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The night witch

4 minutes

The evolution of cynicism

5 minutes

Unreal city

6 minutes

Kidnapper ants

5 minutes

A concerto is a conversation

14 minutes

They came in the night – the all-female bomber regiment of the Soviet Air Force

During the Second World War, the Soviet Air Force initially barred women from serving in combat. That was until October 1941 when the pilot Marina Raskova personally convinced Joseph Stalin to deploy the world’s first all-female air force units to fight against Axis powers. Primarily made up of volunteers in their late teens and early 20s, these regiments flew wood-and-canvas Polikarpov U-2 biplanes, aircraft originally intended for crop-dusting and hardly equipped for warfare, lacking guns, radio, radar and even parachutes. In this short animated documentary, the US filmmaker Alison Klayman recounts the story of Nadezhda Popova (1921-2013), a pilot in the notorious 588th Night Bomber Regiment – known by fearful German soldiers as ‘Nachthexen’ (‘night witches’), for their sudden, nearly soundless approaches before devastating bombardments. In The Night Witch, Popova’s experiences – from her childhood to old age – represent the complex intersection of 20th-century warfare with women’s growing empowerment.

Director: Alison Klayman

Director of animation: Dustin Grella

Cynicism was born when Diogenes rejected materialism and manners

Plato once described the philosopher Diogenes of Sinope as ‘a Socrates gone mad!’ It’s a good comparison. Like Socrates, Diogenes gave the bird to respectable society. He undermined status and manners in the 4th century BCE with his bottomless reserve of shamelessness and irreverence, opting to live on the streets like a stray dog. But, of course, there was a method to his madness. In this short video by TED-Ed, the Irish philosopher William D Desmond explains how Diogenes lived an authentic and ascetic life in accordance with nature, and how in doing so he founded the philosophy of cynicism – an iconoclastic tradition that continues to illuminate and infuriate today.

Video by TED-Ed

Director: Avi Ofer

Writer: William D Desmond

How an augmented reality app transformed London into an immersive art gallery

If you ever hopped on the Pokémon GO craze, you’ll have an inkling of how digital technology is increasingly capable of adding rich new slices to everyday life. The public exhibition ‘Unreal City’, which ran from 8 December 2020 to 5 January 2021 on the River Thames in London – and is, until 9 February 2021, available for at-home viewing – similarly superimposed digital layers on to reality, but with an aim to transform the city into an immersive augmented reality (AR) art gallery. An initiative from the AR app Acute Art and Dazed Media, the exhibition featured 36 digital sculptures from artists around the globe, and was arranged as a riverside walking tour at a time when indoor museums had become mostly inaccessible due to COVID-19. Featuring images of some of the sculptures and words from artists including Olafur Eliasson, Tomás Saraceno, Cao Fei and KAWS, this trailer for the ‘Unreal City’ exhibition is an exciting glimpse into the potential for AR as it continues to transform cities in strange and surprising ways.

Director: Kate Villevoye

Website: Dazed

Incredible footage captures the ants that transform other species into loyal servants

You might assume that a creature incapable of feeding itself would have a one-way ticket off the food chain and into the dustbin of extinction. But some ant species with mandibles that are ill-equipped for eating have developed a clever – if not quite mutual – means of finding sustenance and perpetuating. Known as ‘kidnapper’ or ‘slave-making’ ants, these parasitic creatures raid the nests of other ant species, capture their young and carry them to their home nest. Using scents to keep the new arrivals oblivious to the fact that they’re far from home, the kidnappers deploy their captors to tend to their young, forage for their food, and even chew and feed it to them in a process known as trophallaxis. Captured in stunning high definition by the science documentary series Deep Look, this short video tracks red kidnapper ants in the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California as they raid, kidnap and brainwash the young from a nearby black ant species’ nest. You can learn more about this video at KQED Science.

Video by KQED Science

Producer and Writer: Josh Cassidy

Narrator and Writer: Lauren Sommer

A piano virtuoso traces and scores the contours of his grandfather’s inspiring life story

The award-winning pianist Kris Bowers and his grandfather Horace Bowers, Sr were born on opposite sides of the United States, and some 60 years apart. Growing up in Los Angeles, Kris aspired to be a musician and composer from a young age – and had the natural talent to match. Raised in Florida amid Jim Crow, Horace wanted, above all else, to get out of the South, hitchhiking West as a teenager, where he would later start a successful small business in California. But, as the short documentary A Concerto Is a Conversation explores, what they share – including personal struggles with race and discrimination, ambitions to rise above the circumstances of their birth, and indistinguishable spirits – transcends the years between them. Featuring intimate cinematography from the Canadian director Ben Proudfoot and a stirring score provided by Kris Bowers himself, the film tracks the musical rhythms of a conversation between loved ones, and across the generations, with grace and heart.

Directors: Ben Proudfoot, Kris Bowers

Producer: Jeremy Lambert

Website: Breakwater Studios

They came in the night – the all-female bomber regiment of the Soviet Air Force

During the Second World War, the Soviet Air Force initially barred women from serving in combat. That was until October 1941 when the pilot Marina Raskova personally convinced Joseph Stalin to deploy the world’s first all-female air force units to fight against Axis powers. Primarily made up of volunteers in their late teens and early 20s, these regiments flew wood-and-canvas Polikarpov U-2 biplanes, aircraft originally intended for crop-dusting and hardly equipped for warfare, lacking guns, radio, radar and even parachutes. In this short animated documentary, the US filmmaker Alison Klayman recounts the story of Nadezhda Popova (1921-2013), a pilot in the notorious 588th Night Bomber Regiment – known by fearful German soldiers as ‘Nachthexen’ (‘night witches’), for their sudden, nearly soundless approaches before devastating bombardments. In The Night Witch, Popova’s experiences – from her childhood to old age – represent the complex intersection of 20th-century warfare with women’s growing empowerment.

Director: Alison Klayman

Director of animation: Dustin Grella

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Districts like the largely Latino Mission District in San Francisco have experienced the effects of gentrification with fast-rising housing costs and the eviction of longtime tenants. 9 May 2015. Photo by Preston Gannaway/New York Times

Essay/
Cities
The harms of gentrification

The exclusion of poorer people from their own neighbourhoods is not just a social problem but a philosophical one

Daniel Putnam

Illustration by Tom Björklund

Essay/
Human evolution
Sheanderthal

Not all Neanderthals were ‘cavemen’: half were women. What can archaeologists tell us about how they lived?

Rebecca Wragg Sykes