Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
As a young aspiring scientist, the South African cosmologist Renée Hložek, who is now an associate professor at the University of Toronto, noticed that the few female scientists she could look up to seemed to be successful in spite of – and not because of or independently of – their ‘womanness’. And, as she details in this brief animation from Thought Café, when she was getting her start, she began to truly understand the distinct barriers women faced in the male-dominated scientific culture. This includes how the process of tearing down ideas, which is fundamental to scientific practice, can be corrosive to the experience of female scientists – and indeed to science itself – when it bleeds into the interpersonal.
Video by Thought Café
video
Music
‘Dun dun dun duuun!’ Why Beethoven’s Fifth sticks in the head and stirs the heart
5 minutes
video
Art
The irreverent duo who thumbed their noses at the Soviet Union and the US art world
11 minutes
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
A scientist’s poor eyesight helped fuel a revolution in computer ‘vision’
9 minutes
video
Thinkers and theories
Henri Bergson on why the existence of things precedes their possibility
3 minutes
video
Ageing and death
Demystifying death – a palliative care specialist’s practical guide to life’s end
4 minutes
video
Future of technology
Is this the future of space travel? Take a luxury ‘cruise’ across the solar system
6 minutes
video
Metaphysics
Why mathematical truths exist with or without minds to consider them
8 minutes
video
Fairness and equality
A tragicomic account of how the Los Angeles Police Department blew up a city block
19 minutes
video
Stories and literature
A French Creole folktale nearly lost to time is given new, gorgeously animated life
6 minutes