Environmental scientists say the Earth is near its human carrying-capacity limit. But is there still room for optimism? | Continue reading
The idea that millions of sperm are on an Olympian race to reach the egg is yet another male fantasy of human reproduction | Continue reading
Change the world, not yourself: or what Henry David Thoreau got wrong about civil disobedience (and Hannah Arendt got right) | Continue reading
Too many depictions of autistic people rely on tired clichés. The neurotypical world needs to take note of our own voices | Continue reading
It takes a lifetime of preparation to grieve as the Stoics did – without weeping and wailing, but with a heart full of love | Continue reading
All the big questions about our world that can be answered at all can be answered by science | Continue reading
It takes a lifetime of preparation to grieve as the Stoics did – without weeping and wailing, but with a heart full of love | Continue reading
The ethical formation of citizens was once at the heart of the US elite college. Has this moral purpose gone altogether? | Continue reading
As the Bard said: to thine own self be true. But how, or more accurately when, do we get a real sense of authenticity? | Continue reading
The idea that nature is a humming, complex, clockwork machine has been around for centuries. Is it due for a revival? | Continue reading
Why you shouldn’t feel bad about feeling sad, or how experiencing negative feelings can promote psychological wellbeing | Continue reading
Life is always more than the living: so if we could make life in a lab, would it change our understanding of it? | Continue reading
Geometry is perhaps the most obviously aesthetic branch of mathematics, and marvellously suited to visual play – a property that the German animator Henning M Lederer explores to great effect in this short video. Inspired by the blog Geometry Daily, in which the German graphic de … | Continue reading
Life is always more than the living: so if we could make life in a lab, would it change our understanding of it? | Continue reading
This instalment of the People in Order series, by the UK directors Lenka Clayton and James Price, presents 73 homes arranged in descending order of household income, from £400,000 to £3,240 (or roughly US $733,945 to $5,945 at the rate of exchange in 2006). As the fascinating seq … | Continue reading
The ethical formation of citizens was once at the heart of the US elite college. Has this moral purpose gone altogether? | Continue reading
Just as the groundwork for the internet was laid decades before its widespread use, many scientists believe the technologies that will usher in the era of human customisation and augmentation are being developed in labs today. Moving far beyond the prevention of genetic illness a … | Continue reading
Hume believed we were nothing more or less than human: that’s why he’s the amiable, modest, generous philosopher we need now | Continue reading
Is it ever worth making someone feel bad in order to push them towards success? If so, what’s the cost of this strategy? | Continue reading
The music of Ancient Greece is no longer a mystery; recreating their songs reveals the roots of the Western tradition | Continue reading
Is it ever worth making someone feel bad in order to push them towards success? If so, what’s the cost of this strategy? | Continue reading
Hume believed we were nothing more or less than human: that’s why he’s the amiable, modest, generous philosopher we need now | Continue reading
For big pharma, the perfect patient is wealthy, permanently ill and a daily pill-popper. Will medicine ever recover? | Continue reading
Optimists believe in good luck, pessimists in bad. But if it’s all a matter of perspective, does luck even exist? | Continue reading
What stands in the way of all-powerful AI isn’t a lack of smarts: it’s that computers can’t have needs, cravings or desires | Continue reading
The Georgia Archives building, also known as the ‘White Ice Cube’ for its pale hue, windowless facade and modernist shape, was a prominent feature of Atlanta's cityscape before the building's controlled implosion in March 2017. Standing beside the State Capitol since 1965, it sto … | Continue reading
Is religion a common feature of every human culture, or an academic invention? On the radical divinity scholar J Z Smith | Continue reading
Optimists believe in good luck, pessimists in bad. But if it’s all a matter of perspective, does luck even exist? | Continue reading
Twin sisters Wei and Yan and their younger brother Won are left on their own when their father is imprisoned for manslaughter. Like other children from poor families in China whose parents have ended up in prison or executed, the Zhang siblings face a bleak future. The children o … | Continue reading
Why you shouldn’t feel bad about feeling sad, or how experiencing negative feelings can promote psychological wellbeing | Continue reading
What stands in the way of all-powerful AI isn’t a lack of smarts: it’s that computers can’t have needs, cravings or desires | Continue reading
A staple of American cinema since the release of the silent film The Great Train Robbery in 1903, the Western arguably became its defining genre with the release of Stagecoach in 1939 – the first of nine Western collaborations between the iconic duo of director John Ford and acto … | Continue reading
We have an ethical obligation to relieve individual animal suffering, just as we do with individual human suffering | Continue reading
It began as a whim: talk to a physicist, $50 per 20 minutes. But those ‘crackpots’ taught me something about my subject | Continue reading
Note: English subtitles for this video are available by clicking the ‘CC’ button on the bottom right of the video player.As the Second World War fades further into the past, the passage of time can make firsthand accounts told by its survivors and participants feel less like thei … | Continue reading
Does everything in the world boil down to basic units – or can emergence explain how distinctive new things arise? | Continue reading
Economic inequality is an urgent problem. Deeper still is our loss of mutual respect, the foundation of a fair society | Continue reading
The music of Ancient Greece is no longer a mystery; recreating their songs reveals the roots of the Western tradition | Continue reading
How over-lighting our homes and streets turned the modern marvel of electric light into an urban blight to health | Continue reading
The trumpeting of elephants is a magnificent and unforgettable sound to human ears but, beyond the reach of our hearing, elephant communication involves something truly remarkable. The high-frequency vibrations of their massive vocal chords can reach the ears of other elephants w … | Continue reading
Charles Pierce, William James and truth as a property of our best beliefs: the key concepts of the pragmatic theory of truth | Continue reading
For big pharma, the perfect patient is wealthy, permanently ill and a daily pill-popper. Will medicine ever recover? | Continue reading
Vast lunar landscapes set to the aching, shimmering piano of Claude Debussy's 1905 composition ‘Clair de Lune’ (French for ‘moonlight’) offer an enchanting melding of science and art through the interplay of light, texture and music. The video, which traces the flow of sunlight o … | Continue reading
Vast lunar landscapes set to the aching, shimmering piano of Claude Debussy's 1905 composition ‘Clair de Lune’ (French for ‘moonlight’) offer an enchanting melding of science and art through the interplay of light, texture and music. The video, which traces the flow of sunlight o … | Continue reading
Competing claims of being on God’s side test the limits of a liberal social order straining to accommodate militant believers | Continue reading
In Japan, ghost stories are not to be scoffed at, but provide deep insights into the fuzzy boundary between life and death | Continue reading
Humans alone have language, but many animals clearly have consciousness. Are parallels between the two a red herring? | Continue reading
Just as the groundwork for the internet was laid decades before its widespread use, many scientists believe the technologies that will usher in the era of human customisation and augmentation are being developed in labs today. Moving far beyond the prevention of genetic illness a … | Continue reading