videoEcology and environmental sciences
Join endangered whooping cranes on their perilous migratory path over North America
6 minutes
videoLanguage and linguistics
Do button-pushing dogs have something new to say about language?
9 minutes
essayInformation and communication
Methodical banality
Like today’s large language models, 16th-century humanists had techniques to automate writing – to the detriment of novelty
Hannah Katznelson
essayDance and theatre
What actors know
Acting is an ancient and intrinsically human way to establish vibrant connections with one another. And it’s available to us all
John Britton
videoComputing and artificial intelligence
Why large language models are mysterious – even to their creators
8 minutes
videoEthics
Plato saw little value in privacy. How do his ideas hold up in the information age?
5 minutes
videoInformation and communication
‘Astonished and somewhat terrified’ – Victorians’ reactions to the phonograph
36 minutes
videoInformation and communication
Coverage of the ‘balloon boy’ hoax forms a withering indictment of for-profit news
17 minutes
videoComputing and artificial intelligence
The ‘cloud’ requires heaps of energy to stay aloft. Could synthetic DNA be the answer?
12 minutes
videoArchaeology
How researchers finally solved the puzzle of the oldest known map of the world
18 minutes
essayComputing and artificial intelligence
Mere imitation
Generative AI has lately set off public euphoria: the machines have learned to think! But just how intelligent is AI?
Deepak P
videoWar and peace
A war meteorologist’s riveting account of how the Allies averted a D-Day disaster
6 minutes
essayAnthropology
The Ju/’hoansi protocol
Hunter-gatherer societies are highly expert in group deliberation and decision-making which respects both difference and unity
Vivek V Venkataraman
videoInformation and communication
An animation built from road signs is a whirlwind study of flash communication
2 minutes
videoLanguage and linguistics
The little Peruvian guide to public speaking that conjures up a grandiose world
7 minutes
videoFilm and visual culture
‘Bags here are rarely innocent’ – how filmmakers work around censorship in Iran
8 minutes
videoLanguage and linguistics
Closed captions suck. Here’s one artist’s inventive project to make them better
8 minutes
videoAnthropology
Why are witchcraft accusations so common across human societies?
4 minutes
essayHistory of technology
Indexing the information age
Over a weekend in 1995, a small group gathered in Ohio to unleash the power of the internet by making it navigable
Monica Westin
essayPhilosophy of language
Metaphors make the world
Woven into the fabric of language, metaphors shape how we understand reality. What happens when we try using new ones?
Benjamin Santos Genta
videoThinkers and theories
‘My art is oratory, Socrates.’ An ancient warning on the power and peril of rhetoric
4 minutes
essayInformation and communication
Beware climate populism
The most ardent deniers of anthropogenic climate change today will become the climate conspiracy theorists of tomorrow
Ákos Szegőfi
essayInformation and communication
How to hate
The manifesto was always a hotheaded call to arms. Then it got a slick, digital makeover in the cause of coldblooded hate
Tyler Thier
essayPhilosophy of language
The geometry of other people
Some friends are ‘close’. Others are ‘distant’. But our spatial descriptions of social life are more than just metaphors
David Borkenhagen