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If, as Shakespeare suggested, all the world’s a stage, do we have a ‘true self’?
The 20th-century Canadian-American sociologist Erving Goffman believed that we adapt to roles – lover, customer, worker – based on circumstance, and are constantly concerned with how we’re appearing to others. This short animation explains why Goffman’s view of humanity left no room for a ‘true self’ – an actor behind all the roles we play.
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Wellbeing
Children of the Rwandan genocide face a unique stigma 30 years later
20 minutes
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Meaning and the good life
Leading 1950s thinkers on the search for happiness in trying times
29 minutes
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War and peace
Two Ukrainian boys’ summer unfolds just miles from the frontlines
22 minutes
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Love and friendship
Never marry a man you love too much, and other views on romance in Sierra Leone
5 minutes
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Virtues and vices
Why Bennie tried to disappear, and what happened when he was found decades later
16 minutes
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History of technology
Curious singles and tech sceptics – what ‘computer dating’ looked like in 1966
6 minutes
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Cognition and intelligence
A father forgets his child’s name for the first time in this poetic reflection on memory
4 minutes
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Technology and the self
The commodified childhood – scenes from two sisters’ lives in the creator economy
14 minutes
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Art
Background music was the radical invention of a trailblazing composer
17 minutes