The Classical world abounded with avians – and so birds took up in the human imagination, nesting in our language and art | Continue reading
Immanuel Kant held that moral education is hydraulic: shame squashes down our vices, making space for virtue to rise up | Continue reading
Alexis Fleming has devoted her life to providing palliative care for sick and disabled animals. At the animal hospice she established in rural Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland, she treats every sheep, chicken and pig with the same gentle care and patience that most people reserv … | Continue reading
Alexis Fleming has devoted her life to providing palliative care for sick and disabled animals. At the animal hospice she established in rural Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland, she treats every sheep, chicken and pig with the same gentle care and patience that most people reserv … | Continue reading
Immanuel Kant held that moral education is hydraulic: shame squashes down our vices, making space for virtue to rise up | Continue reading
Genes that leap from one species to another are more common than we thought. Does this shake up the tree of life? | Continue reading
The idea that we are edging up to a mass extinction is not just wrong – it’s a recipe for panic and paralysis | Continue reading
Fashion is far from frivolous, and can offer keen anthropological and historical insights into everything from an era’s sexual politics to its international trade routes. Created as part of an exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, this short video shows and contextua … | Continue reading
When clocks and calendars serve state ideology, we lose the poetics and significance of percolating, local timekeeping | Continue reading
This short documentary from the New York-based filmmaker Paul Szynol finds the late US Poet Laureate Donald Hall (1928-2018) in the autumn of his accomplished life, when his days oscillated between calm solitude and painful loneliness. From his rural New Hampshire home, Hall disc … | Continue reading
The temptation to be uncivil grows as public discourse gets nastier and more aggressive. Can rudeness ever be righteous? | Continue reading
Consciousness puts us in a unique position on Earth. Our brains got us into this mess, and only our brains can get us out | Continue reading
The US filmmaker Conner Griffith specialises in making absorbing, deeply original digital art from images of the ways we move around in and shape our world. His imaginative animation Auto toys with people and automobiles, walkways and highways, forming an impressionistic and ench … | Continue reading
Words stand for things in the world, and they stand apart from it. Perhaps meaning is more sunken into words than we realise? | Continue reading
Why the ancient erotic poems of Sappho and Wallada bint al-Mustakfi are far more stimulating than modern pornography | Continue reading
Don’t just give away your privacy to the likes of Google and Facebook – protect it, or you disempower us all | Continue reading
'I'd been hit in the head by the ball my whole life. But this time I guess it hit me in the wrong spot.'When Kenneth E Seligson was an anthropology postgrad in Wisconsin, he was playing in an intramural soccer game that sent a ball straight at his head – a mundane moment that wou … | Continue reading
Don’t just give away your privacy to the likes of Google and Facebook – protect it, or you disempower us all | Continue reading
It took a polymath to pin down the true nature of ‘information’. His answer was both a revelation and a return | Continue reading
Working out probabilities is not simple as you might think, whether you’re a gambler, a quantum physicist or a juror | Continue reading
Universal emotions are the deep engine of human consciousness and the basis of our profound affinity with other animals | Continue reading
Dogs rescue their friends and elephants care for injured kin – humans have no monopoly on moral behaviour | Continue reading
In the late 1980s in the UK, Roland Jaggard was part of a loose-knit group of men who engaged in, and occasionally videotaped, consensual sadomasochistic same-sex acts. While Jaggard acknowledged that aspects of his sex life were ‘not to everyone’s taste’, he never imagined that … | Continue reading
Excessive praise can make the wealthy and powerful act badly, but blame puts them on notice and reinforces good behaviour | Continue reading
'It's important to have something that makes you laugh a little bit.'At 94 years old, Anny Junek has a streak going: she's the three-time winner of the Purim costume contest at her retirement home in Rehovot in Israel. As the Jewish holiday approaches again, she's angling for a f … | Continue reading
Universal emotions are the deep engine of human consciousness and the basis of our profound affinity with other animals | Continue reading
Two centuries before Einstein, Hume recognised that universal time, independent of an observer’s viewpoint, doesn’t exist | Continue reading
For centuries, philosophers – and more recently, science-fiction writers – have been concocting riffs and variations on a particular thought experiment: if every bit of your body could be perfectly scanned and replicated, in what ways would the replica still be ‘you’? In this int … | Continue reading
Green with satisfaction: why living in a pro-environmental manner is all about what you gain, not what you give up | Continue reading
Two centuries before Einstein, Hume recognised that universal time, independent of an observer’s viewpoint, doesn’t exist | Continue reading
Before you judge a synthetic chemical as too risky for your health, you first need to understand the probability of risk | Continue reading
‘Indigenous labour is never just work. It’s cultural practice, our Indigenous knowledge. It’s how we are in the world,’ says the Cree filmmaker Alexandra Lazarowich, discussing her inspiration for her latest short documentary, Lake. Produced as part of the Five Feminist Minutes i … | Continue reading
Why the ancient erotic poems of Sappho and Wallada bint al-Mustakfi are far more stimulating than modern pornography | Continue reading
For centuries, philosophers – and more recently, science-fiction writers – have been concocting riffs and variations on a particular thought experiment: if every bit of your body could be perfectly scanned and replicated, in what ways would the replica still be ‘you’? In this int … | Continue reading
From tutus to trucks, parents are often struck by the gendered choices made by their children. Could these be ‘hardwired’? | Continue reading
Endemic to the mountain forests of New Guinea, the King of Saxony bird-of-paradise (Pteridophora alberti) is best-known for the flamboyant, mate-attracting efforts of its males. The bird’s courtship displays – which often double as a means of keeping competitors at a comfortable … | Continue reading
Before you judge a synthetic chemical as too risky for your health, you first need to understand the probability of risk | Continue reading
A radical concept called ergodicity at the heart of economics could change our approach to risk for the benefit of all | Continue reading
Charles Sanders Peirce was a brilliant philosopher, mathematician and scientist. His polymathic work should be better known | Continue reading
How to Make a Rainbow is a glimpse into the life of a young girl, Alaizah, and her single mother, Jade, during two especially challenging years. Together, they face the challenges of Jade’s transition from male to female – including new pronouns, unsympathetic family members, str … | Continue reading
Charles Sanders Peirce was a brilliant philosopher, mathematician and scientist. His polymathic work should be better known | Continue reading
A radical concept called ergodicity at the heart of economics could change our approach to risk for the benefit of all | Continue reading
DBS is an incredibly promising intervention for intractable neurological and psychiatric illness. What are the risks? | Continue reading
The first newspapers contained not high-minded journalism but hundreds of readers’ letters exchanging news with one another | Continue reading
The US filmmaker D A Pennebaker – a pioneer of the documentary form – died on 1 August 2019 at the age of 94. He is perhaps best-known for his feature films Don’t Look Back (1967), a remarkable portrait of Bob Dylan while on a concert tour near the height of his fame, and The War … | Continue reading
The first newspapers contained not high-minded journalism but hundreds of readers’ letters exchanging news with one another | Continue reading
From the Roman Empire to our own Gilded Age, inequality moves in cycles. The future looks like a rough ride | Continue reading
From Diogenes to Jane Goodall, the hypersane seem mad to the mainstream but perhaps they see more deeply than the sane | Continue reading