Society
essay
Economics
Going cashless
It’s not in the interests of the ordinary person but it’s not a conspiracy either. A cashless society is a system run amok
Brett Scott
essay
Cities
The haunting of modern China
In Nanjing, Hong Kong and other Chinese cities, rapid urbanisation is multiplying a fear of death and belief in ghosts
Andrew Kipnis
essay
Language and linguistics
Language is medicine
For First Nations people, health is not a matter of mechanical fitness of the body, but of language, identity and belonging
Erica X Eisen
essay
Cities
Sick city
My dad grew up in Robert Moses’s New York City. His story is a testament to how urban planning shapes countless lives
Katie Mulkowsky
essay
Mental health
People not professionals
Training individuals to support one another through difficult times is a profound step forward in our mental health crisis
Arjun Kapoor & Jasmine Kalha
essay
Knowledge
The ends of knowledge
Academics need to think harder about the purpose of their disciplines and whether some of those should come to an end
Rachael Scarborough King & Seth Rudy
video
Technology and the self
Greetings from Green Bank – the small town where modern technology is banned
10 minutes
essay
History of technology
Care from afar
For over a century telemedicine has promised healthcare for all. But will it ever replace seeing a human being in person?
Jeremy A Greene
essay
History of ideas
Sleepwalk to the gift shop
Romanticism once radically challenged conventional pieties. Now it’s little more than marketable schlock. What happened?
Fiona Sampson
essay
Cities
The haunted city
The city, for all its mechanical speed, artificial light and industrialisation, is the most uncanny of human habitats
Azania Imtiaz Khatri-Patel
essay
Thinkers and theories
Philosopher of the apocalypse
From the ashes of the Second World War, Günther Anders forecast a new catastrophe: technology would overwhelm its creators
Audrey Borowski
video
Childhood and adolescence
When Paradise, California burned, its teens became instant climate refugees
23 minutes
video
Demography and migration
In 1980, two feuding professors bet on the fate of humanity. Who won?
5 minutes
essay
Global history
The power of water
Far more potent than oil or gold, water is a stream of geopolitical force that runs deep, feeding crops and building nations
Giulio Boccaletti
essay
Nations and empires
East of Zionism
In 1900 my grandfather’s generation imagined a modernising Arab world, multireligious and progressive. What happened?
Ussama Makdisi
essay
Beauty and aesthetics
Can culture degenerate?
Tempting it might be, but the idea that culture has become vacuous and banal comes with unsavoury implications
Christy Wampole
essay
Neurodiversity
After neurodiversity
We live in a world that must move beyond identity politics and embrace new models of the mind. Enter psydiversity
Bonnie Evans
essay
Nations and empires
The road from Rome
The fall of the Roman Empire wasn’t a tragedy for civilisation. It was a lucky break for humanity as a whole
Walter Scheidel
essay
Nations and empires
Brand India
How a country used myth and mystique to tempt global investors – and seeded a toxic Hindu nationalism in the process
Ravinder Kaur
video
Work
The last of her kind, Gricel regales Cuban cigar-rollers with readings and good humour
10 minutes
essay
History of ideas
The subjective turn
For Hegel, human nature strives through history to unchain itself from tradition. But is such inner freedom worth the cost?
Jon Stewart
essay
History of ideas
The rise and rise of creativity
Once seen as the work of genius, how did creativity become an engine of economic growth and a corporate imperative?
Steven Shapin
essay
Economic history
Thirty glorious years
Postwar prosperity depended on a truce between capitalist growth and democratic fairness. Is it possible to get it back?
Jonathan Hopkin
essay
History
Repetition and rupture
Reinhart Koselleck, the last great theorist of history, sought in the apparent chaos of events a science of experience
Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann