Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
After decades of experimenting on animal brains, the US neurosurgeon Robert J White proposed executing a ‘whole body transplant’ on a rhesus monkey in the late 1960s. By performing a complex surgery that involved removing one monkey’s head and attaching it to another’s body, White believed he might unlock a method to potentially save human lives in the future. It was a medical experiment widely considered to be controversial, even in an era before the animal rights movement had reached the mainstream.
Yet, as this video from TED-Ed details, with the approval of some mainstream agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the procedurally complicated, ethically complex and certainly grisly experiment was conducted in 1970. Chronicling both the surprising results of the surgery and the enduring controversies around it, the short animation touches on what White’s experiment reveals about centuries-old questions like the mind-body problem, as well as intricate issues on the frontiers of bioethics.
video
Technology and the self
The commodified childhood – scenes from two sisters’ lives in the creator economy
14 minutes
video
Art
Background music was the radical invention of a trailblazing composer
17 minutes
video
Anthropology
For an Amazonian female shaman, ayahuasca ceremonies are a rite and a business
30 minutes
video
Metaphysics
What do past, present and future mean to a philosopher of time?
55 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
Art
Radical doodles – how ‘exquisite corpse’ games embodied the Surrealist movement
15 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