To counter racism, scholars must trace the idea of ‘race’ to its origins, but asking the right questions is half the battle | Continue reading
To counter racism, scholars must trace the idea of ‘race’ to its origins, but asking the right questions is half the battle | Continue reading
At 89 years old, Lizzie doesn’t get around as easily as she once did – but the fact that she’s traversing Europe at all is still quite an accomplishment for a Ford Model T. After years of driving the historic automobile, the Swiss author and automotive historian Bernhard Brägger … | Continue reading
The language of ‘soul’ speaks of our longing for transcendence, for the opportunity to become a better version of ourselves | Continue reading
Climate change is an emergency but despair is not the answer. The world is full of untold stories of people-powered change | Continue reading
Every human is both an animal with a deep evolutionary history and an individual who must bring their existence into being | Continue reading
Testosterone has a big, popular reputation for causing all sorts of things, but what science tells us is quite different | Continue reading
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, chiffonniers – or ragpickers – were a common sight on the streets of big cities around the world. These early recyclers sifted through rubbish in search of items that could be sorted and sold to people with the means to reuse the materials. I … | Continue reading
You know that feeling when you don’t have a word for a feeling? That’s hypocognition, and it can be used to censor and suppress | Continue reading
For the French philosopher Alain Badiou, romantic love is ‘the most powerful way known to humanity to have an intimate relationship with another’. Love, he believes, creates a state of dependence that is an important counterweight to modernity’s emphasis on individuality. In this … | Continue reading
In a fast-changing world, the university model needs to evolve so that students can get a passport to lifelong learning | Continue reading
Who should we admire more: the Michelin-starred chef with his teams and glamour, or the unsung but brilliant cook? | Continue reading
Superman et al were invented amid feverish eugenic speculation: what does the superhero craze say about our own times? | Continue reading
‘The church is within the forest, the forest is inside the church.’Ethiopia’s northern highlands were once covered by trees. But over the past century, development and exponential population growth have all but wiped out the region’s forests, transforming the landscape into an ex … | Continue reading
While some keep their cards close to their chest, others try raising the stakes. What can poker teach us about dating? | Continue reading
The lure of ‘cool’ brain research – and psychotropic drugs – are stifling psychotherapy. Has bioreductionism gone too far? | Continue reading
For Friedrich Nietzsche, dance was the way to teach his readers to affirm life here and now, with our human bodily selves | Continue reading
Survivors of life-threatening illness can be left in profound fear and distress. Are they suffering from a form of PTSD? | Continue reading
They are sentient beings with rich emotional lives, yet we subject them to experimental cruelty without conscience. Why? | Continue reading
Roughly two-thirds of people have had déjà vu, or the weird feeling that a new situation has been experienced before. Yet its prevalence belies just how mysterious the phenomenon remains to researchers, despite some extraordinary recent leaps in neuroscience. In part, this is bec … | Continue reading
They are sentient beings with rich emotional lives, yet we subject them to experimental cruelty without conscience. Why? | Continue reading
Most mental health work takes place away from the psychologist’s office, in the seeming insanity of our everyday lives | Continue reading
In a time of great powers and empires, just one region of the world experienced extraordinary economic growth. How? | Continue reading
How talking tech and robots that give hugs are returning us to the oldest form of human cognition: animism | Continue reading
Aldous Huxley argued that all religions in the world were underpinned by universal beliefs and experiences. Was he right? | Continue reading
‘What do you think the grass looks like?’Two friends – a blind boy and a sighted girl – wander through a meadow, riding their bikes, picking dandelions and doing their best to avoid stinging nettles. Now and then, the girl probes the contours of the boy’s sensory experience, ofte … | Continue reading
I was suddenly widowed, with two small children. But Marcus Aurelius taught me that good fortune is what I make for myself | Continue reading
There's a romanticised view that learning music as a child is a profoundly enriching experience, that it's a portal into a world of creativity and a means of achieving a host of secondary cognitive benefits. While learning an instrument is all of that and more for some people, mu … | Continue reading
The risk of nihilism is that it alienates us from anything good or true. Yet believing in nothing has positive potential | Continue reading
It’s the person who consistently seeks knowledge, rather than the one who is handed it on a platter, who deserves respect | Continue reading
It is a crab; no, a worm; no, a wolf. Early physicians weren’t entirely wrong to imagine cancer as a ravenous disease | Continue reading
Chinese New Year (also known as Lunar New Year), which starts on the new moon that falls between 21 January and 20 February, is celebrated by some 1.5 billion people around the world. And, as travel has become more affordable to China’s rapidly growing middle class, the holiday n … | Continue reading
It’s one thing to say something. It’s quite another for a person to do (or not do) something because of what you’ve said | Continue reading
How talking tech and robots that give hugs are returning us to the oldest form of human cognition: animism | Continue reading
Our cities are filled by the hubbub of human-made noise. Where shall we find the quietness we need to nurture our spirit? | Continue reading
Olympic athletes have, by definition, overcome overwhelming odds. But even among such a class of people, the US fencer Keeth Smart's story stands out as extraordinary. He was the worst member of his high-school fencing club – which he joined only thanks to his talented sister (an … | Continue reading
The evidence behind some of the therapies thought to be best supported by research is not as strong as it should be | Continue reading
Our cities are filled by the hubbub of human-made noise. Where shall we find the quietness we need to nurture our spirit? | Continue reading
Are moral beliefs quite literally gut feelings that stem from the body’s tendency to feel disgust at certain human behaviours? | Continue reading
Have you heard this one before? An ultra-Orthodox Jew breaks the rules by going online, falls in love with stand-up comedy, and starts performing in clubs to help manage his crippling social anxiety. With deadpan delivery, and often wearing traditional Jewish Orthodox clothing, D … | Continue reading
Are moral beliefs quite literally gut feelings that stem from the body’s tendency to feel disgust at certain human behaviours? | Continue reading
A generation ago, the Welsh valley town of Maesteg was a booming coal mining and manufacturing community. Today, the mines and factories have all closed, and the sweeping green hills outside town are capped with massive wind turbines. This short documentary chronicles a day in th … | Continue reading
For 400 years Americans have argued that their violence is justified, while the violence of others constitutes barbarism | Continue reading
Aldous Huxley argued that all religions in the world were underpinned by universal beliefs and experiences. Was he right? | Continue reading
Trying to feed children a perfect, organic diet holds mothers to an impossible standard – and makes society less healthy | Continue reading
How the quick thinking of internationally minded astronomers avoided stamping the solar system with petty European rivalries | Continue reading
Established in 1921 by the Scottish writer and educator Alexander Sutherland Neill (1883-1973), Summerhill School in England helped to pioneer the ‘free school’ philosophy, in which lessons are never mandatory and nearly every aspect of student life can be put to a vote. Neill’s … | Continue reading
The argument that a psychiatric diagnosis is an unkind form of ‘labelling’ people neglects that it can be vital to good care | Continue reading