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Society

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

Religion

Conscientious unbelievers

How, a century ago, radical freethinkers quietly and persistently subverted Scotland’s Christian establishment

Felicity Loughlin

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video

The ancient world

The six priestesses who kept the flame of ancient Rome alight at risk of death

5 minutes

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Religion

Inventing Hindu supremacy

Vinayak Savarkar ridiculed Gandhi, preaching that anti-Muslim violence was the only means to unite India into a nation

Mihir Dalal

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Religion

There was no Jesus

How could a cult leader draw crowds, inspire devotion and die by crucifixion, yet leave no mark in contemporary records?

Gavin Evans

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video

Human rights and justice

Witch hunts persist as a horrifying, deadly reality in pockets of rural India

24 minutes

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video

Art

The overlooked polymath whose theatrical oeuvre made all of Rome a stage

30 minutes

Men are seen in a nondescript office type rooma against sunlight streaming through the window, their hands raised in devotion
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Religion

Indomitable Sufis

Once a centre of Afghan culture, Sufism seems to have disappeared in the maelstrom of war and upheaval. But still it survives

Annika Schmeding

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video

Religion

Hear from blasphemes, sceptics and free-thinkers in this ‘tour of medieval unbelief’

52 minutes

Two fashionably dressed women in modern style hijabs descend steps beneath a blue sky
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Religion

Secularism in Iran

Postcolonial intellectuals and Iran’s rulers agree that secularism is just Western imperialism in disguise. They are wrong

Patrick Hassan & Hossein Dabbagh

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video

The ancient world

Meet the absentee gods and nefarious spirits of ancient Mesopotamia

6 minutes

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Religion

Praying in shoes

The Sunni movement of Salafism was born at the beginning of the 20th century, with the goal of modelling life on the 7th

Aaron Rock-Singer

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video

Religion

How Jewish leaders in the US are fighting abortion bans on religious grounds

24 minutes

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Values and beliefs

How the plight of holy cows is used to radicalise teenagers in small-town India

24 minutes

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Spirituality

Trek alongside spiritual pilgrims on a treacherous journey across Pakistan

6 minutes

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video

Religion

From God’s shoes to satellites in heaven – children weigh in on religion

8 minutes

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Nations and empires

The Arab Kingdom

Amid the chaos of the First World War, a new pan-Arab empire was proclaimed. It faltered, but its historical lessons remain

Adam Mestyan

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Religion

Miracles not magic

It took a tremendous effort to distinguish early Christianity from the finely tuned world of pagan beliefs and rituals

Martha Rampton

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History

Warfare as mercy and love

The daggers that knights carried to the crusades help us understand why they thought of holy war as an act of love

William Chester Jordan

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Thinkers and theories

A philosophy of secrets

Jacques Derrida was fascinated by the figure of the Marrano Jew, whose identity could barely be told even to themselves

Peter Salmon

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Consciousness and altered states

Stuck with the soul

The idea of the soul is obviously a nonsense, yet its immaterial mysterious nature has deep hooks in the human psyche

David P Barash

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Religion

At the Kremlin in 1943

Stalin presented Orthodox leaders with a proposal: the Soviet state that had destroyed their Church would bring it back

Kathryn David

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History of science

Inventing heaven

For hundreds of years, Christians knew exactly where heaven was: above us and above the stars. Then came the new cosmologists

Stephen Case

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Ethics

The lethal act

The Buddha taught not to kill, yet his followers have at times disobeyed him. Can murderers still be Buddhists?

Martin Kovan

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Religion

The imperative betrayal

The mystery of why Judas forsook Jesus goes to the heart of Christianity. A newly translated gospel offers a new view

David Brakke