Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
For centuries, many Western theologians and philosophers have answered the ‘problem of evil’ – how a benevolent god could allow for pain and suffering – with the argument that, in order for humans to perform good deeds, they must be free to choose between good and evil. In this animation from the Centre for Inquiry UK, the British philosopher Stephen Law considers the inverse scenario: if there were a fully evil, omnipotent god, could we possibly imagine he would allow for good deeds to be performed in the name of freedom to choose evil?
Director: Steph Hope
video
Values and beliefs
Why a single tree, uprooted in a typhoon, means so much to one man in Hanoi
7 minutes
video
Meaning and the good life
Why Orwell urged his readers to celebrate the spring, cynics be damned
11 minutes
video
History
Hags, seductresses, feminist icons – how gender dynamics manifest in witches
13 minutes
video
Meaning and the good life
Leading 1950s thinkers on the search for happiness in trying times
29 minutes
video
Virtues and vices
Why Bennie tried to disappear, and what happened when he was found decades later
16 minutes
video
Art
Background music was the radical invention of a trailblazing composer
17 minutes
video
Metaphysics
What do past, present and future mean to a philosopher of time?
55 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