A new discourse about men and ‘creepiness’ has emerged. Research warns us such judgments tend to reinforce stereotypes | Continue reading
A philosophy that values innocent pleasure, human warmth and the rewards of creative endeavour. What’s not to like? | Continue reading
While the 'manufacture of consent' is an idea now mostly associated with Noam Chomsky, the phrase was actually coined by the US journalist and writer Walter Lippman in his influential book Public Opinion (1922) – a fact that Chomsky and Edward S Herman, his co-author of Manufactu … | Continue reading
A decades-long conversation between friends about books, photography and life, exploring what it is to know, to look, to see | Continue reading
Coffee might seem like a simple pleasure, but it’s taken centuries of scientific theory and experimentation to begin to understand the physical mysteries contained in a single cup – and scientists are still working out the details. A collaboration between the French filmmaker Cha … | Continue reading
Look up, go outside, see what lies beyond: an ethic of wonder made Rachel Carson a philosopher as well as an environmentalist | Continue reading
A Classical education was never just for the elite, but was a precious and inspiring part of working-class British life | Continue reading
Changed but not lost – only when we understand how the sense of self endures can we provide better care in dementia | Continue reading
Lorna Marsh, a UK dance instructor and disability rights advocate, uses a wheelchair due to cerebral palsy quadriplegia, which also limits the use of her arms. When the charity Canine Partners for Independence offered her an assistance dog, Marsh was initially reluctant to accept … | Continue reading
Existential therapy explores the darkest corners and craggy edges of the many-sided self. The result is true transformation | Continue reading
For more than two centuries the huge profits and profound suffering of the Manila Galleons helped create global capitalism | Continue reading
The poet Ghazi Hussein was born to a Palestinian family exiled in Syria. Starting at age 14, he was subjected to 20 years, on and off, of imprisonment and torture, and deemed ‘guilty of carrying thoughts’ though never formally charged. In prison, Hussein often felt hopeless and w … | Continue reading
The world’s last climate crisis demonstrates that surviving is possible if bold economic and social change is embraced | Continue reading
Many scientists believe that natural selection brought our perception of reality into clearer and deeper focus, reasoning that growing more attuned to the outside world gave our ancestors an evolutionary edge. Donald Hoffman, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, … | Continue reading
Where does our number sense come from? Is it a neural capacity we are born with — or is it a product of our culture? | Continue reading
‘Please define everything...’This short documentary is built around a single question posed in 2005-6 to scientists working at the NASA Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley: ‘Do you think science can understand everything?’ Most of them pause or tak … | Continue reading
People who trust more get better at knowing whom to trust, and so reap the benefits of more friends and more knowledge | Continue reading
To realise that death is inevitable and that the world can and will continue without you is to experience existential shock | Continue reading
The Berlin Wall separated Allied-controlled West Berlin from Soviet-controlled East Berlin from 1961 to 1989. An infamous emblem of the Cold War, the wall's meaning was far from figurative for those friends, families and communities separated by its 66 miles of concrete, with pot … | Continue reading
Whether via music, dance or prayer, the trance state was key to human evolution, forging society around the transcendent | Continue reading
Visiting Wittgenstein’s home evokes the philosopher’s serious, ascetic mind (no doubt he would disapprove its restoration) | Continue reading
All families have secrets, from the innocent to the deeply sinister. Are there good reasons to keep them under wraps? | Continue reading
Organisations won’t reform themselves at the hands of the managerial elite. So what can people do for a fairer workplace? | Continue reading
Many scientists believe that natural selection brought our perception of reality into clearer and deeper focus, reasoning that growing more attuned to the outside world gave our ancestors an evolutionary edge. Donald Hoffman, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, … | Continue reading
A philosophy which values innocent pleasure, human warmth and the rewards of creative endeavour. What’s not to like? | Continue reading
How did feeling good become a matter of relentless, competitive work; a never-to-be-attained goal which makes us miserable? | Continue reading
Conspiracy theories have always been with us, powered by an evolutionary drive to survive. How’s that working for us now? | Continue reading
In a self-portrait from 1907, the German artist Paula Modersohn-Becker painted herself with a hand over her stomach, suggesting pregnancy, shortly before dying of complications from childbirth. In this short video from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the art conservator Dia … | Continue reading
Conspiracy theories have always been with us, powered by an evolutionary drive to survive. How’s that working for us now? | Continue reading
To realise that death is inevitable and that the world can and will continue without you is to experience existential shock | Continue reading
The Golden Rule says put yourself in another’s shoes. But what if we do as Mengzi did, and just love them as our own? | Continue reading
An ADHD diagnosis often means lifelong medication, even addiction. But there is another way: put that distraction to work | Continue reading
The Colombian-born evolutionary biologist Patty Brennan, assistant professor at Mount Holyoke College, studies something that reliably makes her the centre of any conversation: vertebrate genitalia. Far from turning squeamish or becoming bored by the details of her research, she … | Continue reading
The Golden Rule says put yourself in another’s shoes. But what if we do as Mengzi did, and just love them as our own? | Continue reading
Soviet scientists tried for decades to network their nation. What stalemated them is now fracturing the global internet | Continue reading
‘Johnson's song concerns a situation he faced many times: nightfall with no place to sleep. Since humans appeared on Earth, the shroud of night has yet to fall without touching a man or woman in the same plight.’ Carl Sagan, on including Blind Willie Johnson’s Dark Was the Night, … | Continue reading
How did feeling good become a matter of relentless, competitive work; a never-to-be-attained goal which makes us miserable? | Continue reading
Is the adversarial approach in the humanities to blame for our toxic online culture – and do historians have the answer? | Continue reading
History and philosophy should reveal to us the baffling, strange and wondrous qualities of other lives and other times | Continue reading
For better and worse, pro-anorexia forums provide a sense of community and understanding: we have much to learn from them | Continue reading
History and philosophy should reveal to us the baffling, strange and wondrous qualities of other lives and other times | Continue reading
In 1963, Martin Heidegger sat down for an interview with Bhikku Maha Mani, a Vietnamese-born Buddhist monk, radio presenter and great admirer of the reclusive and influential German philosopher. In their wide-ranging conversation, Maha Mani poses broad questions to Heidegger, yie … | Continue reading
The slaughterhouse ethic of Soviet and American whalers tells us we must look beyond communism and capitalism to survive | Continue reading
‘I just want to give him back the shame he left me with for all these years.’ On 31 December 2003, Lucie Tremblay set out to confront the man who had sexually abused her from the age of eight to 12 years old. Equipped with a handheld camera and a letter to her abuser, Tremblay tr … | Continue reading
Assuming that another person’s opinions are immune from criticism is not a marker of respect. It is, in fact, dehumanising | Continue reading
'You were too young to lose your mum. And we were too young to be organising a funeral.'When her friend's mother died, the UK filmmaker Alice Dunseath and her friend set out on an unplanned road trip through Yorkshire, mostly because they didn't know what else to do. The only des … | Continue reading
Fixing chronic back pain is possible only when patients understand how much it is produced by the brain, not the spine | Continue reading
Clothes can be forms of thought as articulate as a poem or equation. Why then does philosophy like to dress them down? | Continue reading