Civilisations evolve through strategic forgetting of once-vital life skills. But can machines do all our remembering? | Continue reading
Even with loving parents and caring therapists, a child whose diagnosis came too late can lose the fight | Continue reading
The Inkas’ mysterious knotted khipus were a 3D record-keeping code so sophisticated, we still haven’t managed to crack it | Continue reading
Much of what we think of as Ancient Greek poetry, including Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, was composed to be sung, frequently with the accompaniment of musical instruments. And while the Greeks left modern classicists many indications that music was omnipresent in society – from vas … | Continue reading
Although created for animators aiming to perfect their rendering of animal gaits, this tutorial is filled with little surprises that even the artistically disinclined can enjoy. Skillfully combining illustration, biology and physics, the US animator Stephen Cunnane’s short video … | Continue reading
Lacking confidence? Need an ego boost? Take a leaf out of the autobiographer’s book and write about chapters of your life | Continue reading
Wry observations on daily life, sly turns of phrase, and aptly hurled swear words – a lot of what's in the sets performed by the Greek-born, Edinburgh-based comedian Leah Kalaitzi is standard fare for stand-up comedy. However, as a deaf woman communicating in British Sign Languag … | Continue reading
More than false choices and options, the highest freedom lies in being true to oneself and defying the expectations of others | Continue reading
Does consciousness work like predictive coding in AI: as an inner mechanism of doubt sorting perception from belief? | Continue reading
Does consciousness work like predictive coding in AI: as an inner mechanism of doubt sorting perception from belief? | Continue reading
In 20th-century Turkey, modernisers turned to eugenics and claims of an ancient Asian past to argue that Turks were white | Continue reading
Sassoon Docks is one of Mumbai’s largest and oldest fishing ports. A cacophonous and bustling centre of commerce, some 20 tons of fish are unloaded there daily. When heading out to sea and upon arrival, fish traders rely on the teams of ice makers and transporters at the docks to … | Continue reading
Plato portrays him as a pious ethical teacher, but was the real Socrates actually a more worldly man with many lovers? | Continue reading
At every turn, the design of our environments either creates barriers or opens doors. Let’s design a more humane world | Continue reading
Think of a piece of crime fiction. What broad plot points spring to mind? There’s a not-so-terrible chance your selection includes a beautiful dead woman and a sad male protagonist for whom the crime prompts a journey of discovery and personal development. In this brief animation … | Continue reading
Acceptance and commitment therapy teaches us how to live a values-driven life even in the face of dark emotions and trauma | Continue reading
The iconoclast Muhammad: how Europe’s Enlightenment idealised the Prophet as an anticlerical reformer and great leader | Continue reading
A growing population, poor government management and three years of drought have given rise to an unprecedented water crisis in Cape Town, South Africa. The shortage has left residents fearing what’s been coined ‘Day Zero’: the moment when the city turns off the taps, and residen … | Continue reading
Graphic histories combine the popular appeal of comic books with serious historical scholarship in a democratic art form | Continue reading
Comprising excerpts from the documentary Philosophie Gegen Falsche Propheten (1974), or 'Philosophy Against False Prophets', this video is a robust primer on the ideas and legacy of Karl Popper. The influential Austrian-born thinker elucidates his concept of falsifiability, which … | Continue reading
It’s a truism of social psychology that witnesses are less likely to intervene if other onlookers are present. Not true | Continue reading
The things we do every day aren’t just routines to be hacked, but windows through which we glimpse who we really are | Continue reading
The spectre of a Nazi Britain, successfully invaded in 1940, continues to haunt the British political imagination | Continue reading
‘Until a generation ago, it seemed indecipherable...’In 1960, humanity was on the cusp of achieving something momentous. After centuries of stargazing – and two decades of flying some airplanes very high – our species was finally preparing to blast through Earth's atmosphere. The … | Continue reading
‘Until a generation ago, it seemed indecipherable...’In 1960, humanity was on the cusp of achieving something momentous. After centuries of stargazing – and two decades of flying some airplanes very high – our species was finally preparing to blast through Earth's atmosphere. The … | Continue reading
Before Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, came Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy, the feral child of philosophy, and his radical, island isolation | Continue reading
Some critics say that terms such as ‘chestfeeding’ and ‘front hole’ erase cis women’s identities. Here’s why we disagree | Continue reading
Market systems have made better use of more information than economic planners. What if AI and machine learning changed that? | Continue reading
For centuries, dogs were like a rainbow: variations on a type. Then the Victorians invented the modern dog breeds of today | Continue reading
Ockham’s Razor says that simplicity is a scientific virtue, but justifying this philosophically is strangely elusive | Continue reading
One of the techniques for which Vincent van Gogh is celebrated is his evocative and striking use of colour contrast. In many of his most famous works – including Café Terrace at Night (1888), The Starry Night (1889) and Irises (1889) – his palette is soothing and inviting, yieldi … | Continue reading
For centuries, dogs were like a rainbow: variations on a type. Then the Victorians invented the modern dog breeds of today | Continue reading
Market systems have made better use of more information than economic planners. What if AI and machine learning changed that? | Continue reading
A generation of schoolchildren is being exhorted to believe in their brain’s elasticity. Does it really help them learn? | Continue reading
After the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the United States' departments of Defense and of Justice launched a series of unprecedented initiatives aimed at fighting terrorism, including US Constitution-bending rendition, torture and detainment programmes. Eighteen years la … | Continue reading
To call Chaucer the father of English literature sells him short. We should celebrate him as a great European poet | Continue reading
When Walter Benjamin fled France in 1940, he took a heavy black suitcase. Did it contain a typescript? Where is it now? | Continue reading
Despite its reputation as remote and anti-intellectual, Australia has exercised a surprisingly deep influence on philosophy | Continue reading
Self-driving cars don’t drink and medical AIs are never overtired. Given our obvious flaws, what can humans still do best? | Continue reading
Written by Emily Dickinson during the depths of the US Civil War, the untitled poem known as ‘We Grow Accustomed to the Dark’ conjures hope and perseverance amid waves of chaos and uncertainty. In this animation, the UK filmmaker and illustrator Hannah Jacobs visualises the poem … | Continue reading
Self-driving cars don’t drink and medical AIs are never overtired. Given our obvious flaws, what can humans still do best? | Continue reading
The right to know and the right not to know: how national genetic sampling initiatives test the limits of nondisclosure | Continue reading
When Walter Benjamin fled France in 1940, he took a heavy black suitcase. Did it contain a typescript? Where is it now? | Continue reading
Should rivers have rights? Why the ‘human’ cannot continue to be the benchmark for the entitlements of other beings | Continue reading
Despite its reputation as remote and anti-intellectual, Australia has exercised a surprisingly deep influence on philosophy | Continue reading
This tongue-in-cheek animation from the US YouTuber Henry Reich – the mind behind MinutePhysics – is a creative exercise in how not to lose your cool when faced with the abyss of illogic. Recalling the mundane, mindnumbing tribulations of trying to get a straight answer on billin … | Continue reading
So many arguments are given against Shakespeare being gay – yet his sonnets contain their own message, that love is love | Continue reading
The problem with neurointerventions is not the loss of control, since we’re not fully in control anyway | Continue reading