Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
Neither plant nor animal, shapeshifting plasmodial slime mould was once considered a fungus, which it sometimes resembles. The mould crawls 1/25th of an inch per hour in search of life-sustaining nutrients and, despite lacking a brain, displays basic forms of computation and intelligence. This trailer for the feature-length documentary The Creeping Garden gives a brief glimpse into what has made plasmodial moulds such a point of fascination for scientists, mycologists and artists, including whether the moulds could hold clues to the origins of intelligent life.
Directors: Tim Grabham, Jasper Sharp
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
Why large language models are mysterious – even to their creators
8 minutes
video
Sports and games
Havana’s streets become racetracks in this exhilarating portrait of children at play
5 minutes
video
Spirituality
Through rituals of prayer, a monk cultivates a quietly radical concept of freedom
4 minutes
video
Evolution
The many ways a lizard tongue sticks, grasps, pinches and plops – in slo-mo
6 minutes
video
Fairness and equality
‘To my old master’ – a freed slave answers the request to return to his old plantation
7 minutes
video
Design and fashion
A ceramicist puts her own bawdy spin on the folk language of pottery
14 minutes
video
Animals and humans
Villagers struggle to keep their beloved, endangered ape population afloat
19 minutes
video
Language and linguistics
Why Susan listens to recordings of herself speaking a language she no longer remembers
5 minutes
video
Ethics
Plato saw little value in privacy. How do his ideas hold up in the information age?
5 minutes