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‘Where meat was once bound to the moral act of killing, it is now bound only to the market.’
While meat has played a vital part in the development of the human brain, according to the US author Harold McGee, our dependence on it could also be our undoing. The rise of meat production and consumption is proving environmentally disastrous, contributing heavily to water shortages, pollution and global warming. Knotty Objects: Steak is a brief plunge into the moral complexities of eating meat in the 21st century and some creative solutions that could help us overcome our inborn desire to eat animals.
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Language and linguistics
Why Susan listens to recordings of herself speaking a language she no longer remembers
5 minutes
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Ethics
Plato saw little value in privacy. How do his ideas hold up in the information age?
5 minutes
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Biology
Starlings swoosh like brushstrokes across the sky in this dazzling short
3 minutes
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Engineering
From simple motors to levitating trains – how design shapes innovation
23 minutes
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Home
How an artist transformed a dilapidated hunting lodge into a house made of dreams
8 minutes
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Animals and humans
Are zoos and natural history museums born of a desire to understand, or to control?
57 minutes
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Virtues and vices
Why Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith were divided on the virtues of vanity
5 minutes
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Ecology and environmental sciences
The tree frog die-off that sparked a global mystery – and revealed a dark truth
15 minutes
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Beauty and aesthetics
In art, the sublime is a feedback loop, evolving with whatever’s next to threaten us
9 minutes