Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
Designed to help ships navigate through hazards such as reduced visibility, foghorns first started appearing on coastlines in the 1850s. While imperfect messengers, these elaborate and powerful steam whistles were nonetheless considered an improvement on the systems of lights, rockets and cannons that predated them for centuries, until simpler horn designs, and later, GPS, rendered them obsolete. This brief piece from the UK filmmaker J J Jamieson transports viewers to the Sumburgh Lighthouse in Shetland, in the far north of Scotland, for the annual sounding of its recently refurbished foghorn. With an artful editing style, the short video captures the intricate, elegant mechanics that awake the powerful horn from its slumber, and send it bellowing across the scenic coastline.
Via Kottke
Director: J J Jamieson
video
Thinkers and theories
A rare female scholar of the Roman Empire, Hypatia lived and died as a secular voice
5 minutes
video
Anthropology
Why are witchcraft accusations so common across human societies?
4 minutes
video
Wellbeing
Born in China, Zee seeks a gender-affirming life in the American Midwest
11 minutes
video
Chemistry
Why do the building blocks of life possess a mysterious symmetry?
12 minutes
video
Rituals and celebrations
A whale hunt is an act of prayer for an Inuit community north of the Arctic Circle
8 minutes
video
Cosmology
Tiny, entangled universes that form or fizzle out – a theory of the quantum multiverse
11 minutes
video
Astronomy
The history of astronomy is a history of conjuring intelligent life where it isn’t
34 minutes
video
Politics and government
How it looked to Afghan women to see the Taliban return to power
33 minutes
video
Metaphysics
Simple entities in universal harmony – Leibniz’s evocative perspective on reality
4 minutes