Far from making them obsolete, the flatter business organisations of today need managers more than ever but in new ways | Continue reading
Felines walk the line between familiar and strange. We stroke them and they purr, then in a trice they pounce | Continue reading
It’s tempting to think science gives a God’s-eye view of reality. But we forget the place of human experience at our peril | Continue reading
Brilliant leader, kind horseman and friend of Socrates: Xenophon’s writings inspire a humane, practical approach to life | Continue reading
During a fellowship at the Mineral Sciences Laboratory at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, the UK filmmakers Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt stumbled upon a collection of 16mm films shot by volcanologists in the field. Originally presented as an … | Continue reading
From medicine to education, market imperatives rule public life: how neoliberalism undermined the idea of professionalism | Continue reading
The Silk Road might have started as a libertarian experiment, but it was doomed to end as a fiefdom run by pirate kings | Continue reading
Almost 40 years after post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was officially recognised as a distinct mental condition, treating its frequently debilitating symptoms has proven extremely challenging to sufferers and clinicians. The human brain is hard-wired to defend against threat … | Continue reading
Brilliant leader, kind horseman and friend of Socrates: Xenophon’s writings inspire a humane, practical approach to life | Continue reading
The development sector set out to summon the magic of capitalism from the ashes of communism. How is it going? | Continue reading
The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem was no intellectual desert: how the Latin East contributed to a unique cultural world | Continue reading
Due to visa restrictions and short turnarounds, many crews of international cargo ships stay in port after docking. Their brief stints ashore are frequently spent in seafarers' centres, where they can unwind and connect with families who are often oceans away, before climbing bac … | Continue reading
A Serb, a Croat and a Bosnian walk into a bar: do they speak different languages – or dialects? The answer is pure linguistics | Continue reading
It’s tempting to think science gives a God’s-eye view of reality. But we forget the place of human experience at our peril | Continue reading
Is having a passion enough? Or does finding a calling take grit, effort and purpose? The latest findings from psychology | Continue reading
I hear the chorus, it is a grand opera,Ah this indeed is music – this suits me.‘Song of Myself’ was first published as an untitled selection in Walt Whitman’s landmark poetry collection Leaves of Grass (1855), and was revised by Whitman until his death in 1892. The 52-section fre … | Continue reading
The adults who joined Bhagwan’s ashram sought freedom, love and light. Many of their children found darkness instead | Continue reading
Is having a passion enough? Or does finding a calling take grit, effort and purpose? The latest findings from psychology | Continue reading
Aptitude and IQ tests are used to distinguish those young people who deserve a chance from those who do not. Do they work? | Continue reading
The best way to make babies laugh is to take them seriously, and the best way for them to learn is while laughing | Continue reading
Animals have friends, enemies, allies and life-long companions. Human relationships aren’t so unique after all | Continue reading
Of all the age-old questions of philosophy, the problem of free will might be most likely to result in existential angst. In this video from Wi-Phi or Wireless Philosophy, the English philosopher Richard Holton, formerly of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and now at the … | Continue reading
The pickup industry mates market logic with the arts of seduction – turning human intimacy into hard labour | Continue reading
He’s not the guy on Quaker Oats, he’s much more interesting: Pennsylvania’s little-known and much-misunderstood founder | Continue reading
Redwoods typically provoke wonder at the macro scale. They are, after all, the largest and tallest trees in the world. But in this visualisation from the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, viewers are invited on a remarkable tour through several levels of organisati … | Continue reading
In the case atheists vs religious belief, Ludwig Wittgenstein is called to the stand. Whose side does his testimony serve? | Continue reading
‘The Snark was a Boojum, you see’: on the hunt for sense, truth and meaning in the nonsense poetry of Lewis Carroll | Continue reading
Synthetics created in the 20th century have become an evolutionary force, altering human biology and the web of life | Continue reading
How virtual reality and artificial intelligence can illuminate the metaphysics of the ancient philosophy of Vedanta | Continue reading
Synthetics created in the 20th century have become an evolutionary force, altering human biology and the web of life | Continue reading
Death was the great leveller, but new life-extension technologies will widen the gap between the haves and havenots | Continue reading
Frankincense and myrrh have long links to the sacred. Why has Christianity viewed them with both fascination and suspicion? | Continue reading
Divine immanence is a call to action: how politics solved a philosophical problem for Martin Luther King Jr | Continue reading
Operation Jane Walk appropriates the hallmarks of an action roleplaying game – Tom Clancy’s The Division (2016), set in a barren New York City after a smallpox pandemic – for an intricately rendered tour that digs into the city's history through virtual visits to some notable lan … | Continue reading
It is not all in your head, sometimes it’s in your legs or your torso: a cartography of conscious feelings in the body | Continue reading
Through genome sequencing, we now know that chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, sharing nearly 99 per cent of our DNA. But in the roughly 7 million years since our ancestors split from chimps, Homo sapiens has existed alongside a wide variety of closer evolutionary cous … | Continue reading
Shinto is uniquely Japanese, yet embodies a once-universal animistic religion of wind and fire, gods and animal spirits | Continue reading
Reach out, listen, be patient: how to use philosophical tools to reduce political polarisation in arguments with extremists | Continue reading
Space exploration in film is overwhelmingly male, metallic and hard-edged. Could we get further with more women on board? | Continue reading
Chinese psychiatry remains committed to the political ideal of mental hygiene, long after its discrediting in the West | Continue reading
Instead of loving yourself, try being indifferent: take comfort in realising you’re not that unique. Now, isn’t that better? | Continue reading
Academic research in the US is unplanned, exploitative and driven by a lust for glory. The result is the envy of the world | Continue reading
On the Monday after prom, a bit before graduation, getting to class is the last thing on the minds of high-school seniors from the small industrial city of Pahokee in Florida. Instead, they're off on a 60-mile drive to have a celebratory day at the beach. In between selfies and s … | Continue reading
Mwa-ha-haa! Why all film baddies have a wicked laugh that’s a loud and clear sign of villainy and evil intent | Continue reading
Academic research in the US is unplanned, exploitative and driven by a lust for glory. The result is the envy of the world | Continue reading
Dark energy is the term that scientists have given to the mysterious 'something' deemed responsible for the accelerating expansion of the Universe. However, unlike gravity, which pulls things together, physicists and cosmologists still can't explain what dark energy really is or … | Continue reading
Black women can imagine being the prey of predatory men in a racist rape culture. What we can’t imagine is a way out | Continue reading
Chinese psychiatry remains committed to the political ideal of mental hygiene, long after its discrediting in the West | Continue reading