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Longform Essays written by serious and creative thinkers on philosophy, psychology, science, society and culture

A black-and-white photo of a person riding a horse in, with a close-up of another horse in the foreground under bright sunlight.

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Anthropology

Your body is an archive

If human knowledge can disappear so easily, why have so many cultural practices survived without written records?

Helena Miton

Person in a wheelchair with a laptop, wearing a monitoring cap, and a doctor in a lab coat standing nearby in a clinical setting.

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Illness and disease

Empowering patient research

For far too long, medicine has ignored the valuable insights that patients have into their own diseases. It is time to listen

Charlotte Blease & Joanne Hunt

Silhouette of baobab trees against a vibrant orange sunset with the sun peeking through the branches of the largest tree.

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Biology

Seeing plants anew

The stunningly complex behaviour of plants has led to a new way of thinking about our world: plant philosophy

Stella Sandford

Close-up of a hand gracefully resting on a naked woman’s torso, soft lighting accentuating the skin’s smooth texture against a dark background.

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Sex and sexuality

Sexual sensation

What makes touch on some parts of the body erotic but not others? Cutting-edge biologists are arriving at new answers

David J Linden

Photochrom image of a narrow street lined with Middle-Eastern buildings; people are walking down the middle of the street and some are holding umbrellas.

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Nations and empires

The paradoxes of Mikha’il Mishaqa

He was a Catholic, then a rationalist, then a Protestant. Most of all, he exemplified the rise of Arab-Ottoman modernity

Peter Hill

A painting of the back of a framed artwork with an attached small paper labelled ‘36’. The wood shows some nails and slight wear.

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Knowledge

Frameworks

Knowledge is often a matter of discovery. But when the nature of an enquiry itself is at question, it is an act of creation

Céline Henne

Aerial view of a large pipeline construction site with machinery and vehicles cutting through green fields and hills under a partly cloudy sky.

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Nature and landscape

Land loneliness

To survive, we are asked to forget that our lands and bodies are being violated, policed, ripped up, silenced, sacrificed

Kelsey Day

Newborn baby being held by a person wearing blue gloves, with another masked individual looking at the baby in a medical setting.

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Human reproduction

Baby talk

When babies are born, they cry in the accent of their mother tongue: how does language begin in the womb?

Darshana Narayanan

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History of ideas

All that we are

The philosophy of personalism inspired Martin Luther King’s dream of a better world. We still need its hopeful ideas today

Bennett Gilbert

Still life with musical instruments, sheet music, books, and a small statue on a table draped with a richly patterned red and gold curtain.

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Music

A novel kind of music

So-called ‘classical’ music was as revolutionary as the modern novel in its storytelling, harmony and depth

Joel Sandelson

A black-and-white photo of soldiers in uniform checking documents of several men standing outdoors, with laundry hanging in the background.

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Psychiatry and psychotherapy

Decolonising psychology

At times complicit in racism and oppression, psychology has also been a fertile ground for radical and liberatory thought

Rami Gabriel

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Meaning and the good life

Beyond authenticity

In her final unfinished work, Hannah Arendt mounted an incisive critique of the idea that we are in search of our true selves

Samantha Rose Hill