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Essays

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Longform Essays written by serious and creative thinkers on philosophy, psychology, science, society and culture

Photo of an ocean sunset seen through a round window with a warm sepia tone across the sky and water.

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Language and linguistics

The grammar of a god-ocean

To truly explore alien languages, linguists must open themselves to the maximum conceivable degree of cosmic otherness

Eli K P William

A man in a blue shirt playing a saxophone against a dark background.

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Consciousness and altered states

Kind of confusing

Is consciousness like jazz, something hard to pin down? Or is it more like the biology of dolphins, odd but natural?

Tim Bayne

A hospital room with a patient in a gown and headscarf speaking to a doctor, while a man stands nearby taking notes.

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Illness and disease

The power of the ‘C’ word

Saying the word ‘cancer’ changes a person’s life and can lead to overtreatment and fear. Is the word too hot to use at all?

Benjamin Chin-Yee

Black and white photo of Adolf Hitler greeting two clergymen surrounded by a crowd in front of a Gothic building.

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Religion

An unholy alliance

In the 1930s, the rise of Nazism brought centuries of animosity between Europe’s Catholics and Protestants to an end. Why?

Udi Greenberg

Yellow slime mould on textured tree bark, showcasing intricate branching patterns.

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Biology

Memories without brains

Certain slime moulds can make decisions, solve mazes and remember things. What can we learn from the blob?

Matthew Sims

An elderly person lying in a hospital bed in a bright room with a walker and a window nearby.

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Death

Freedom over death

Death is a certainty. But choosing how and when we depart is a modest opportunity for freedom – and dignity

Michael Cholbi

Painting of blind men with sticks leading one another, one has fallen, landscape and church in the background.

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Thinkers and theories

The French liar

René Descartes, the founder of modern philosophy, was furiously condemned by his contemporaries. Why did they fear him?

Sandrine Parageau

A large white cathedral with golden domes near a river, surrounded by trees with autumn colours.

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Architecture

The replica and the original

Architectural copies of lost structures require reckoning with history and heritage. At what cost is the past rebuilt?

Elizabeth Kostina

Illustration of a crab using a laptop, captioned “Homo-crustaceous digitalis” on a textured background.

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The future

Homo crustaceous

‘Everything becomes crab’ is more than an absurd meme. The crab is a deep symbol of our devil’s bargain with technology

Michael Garfield

Photo of a rustic stone house with a shaded garden path lined with lush greenery and flowering plants under a clear blue sky.

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History of ideas

From scattered traces

How the ideas circulating among one noblewoman’s coterie in 16th-century Dubrovnik anticipated modern feminist thought

Luka Boršić

Photo of a busy street corner with people gathering outside a cafe named Dante in a city setting on a cloudy day.

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Neurodiversity

Rethinking adult ADHD

The diagnostic category of adult ADHD is becoming more inclusive. That’s not the same as it being overdiagnosed

Margaret Sibley

Photo of ornate 18th-century women’s shoes with floral embroidery and green trim on a neutral background.

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Design and fashion

Walk in these

Shoes are deeply personal, literally moulded to our lives. But they create our social lives as much as express them

Matthew McCormack