
In praise of the dilettante
A wayfaring cosmopolitan who never gets stuck, the dilettante is the right anti-hero for our hyper-specialised age
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essayTechnology and the self
Deskilling the body
We are, moment by moment, doing less sensing, navigating, remembering, walking, choosing, and attending
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essayMetaphysics
Is everything conscious?
If the question makes no sense to you, try spending some time with the principle of sufficient reason
Sam Kimpton-Nye

essayPhilosophy of mind
How intuitions work
Just as seeing a tree gives you reason to believe it’s there, sensing that a stranger is creepy gives you reason to walk away
Marc A Moffett

videoCities
Manhattan’s evolution over centuries captured via meticulous animation
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essayPhysics
The physics of getting fired
Physics offered me a sense of order and purpose. But when life got messy I realised it had a much deeper insight to give
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videoWellbeing
An Afghan woman recalls how her country’s devastation led to her own
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essayMood and emotion
Love with nowhere to go
Grief is not only for the dead. When we are unable to honour other profound losses, we become strangers to ourselves
Derek van Zoonen

videoThe ancient world
Letters from Bronze Age rulers reveal how little diplomacy has changed
42 minutes

videoArt
The bisexual artist who reimagined womanhood for the Jazz Age
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essayWar and peace
How to build real peace
From Colombia to Syria, I’ve seen that capitalist logic can’t help to rebuild postwar countries but cooperatives can
Azize Aslan

essayHistory of technology
Traction!
Tribologists study friction: what happens when things rub together. It’s indispensable, from the wheel to the paths of stars
Jennifer R Vail

videoTechnology and the self
What happened when the only country to ban TV lifted the ban?
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essayHome
Other people
Disconnection is at the heart of today’s crises. So my husband and I chose a radical and revealing remedy: living communally
Elizabeth Oldfield

videoWar and peace
What four years of ceaseless war looks like to Ukrainian civilians
36 minutes

essayPhilosophy of mind
How intuitions work
Just as seeing a tree gives you reason to believe it’s there, sensing that a stranger is creepy gives you reason to walk away
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videoThinkers and theories
There’s nothing inherently good in the ‘natural’, argues Bruno Latour
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essayHistory of technology
Horrible, unmanly, indispensable
Renaissance Italians saw the gun as the Devil’s work. But soon they embraced this unchivalrous – and necessary – weapon
Catherine Fletcher

essayThe ancient world
How to be a (Roman) man
Cicero’s ideal of manly virtue stressed the performance of self-control and bravery, not boastful egotism and domination
Catharine Edwards

videoArchaeology
Hohle Fels cave illuminates the rich symbolic world of Ice Age humans
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essayKnowledge
The ladder of knowledge
What we claim as ‘true’ is not a ceiling we are forever failing to reach but something that changes as we climb toward it
Alexander V Gheorghiu

videoWar and peace
The all-female team defusing ISIS’s deadly landmine legacy
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essayTechnology and the self
Deskilling the body
We are, moment by moment, doing less sensing, navigating, remembering, walking, choosing, and attending
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videoSpirituality
The fragile majesty of the Buganda royal tombs in Uganda
11 minutes

essayMetaphysics
Is everything conscious?
If the question makes no sense to you, try spending some time with the principle of sufficient reason
Sam Kimpton-Nye

essayProgress and modernity
Barbara Ward’s vision
She was among the first to argue that prosperity, equality and the protection of nature are inseparable planetary goals
Or Rosenboim

videoCities
Manhattan’s evolution over centuries captured via meticulous animation
8 minutes

essayRace and ethnicity
The ghetto on the lagoon
Sixteenth-century Venice wanted to expel its Jews but couldn’t do without them. Its compromise was the world’s first ghetto
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videoFamily life
An Iranian couple seek out the recipient of their late son’s heart
15 minutes
