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Society

Essays and videos on social issues, history, political life and the future
Animals and humansAnthropologyArchaeologyAutomation and roboticsCitiesDemography and migrationEconomic historyEconomicsEducationEnvironmental historyFairness and equalityFuture of technologyGenderGlobal historyHistoryHistory of technologyHuman rights and justiceInformation and communicationMakingNations and empiresPolitics and governmentPoverty and developmentProgress and modernityPublic healthRace and ethnicityReligionThe ancient worldThe environmentThe futureWar and peaceWork
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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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essay

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

Five differently coloured triangular wax crayon bars standing upright on a white surface.
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video

Art

Watch as Japan’s surplus trees are transformed into forest-tinted crayons

4 minutes

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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essay

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

A walking figure made of black shapes, with a pink ticket for “The Moviegoer” by Walker Percy as its body, on a yellow background.
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video

Meaning and the good life

‘Everydayness is the enemy’ – excerpts from the existentialist novel ‘The Moviegoer’

2 minutes

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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essay

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

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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essay

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

Residential street with terraced houses and power plant cooling towers in the background, one of which has a mural depicting a sun and mountains.
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video

Food and drink

Local tensions simmer amid a potato salad contest at the Czech-Polish border

14 minutes

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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essay

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

Weather map showing temperature, cloud cover, and other meteorological data across Ireland, the UK, and part of mainland Europe. Isobars are also depicted.
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video

War and peace

A war meteorologist’s riveting account of how the Allies averted a D-Day disaster

6 minutes

Aerial view of an industrial site emitting smoke, surrounded by snow-covered buildings and landscape, under a clear blue sky with birds flying overhead.
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essay

Politics and government

Governing for the planet

Nation-states are no longer fit for purpose to create a habitable future for humans and nature. Which political system is?

Jonathan S Blake & Nils Gilman

Three women in traditional attire stand outdoors in a dry landscape. One person carries a child on their back while another holds a walking stick.
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essay

Anthropology

The Ju/’hoansi protocol

Hunter-gatherer societies are highly expert in group deliberation and decision-making which respects both difference and unity

Vivek V Venkataraman

Silhouette of a man, a child, and a cow with large horns sitting on the ground at sunset.
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essay

Progress and modernity

In praise of magical thinking

Once we all had knowledge of how to heal ourselves using plants and animals. The future would be sweeter for renewing it

Anna Badkhen

Illustration of various human skulls and profiles with captions detailing different ethnic groups and regions, from a historical anthropological study.
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essay

History of ideas

Baffled by human diversity

Confused 17th-century Europeans argued that human groups were separately created, a precursor to racist thought today

Jacob Zellmer

Ancient Mayan ruins, including a prominent stone pyramid, surrounded by dense green jungle under a cloudy sky.
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essay

Archaeology

Beyond kingdoms and empires

A revolution in archaeology is transforming our picture of past populations and the scope of human freedoms

David Wengrow

Yellow warning sign with a black palm tree bent over in strong wind, signifying severe weather or wind conditions.
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video

Information and communication

An animation built from road signs is a whirlwind study of flash communication

2 minutes

Black and white photo of people sitting at a café, taken through a window with reflections. A sign saying ‘BUFFET FROID’ is visible.
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essay

Meaning and the good life

Philosophy was once alive

I was searching for meaning and purpose so I became an academic philosopher. Reader, you might guess what happened next

Pranay Sanklecha

Painting of a riverside scene with a large windmill, boats on the water, and three women standing on the bank next to a dock, under cloudy sky.
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essay

History of technology

Learning to love monsters

Windmills were once just machines on the land but now seem delightfully bucolic. Could wind turbines win us over too?

Stephen Case

Painting of two clothed men and a naked woman picnicking in a forest, with another woman in the background near a pond.
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video

Art

Creating art that was aware of itself – and the viewer – made Manet the first modernist

15 minutes

Split image showing two types of coral, a hard coral on the left and a soft coral with tentacles on the right, both in deep blue light.
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video

Biotechnology

It’s our responsibility to engineer corals that can weather the world we’ve created

11 minutes

President Eisenhower and Kwame Nkrumah talking. Nkrumah is wearing traditional African attire and pointing at Eisenhower, who is wearing a suit.
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essay

Global history

The route to progress

Anticolonial modernity was founded upon the fight for liberation from communists, capitalists and imperialists alike

Frank Gerits

Silhouette of a soldier with glowing eyes and helmet, holding a rifle, with a blurred, colourful background.
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video

War and peace

A century later, can poetry help us make sense of the First World War’s horrors?

9 minutes

Medieval manuscript illustration of a goat and a person holding a disc, with gold circles in the background, surrounded by text in Latin script.
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essay

Philosophy of mind

The problem of erring animals

Three medieval thinkers struggled to explain how animals could make mistakes – and uncovered the nature of nonhuman minds

Sam Alma

Illustration of two people high-fiving, with colourful abstract shapes around them representing conversation and connection.
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video

Language and linguistics

The little Peruvian guide to public speaking that conjures up a grandiose world

7 minutes

Black and white photograph depicts a flood with rising water levels in a residential area. Strong currents and waves are visible, and houses in the background are partially submerged. Floodwater covers much of the landscape, with a lone tree and partial wooden structure in the foreground.
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essay

The future

The disruption nexus

Moments of crisis, such as our own, are great opportunities for historic change, but only under highly specific conditions

Roman Krznaric