Although Mercury orbits the Sun once every 88 Earth days, the three bodies align only about 13 times a century due to the planets’ relative orbital planes. One such ‘Mercury transit’ occurred on 11 November 2019. This short video highlights the rare event as recorded by NASA's So … | Continue reading
The English philosopher Mary Astell’s work on ‘bad custom’ and other forms of prejudice was centuries ahead of her time | Continue reading
The English philosopher Mary Astell’s work on ‘bad custom’ and other forms of prejudice was centuries ahead of her time | Continue reading
Most utopian communities are, like most start-ups, short-lived. What makes the difference between failure and success? | Continue reading
In a strangely unremarked-upon twist, Disney films have taken to subverting romance and rethinking the happy-ever-afters | Continue reading
Feeling bored? Instead of fighting it, embrace boredom, make friends with it, learn from it, and see where it takes you | Continue reading
If this belief from heaven be sent,If such be Nature’s holy plan,Have I not reason to lamentWhat man has made of man?From 'Lines Written in Early Spring' (1798) by William WordsworthThe Romantic thinkers, poets, composers and artists valued emotion over reason. Reacting to the En … | Continue reading
Feeling bored? Instead of fighting it, embrace boredom, make friends with it, learn from it, and see where it takes you | Continue reading
Forms is a collaboration between the London-based visual artists Memo Akten and Davide Quayolas, and it generates dynamic digital art from the bodies of world-class athletes at the 2010 Commonwealth Games. Inspired by modernist and early photographic interrogations of bodies in m … | Continue reading
Humans teeter on a knife’s edge. The same deep chemistry that fosters bonding can, in a heartbeat, pivot to fear and hate | Continue reading
The quest to explore Mars and more distant worlds is more than an engineering challenge: it’s a challenge to the human mind | Continue reading
The fear of death drives many evils, from addiction to prejudice and war. Can it also be harnessed as a force for good? | Continue reading
Our world is a system, in which physical and social technologies co-evolve. How can we shape a process we don’t control? | Continue reading
A group of young men head out to the woods. They dance around a fire. They ingest mind-altering substances. They shoot sparks into the night sky. They commune with each other. With his documentary Men, the US filmmaker Dane Mainella drops us into the midst of a ritual that is as … | Continue reading
Our world is a system, in which physical and social technologies co-evolve. How can we shape a process we don’t control? | Continue reading
There’s a nihilistic wisdom that comes from staring down the apocalypse: on reading Viktor Frankl in the Anthropocene | Continue reading
Paul Samuelson’s mathematical brilliance changed economics, but it was his popular touch that made him a household name | Continue reading
The 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to David J Thouless, F Duncan M Haldane and J Michael Kosterlitz for their ‘theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter’ that 'revealed the secrets of exotic matter'. If that sounds massivel … | Continue reading
Paul Samuelson’s mathematical brilliance changed economics, but it was his popular touch that made him a household name | Continue reading
The path to happiness is a detour from the route to meaning: better to focus on who you want to be than how you want to feel | Continue reading
The most popular songs today are sadder than they were 50 years ago: can cultural evolution explain this negative turn? | Continue reading
Set in the frigid, snow-swept landscape of northern Russia, Fairytale of the Three Bears features three rural men reflecting on the seismic shifts in Russian culture and economics following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Amid their musings on the days before capitalism took ho … | Continue reading
Don’t blame Maslow for ‘do what you love’. How managers hijacked the hierarchy of needs for their business practices | Continue reading
The body is warm, but the brain has gone dark: why the notion of brain death provokes the thorniest of medical dilemmas | Continue reading
In 2003, when flip phones still ruled the world, the UK director and artist Victoria Mapplebeck found herself on the verge of a promising relationship with a man she had matched with through a dating agency. But just a few weeks later, her life was forever altered by an abrupt br … | Continue reading
The body is warm, but the brain has gone dark: why the notion of brain death provokes the thorniest of medical dilemmas | Continue reading
The therapist who has humility and self-doubt paves the way for better psychotherapy and helps clients more effectively | Continue reading
The therapist who has humility and self-doubt paves the way for better psychotherapy and helps clients more effectively | Continue reading
Moving between the Russian, Iranian and Young Turk revolutions, cosmopolitan Armenians helped usher in the 20th century | Continue reading
The womb isn’t as welcoming a space for a developing offspring as you might imagine. Indeed, from the moment an embryo is implanted in the mother’s womb, her immune system views the foreign body as something of an invader. Thereafter, the relationship between mother and developin … | Continue reading
The most popular songs today are sadder than they were 50 years ago: can cultural evolution explain this negative turn? | Continue reading
A polyamorous friend challenges me: are you really happily monogamous or are you just hung up about your philandering dad? | Continue reading
Should philosophy express the national character of a people? Bertrand Russell’s ‘scientific’ philosophy was a bulwark against nationalism | Continue reading
Nestled just outside Quebec City, the majestic Montmorency Falls reaches heights of some 275 feet – a full 100 feet taller than the Niagara Falls. During the long Canadian winters, cliffs beside the main waterfall freeze over entirely, giving the appearance of cascading water stu … | Continue reading
Do ancient bones prove the myth of the ravenous, pendulum-breasted hobbit stalking the past? How science blends with legend | Continue reading
Should philosophy express the national character of a people? Bertrand Russell’s ‘scientific’ philosophy was a bulwark against nationalism | Continue reading
For Simone de Beauvoir, authentic love is an ethical undertaking: it can be spoilt by devotion as much as by selfishness | Continue reading
Loving a pet is usually accompanied by a sombre and unavoidable truth: unless you’ve bought a puppy to accompany you through your final days or are providing excellent care to your tortoise, your dear animal companion will likely precede you in death. However, if you’re a dog own … | Continue reading
The Sun is both creator and destroyer of life. Where better to bow to its power than a subterranean tomb on winter solstice? | Continue reading
Some mushrooms will kill you,while some will show you godsand some will feed the hunger in our bellies. Identify.The UK-born writer Neil Gaiman wrote the poem ‘The Mushroom Hunters’ for an event held in Brooklyn in 2017 to celebrate ‘great scientists and scientific discoveries’. … | Continue reading
Some mushrooms will kill you,while some will show you godsand some will feed the hunger in our bellies. Identify.The UK-born writer Neil Gaiman wrote the poem ‘The Mushroom Hunters’ for an event held in Brooklyn in 2017 to celebrate ‘great scientists and scientific discoveries’. … | Continue reading
For Simone de Beauvoir, authentic love is an ethical undertaking: it can be spoilt by devotion as much as by selfishness | Continue reading
Voting is a duty of common pursuit. There is nothing more rational than acting individually to achieve collective benefits | Continue reading
Voting is a duty of common pursuit. There is nothing more rational than acting individually to achieve collective benefits | Continue reading
Many athletes are propelled by childhood trauma to succeed, but it’s a toxic myth that healing the wounds blunts the edge | Continue reading
The 3,500-kilometre, 23-day cycling competition known as the Tour de France has long been considered one of the most prestigious and gruelling athletic events in the world. But, as this excerpt from the celebrated French director Louis Malle’s documentary Vive La Tour (1962) demo … | Continue reading
Antisemitism flourished in response to the unsettling, abstract growth of finance capitalism in the early modern world | Continue reading
All the big questions about our world that can be answered at all can be answered by science | Continue reading