Kids don’t just say ‘the darndest things’. Playful and probing, they can be closer to the grain of life’s deepest questions | Continue reading
Why ums, likes and y’knows aren’t verbal litter but filled pauses that add context, emphasis and meaning to our conversations | Continue reading
Innocent, passive, apolitical: after the Holocaust, the standard for ‘true’ victimhood has worked to justify total war | Continue reading
Modern mindfulness strips Buddhism of its spiritual core. We need an ethics of reincarnation for an interconnected world | Continue reading
A history of the ‘dangerous nonsense’ of phrenology shows how facile solutions often gain traction over rigorous empiricism | Continue reading
Physics has long looked to harmony to explain the beauty of the Universe. But what if dissonance yields better insights? | Continue reading
From choreographed violence to gardening and table manners, the samurai code was built on maintaining a good reputation | Continue reading
Far from being profoundly destructive we humans have deep capacities for sharing resources with generosity and foresight | Continue reading
An Oscar-winning portrait of a French resistance fighter’s visit to the concentration camp where her brother died in 1945 | Continue reading
Entangled with, yet critical of, colonial oppression and the evils of slavery, the true history of Boston can now be told | Continue reading
What pea-sized brain organoids reveal about consciousness, the self and our future as a species | Continue reading
What pea-sized brain organoids reveal about consciousness, the self and our future as a species | Continue reading
Microbes are, by definition, too small for our eyes to see. How we perceive them depends entirely on the microscopy method used | Continue reading
Globalism is out. Nationalism is in. Progressives who think they can jump aboard are dangerously naive | Continue reading
Globalism is out. Nationalism is in. Progressives who think they can jump aboard are dangerously naive | Continue reading
From monks to existentialists and hipsters, the search for a true self has been a centuries-long project. Should we give it up? | Continue reading
From mind-bending animation to jazz improvisation – how an artist inverted the usual process of album-art creation | Continue reading
From monks to existentialists and hipsters, the search for a true self has been a centuries-long project. Should we give it up? | Continue reading
If the ice could speak, what would it say? A sci-fi poem in Greenlandic about scientific exploration of the melting Arctic | Continue reading
He spoke truth to power and made heresy a virtue. Lessons on free speech and intellectual combat from John Milton | Continue reading
If philosophers and mathematicians struggle with probability, can gamblers really hope to grasp their losing game? | Continue reading
Women who write about their pain suffer a double shaming: once for getting injured, twice for their act of self-exposure | Continue reading
Take a walk through the snowy streets of Montreal in 1965 for a riveting glimpse into Leonard Cohen’s life as an artist | Continue reading
Gazing at a painting feels like an almost magical encounter with another mind but what real effects does art have on us? | Continue reading
As the American people got fatter, so did marmosets, vervet monkeys and mice. The problem may be bigger than any of us | Continue reading
From the Big Bang to a heartbeat in utero, sounds are a scaffold for thought when logic and imagery elude us | Continue reading
If philosophers and mathematicians struggle with probability, can gamblers really hope to grasp their losing game? | Continue reading
How trees share food, supplies and the wisdom gained over long lives via an information superhighway in their root systems | Continue reading
If philosophers and mathematicians struggle with probability, can gamblers really hope to grasp their losing game? | Continue reading
Dive into an intimate, entrancing viewing experience that takes you into the midst of dhikr, a ritual at the heart of Sufism | Continue reading
Though far more often remembered as a poet, Coleridge’s theory of ideas was spectacular in its originality and bold reach | Continue reading
Lies and distortions don’t just afflict the ignorant. The more you know, the more vulnerable you can be to infection | Continue reading
The fall of the Roman Empire wasn’t a tragedy for civilisation. It was a lucky break for humanity as a whole | Continue reading
Why is the joint jumping? On the cozy, claustrophobic lives of the larvae that set up home inside Mexican jumping beans | Continue reading
The fall of the Roman Empire wasn’t a tragedy for civilisation. It was a lucky break for humanity as a whole | Continue reading
‘It creates for itself its share of joy on an inhospitable ground’ – why Nietzsche found plants an inspiration for living | Continue reading
From the Big Bang to a heartbeat in utero, sounds are a scaffold for thought when logic and imagery elude us | Continue reading
I’m a dream engineer. Through touch, scent and sound, we help people rescript the dramas of their sleeping lives | Continue reading
He was a literary lion and an infamous pederast: what might we learn from his life about monstrosity and humanity? | Continue reading
‘I was just shoving myself into the moment’: how a skateboarder continues to do what he loves after losing his sight | Continue reading
Humans need closeness and belonging but any society which closes its gates is doomed to atrophy. How do we stay open? | Continue reading
As algorithms increasingly shape our lives, their efficient, ethical use demands a dose of humanity, argues Hannah Fry | Continue reading
Human exceptionalism is dead: for the sake of our own happiness and the planet we should embrace our true animal nature | Continue reading
Instead of a code encrypted in the wiring of our neurons, could consciousness reside in the brain’s electromagnetic field? | Continue reading
‘An Indiana Jones in Gotham’ – how an urban archaeologist unearths centuries-old treasure beneath New York City | Continue reading
Instead of a code encrypted in the wiring of our neurons, could consciousness reside in the brain’s electromagnetic field? | Continue reading
Once, these two men were a Guantánamo Bay prisoner and guard; 13 years later, Mohamedou and Steve reunite as friends | Continue reading
Are women really at greater risk from dementia? Until we reckon with social roles and inequalities, it’s impossible to say | Continue reading