Older than bronze and as new as nanowires, textiles are technology — and they have remade our world time and again | Continue reading
The multitude of female birth-control products on the market hardly means there’s a perfect option for everyone. From the combined oral contraceptive (commonly known as the Pill), to the IUD (intrauterine device, aka the coil) to the NuvaRing, the availability of choice can mask … | Continue reading
When attention is a limited resource, it can run out. Treat it as an experience, and it yields a rich sense of purpose | Continue reading
Pesky though they might be, houseflies are remarkable biological specimens – strong enough to carry up to half their own body weight and, as you’ve likely noticed when trying to swat one, exceptionally quick and nimble. For his 1910 short The Acrobatic Fly, the pioneering British … | Continue reading
Bound by rules, yet constantly changing, language might be the ultimate self-regulating system, with nobody in charge | Continue reading
If we don’t invent a legal framework for space colonisation the consequences could be catastrophic: the time to act is now | Continue reading
Rotten to the core: 10 findings from psychology that reveal the bad news about human nature and show us how to do better | Continue reading
Rotten to the core: 10 findings from psychology that reveal the bad news about human nature and show us how to do better | Continue reading
The women’s suffrage movement was saturated with metaphors of ‘shackles’, ‘bonds’ and ‘slavery’. Was it justifiable? | Continue reading
When is active civil disobedience – not just passive resistance – a justified response to government injustice? | Continue reading
When is active civil disobedience – not just passive resistance – a justified response to government injustice? | Continue reading
When the US filmmaker Matthew Palmer’s mother was 28 and childless, she received an unsettling prediction from a psychic: she would have a son, and her husband would die when their son was 13, but it would be ‘okay’. Uninterested in having children and skeptical of psychics, she … | Continue reading
That feeling of being both ridiculously small in the grand scheme and a powerful centre of knowledge: that’s the sublime | Continue reading
If we don’t invent a legal framework for space colonisation the consequences could be catastrophic: the time to act is now | Continue reading
In Sketches, the Russian graphic illustrator and motion designer Vladimir Tomin stitches together a series of short, reality-warping vignettes. Starting with mundane views of streets, stairwells and building façades, Tomin uses visual effects to manipulate each scene in surprisin … | Continue reading
When is active civil disobedience – not just passive resistance – a justified response to government injustice? | 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
Nuclear deterrence continues to dominate international relations. Yet there is no proof it ever worked, nor that it ever will | Continue reading
From 2012 to 2016, Syria's capital Aleppo was one of the central battlegrounds of the country's civil war. In December 2016, government forces defeated and subsequently expelled rebel groups from the city in what was considered a turning point in the conflict. This short document … | Continue reading
You are not a blank page, and your brain is not modular: how your genes work together to shape your psychology | Continue reading
Are insects ‘philosophical zombies’ with no inner life? Close attention to their behaviours and moods suggests otherwise | Continue reading
Prior to the introduction of the euro on 1 January 1999, the European continent was awash in a huge variety of national coins. For their animation Beautiful Coins, the design studio NEWGOLD weaved together obsolete coins from each of the 19 countries that now exclusively use the … | Continue reading
Is a home made of bricks and mortar or hopes and dreams? Dispatches from among the rough sleepers on the streets of Paris | Continue reading
The uncanny realism of Orson Welles’s radio play crystallised a fear of communication technology that haunts us today | Continue reading
The experience of love is culturally specific, and cannot be universalised. So why does immigration law try to do so? | Continue reading
The physics of panic: how physical motion works with emotional responses to explain the behaviour of a crowd in crisis | Continue reading
The chasm between producers and consumers leaves many of us estranged from beauty and a vital part of an ethical life | Continue reading
Time-lapse footage of thunderstorms, auroras borealis and city lights captured from the International Space Station (ISS) has become a somewhat common sight across computer and television screens. Because NASA releases these images into the public domain, they tend to be frequent … | Continue reading
Are insects ‘philosophical zombies’ with no inner life? Close attention to their behaviours and moods suggests otherwise | Continue reading
The experience of love is culturally specific, and cannot be universalised. So why does immigration law try to do so? | Continue reading
In California, men on probation for domestic violence offences are required to complete the 52-week Batterers’ Intervention Program, aimed at teaching them strategies for managing anger and breaking cycles of abuse. The programmes vary widely in quality, and frequently suffer fro … | Continue reading
The uncanny realism of Orson Welles’s radio play crystallised a fear of communication technology that haunts us today | Continue reading
John Lilburne was a secular martyr on the road from Reformation to Enlightenment: his war was for the people against tyranny | Continue reading
The Inka empire was open-ended, oral and loosely institutionalised, leaving it vulnerable to the Spanish conquistadores | Continue reading
Once parents felt children needed a little fear to grow up well. Today they are desperately protective. What went wrong? | Continue reading
In his Covers series, the German animator Henning M Lederer envisions a world where classic book covers spring to spectacular and satisfyingly geometric life. Lederer’s third instalment, Even More Covers, features midcentury editions of philosophy, science and logic classics, inc … | Continue reading
In his Covers series, the German animator Henning M Lederer envisions a world where classic book covers spring to spectacular and satisfyingly geometric life. Lederer’s third instalment, Even More Covers, features midcentury editions of philosophy, science and logic classics, inc … | Continue reading
Shamefaced: is shame an irrational moral delusion? Or does the feeling have nothing to do with ideals in the first place? | Continue reading
Philosophy was once a woman’s world, ranging across Asia, Africa and Latin America. It’s time to reclaim that lost realm | Continue reading
How Einstein’s early experience of Judaism may have coloured his understanding of reality | Continue reading
His name has become synonymous with egotistic political scheming, yet Machiavelli’s work is effectively democratic at heart | Continue reading
‘It feel like, I went to sleep at 18 and I woke up at 60.’In May 1975, 18-year-old Rickey Jackson was arrested in Cleveland, Ohio for a murder he didn’t commit. After being convicted, he spent two and a half years on Death Row and an additional 26 years in Ohio prisons, maintaini … | Continue reading
How Einstein’s early experience of Judaism may have coloured his understanding of reality | Continue reading
A pair of cognitive scientists, married for half a century, explain why two argumentative heads can be better than one | Continue reading
It can be easy to simply accept algorithms as indisputable mathematic truths. After all, who wants to spend their spare time deconstructing complex equations? But make no mistake: algorithms are limited tools for understanding the world, frequently as flawed and biased as the hum … | Continue reading
Once parents felt children needed a little fear to grow up well. Today they are desperately protective. What went wrong? | Continue reading
The Inka empire was open-ended, oral and loosely institutionalised, leaving it vulnerable to the Spanish conquistadores | Continue reading
In China and Japan, temples may be rebuilt and ancient warriors cast again. There is nothing sacred about the ‘original’ | Continue reading