?

Stephen J Pyne

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Environmental history

Little Ice Age lessons

The world’s last climate crisis demonstrates that surviving is possible if bold economic and social change is embraced

Dagomar Degroot

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Animals and humans

Turn and live with animals

The slaughterhouse ethic of Soviet and American whalers tells us we must look beyond communism and capitalism to survive

Bathsheba Demuth

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Nature and landscape

For Rachel Carson, wonder was a radical state of mind

Jennifer Stitt

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Environmental history

Did European colonisation precipitate the Little Ice Age?

Dagomar Degroot

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Human rights and justice

It’s wrongheaded to protect nature with human-style rights

Anna Grear

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The environment

When the monsoon goes away

The imperious monsoon rains have ruled India for centuries. Already unstable, what happens if they shift fundamentally?

Sunil Amrith

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video

Food and drink

Reclaiming the dignity and spiritual roots of chocolate production in Mexico

4 minutes