How over-lighting our homes and streets turned the modern marvel of electric light into an urban blight to health | Continue reading
Children learn best when their bodies are engaged in the living world. We must resist the ideology of screen-based learning | Continue reading
A second-generation hair trader, Zhang Ming Ye makes his living as a broker operating between factories that produce wigs and hairpieces and the collectors who travel village to village across Asia in search of people willing to sell their long hair. According to Ming Ye, the hai … | Continue reading
Children learn best when their bodies are engaged in the living world. We must resist the ideology of screen-based learning | Continue reading
We influence each other in many ways besides pure reason. What’s the moral difference between persuasion and manipulation? | Continue reading
We influence each other in many ways besides pure reason. What’s the moral difference between persuasion and manipulation? | Continue reading
Islamists and Western pundits speak of ‘the West’ and ‘the Muslim world’ but such tribalism is dangerous colonial propaganda | Continue reading
Recently diagnosed with lung cancer, Mark Zabawa believes that he might be approaching the end of a life fraught with struggles, including battles with mental illness and alcoholism. In The Last Storm, UK-based filmmaker Liam Saint-Pierre follows Mark as he sets out on a bucket-l … | Continue reading
Ever since Heisenberg and Tagore, physicists have flirted with Eastern philosophy. Is there anything in the romance? | Continue reading
How Ludwig Wittgenstein used the duck-rabbit figure to illustrate ‘seeing as’ and aspect perception | Continue reading
Why some people choose to do evil remains a puzzle, but are we starting to understand how this behaviour is triggered? | Continue reading
The Book of Exodus chronicles the Israelites’ flight from slavery in Egypt under the guidance of Moses, and their eventual covenant with the Abrahamic God. While Jews celebrate this founding myth as a triumph, the Jewish US writer, cartoonist and filmmaker Nina Paley wonders whet … | Continue reading
Why some people choose to do evil remains a puzzle, but are we starting to understand how this behaviour is triggered? | Continue reading
When a volcano erupts, lava is the least of your worries: what killed the villagers of Pompeii will take your breath away | Continue reading
More than a century of death notices have not diminished the achievements and the necessity of liberalism | Continue reading
‘I wondered if she knew I was waiting for her room.’Adapted from a semi-autobiographical short story by the Canadian writer Mordecai Richler, the celebrated and Oscar®-nominated film The Street (1976) tells the story of a young boy experiencing his grandmother's slow death while … | Continue reading
True slothfulness isn’t sleeping eight hours a night – it’s ignoring health and taking on responsibilities while underslept | Continue reading
In 1969, 14 African-American players on the University of Wyoming’s nationally ranked American football team planned a protest against the racist policies of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints before their game against Brigham Young University, which is owned and ope … | Continue reading
All the great inventions took painstaking, risky, indirect routes to fruition. Has Silicon Valley really escaped history? | Continue reading
The pleasure is incomparable: if only we could weigh the value of all our delights, the sum total would enhance our lives | Continue reading
Is woman not the equal of man? Eileen Hunt Botting introduces Mary Wollstonecraft on the rights and duties of women | Continue reading
Even experts can’t predict violence or suicide. Surely we’re kidding ourselves that we can see inside the minds of others | Continue reading
‘There’s so much behind my smile you don’t even know.’Ninnoc wants to stand out from the crowd, but she’s afraid of what it might cost her. As she navigates the social pressures of high school, Ninnoc wavers between frustration and despair, her head vibrating with a constant hum … | Continue reading
Orwell’s predicted it: citizens willingly buy for entertainment the very screens that can be used against us | Continue reading
In 1683 an Ottoman siege was repelled from the walls of Vienna. But it was far from a fight between Islam and Christendom | Continue reading
Even experts can’t predict violence or suicide. Surely we’re kidding ourselves that we can see inside the minds of others | Continue reading
Sitting atop four large tectonic plates, Japan is a hotbed of seismic activity, with some 1,500 earthquakes striking the country each year. While many pass without major incident, some prove disastrous, such as the 2011 earthquake off the Pacific coast of Tōhoku, which triggered … | Continue reading
The anti-philosophites are wrong: philosophical choices always play a role in building and testing cosmological theories | Continue reading
Even experts can’t predict violence or suicide. Surely we’re kidding ourselves that we can see inside the minds of others | Continue reading
When faced with a difficult choice, our mind will represent possible options. Why did this capacity evolve? | Continue reading
‘Boundaries between reality and dream are blurry.’Seeking a ‘normal’ relationship after several soured romances left him depressed, Dirk eventually found support and stability in a relationship with a rather unusual new partner: a life-sized and lifelike sex doll named Jenny. Dre … | Continue reading
When faced with a difficult choice, our mind will represent possible options. Why did this capacity evolve? | Continue reading
The town of Santa Clara del Cobre in the Mexican state of Michoacán is celebrated for the copper craftsmanship of the indigenous Purépecha people. Its reputation for copper production dates to pre-Columbian times, and the craft still dominates the local economy today, with some 8 … | Continue reading
As Hannah Arendt argued, there is one common thread which connects individuals drawn to all kinds of extremist ideologies | Continue reading
When you think of AI, do you picture a multi-skilled C-3PO droid? A cupboard of appliances might be nearer the mark | Continue reading
When you think of AI, do you picture a multi-skilled C-3PO droid? A cupboard of appliances might be nearer the mark | Continue reading
Dandies in the age of decadence favoured synthetics over nature, nowhere more so than in perfumery’s fabulous counterfeits | Continue reading
Do psychedelics give access to a universal, mystical experience of reality, or is that just a culture-bound illusion? | Continue reading
In what looks like an austere, water-filled room, the French free-diver, dancer and underwater filmmaker Julie Gautier performs a breathtaking aquatic dance for several extended minutes before rising to the surface to release a blossoming bubble of air. Titled Ama, which is the t … | Continue reading
The rhetoric of hope was everywhere in politics yet now it’s rarely seen or heard. That’s why we need it more than ever | Continue reading
Do psychedelics give access to a universal, mystical experience of reality, or is that just a culture-bound illusion? | Continue reading
Envy is the dark side of love, but love is the luminous side of envy. Is there a way to harness envy wisely, for growth? | Continue reading
The elderly have always been with us: what do their ancient remains say about the human lifespan and ‘invisible’ old age? | Continue reading
After spending billions trying (and failing) to support beautiful ideas in physics, is it time to let evidence lead the way? | Continue reading
In Tears of Inge, the Mongolian-born, Montreal-based filmmaker Alisi Telengut explores a nomadic Mongolian ritual in which songs are used to coax a mother camel into bonding with a newborn she has rejected, generally in response to the pain of giving birth. Telengut’s 'little gra … | Continue reading
The truly resilient can reframe tragic experiences with humour and are able to shift from one strategy to the next | Continue reading
Artificial intelligence promises ever more control over the highs and lows of our emotions. Uneasy? Perhaps you should be | Continue reading
The ‘Pizzagate’ conspiracy theory of 2016 claimed that Hillary Clinton and other high-ranking US Democratic Party officials were operating a child sex-trafficking ring from a popular pizzeria in Washington, DC. The conspiracy had migrated from internet message boards to the natio … | Continue reading