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A woman walking on a dimly lit street pavement at night with a parked scooter and two men walking in the background, one appearing to follow her; the woman looks downcast, the man appears to be smiling.

Did you think you were safe?

When I moved to India for work, I found that rape was a feature of the country, as deeply embedded as caste

A monochrome painting of a moonlit lake scene with a mountain silhouette and figures on a pier under a crescent moon.

essay

Deep time

The bookends of time

Nothing lasts forever: not humanity, not Earth, not the Universe. But finitude confers an indelible meaning to our lives

Thomas Moynihan

Photo of three boys riding wooden carts down a street in an urban setting, with onlookers in the background.

video

Sports and games

Havana’s streets become racetracks in this exhilarating portrait of children at play

5 minutes

Photo of a modern bathroom with circular tiled walls and surfaces, two sinks, mirrors and red hand dryers reflected in the mirrors.

essay

Mathematics

Beyond causality

In order to bridge the yawning gulf between the humanities and the sciences we must turn to an unexpected field: mathematics

Gordon Gillespie

Photo of a person sitting in a dimly lit church with stained glass windows and sun rays filtering through.

video

Spirituality

Through rituals of prayer, a monk cultivates a quietly radical concept of freedom

4 minutes

Black and white close-up photo of a lizard with its tongue extended, about to catch a worm. The background is dark and blurred.

video

Evolution

The many ways a lizard tongue sticks, grasps, pinches and plops – in slo-mo

6 minutes

Black-and-white photo of the Moon’s surface with craters, with a distant Earth visible on the horizon in space.

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Space exploration

How the Moon became a place

For most of history, the Moon was regarded as a mysterious and powerful object. Then scientists made it into a destination

Danny Robb

Photo of a man speaking at a podium marked ‘Letters Live’, gesturing with one hand against a dark background.

video

Fairness and equality

‘To my old master’ – a freed slave answers the request to return to his old plantation

7 minutes

Black-and-white photo of two women preening a toddler who is sitting on a wall and sucking dummy, with a brick house and a washing line in the background.

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Thinkers and theories

So many unmarried men

For Mary Midgley, the Western philosophical tradition is shaped by the fact that its greatest practitioners were bachelors

Ellie Robson

Ceramic vase with yellow snake handles blue clouds and text detail in a workshop setting.

video

Design and fashion

A ceramicist puts her own bawdy spin on the folk language of pottery

14 minutes

Six children with troubled faces sitting and lying on colourful blankets inside a dimly lit room with an earthen wall.

essay

Poverty and development

Poverty is not permanent

By understanding the pernicious myths surrounding poverty, we can make progress towards a lofty goal: dignity for all

Anirudh Krishna & Dirk Philipsen

Photo of a gibbon mother holding her baby in a lush green forest setting.

video

Animals and humans

Villagers struggle to keep their beloved, endangered ape population afloat

19 minutes

Vintage film poster with illustrated women underwater surrounded by bubbles text reads “Primitive and Exciting”.

essay

Public health

A very American fear

Moral panics about erotica have coursed through the country’s history. Why do so many Americans think of porn as harm?

Rebecca L Davis

Surreal abstract painting with eyes, lips and leaf shapes in soft colours on paper.

video

Art

Radical doodles – how ‘exquisite corpse’ games embodied the Surrealist movement

15 minutes

Medieval painting of a man in a cosmic circle with zodiac symbols surrounded by blue and red patterns.

essay

History of science

The birth of naturalism

The modern era is often seen as the triumph of science over supernaturalism. But what really happened is far more interesting

Peter Harrison

Illustration of two people with closed eyes softly singing into a microphone, featuring simple brushstroke style.

video

Language and linguistics

Why Susan listens to recordings of herself speaking a language she no longer remembers

5 minutes

Aerial black-and-white photo of a town surrounded by rolling hills and agricultural terraces.

essay

Nations and empires

Passion and Palestine

More than any other conflict, Israel/Palestine has provoked extraordinarily fervent emotion throughout the world. Why?

Derek Jonathan Penslar

Aerial photo of a winding river through lush green rainforest with dramatic cloud formations in the sky above.

essay

Public health

Hearts and brains

Humans always end up with clogged arteries, right? That’s not what the lives of the Tsimane in the Amazon basin tell us

Ben Daitz

Illustration of a purple star with an eye and shield with padlock on blue background encircled by laurel and gold rings.

video

Ethics

Plato saw little value in privacy. How do his ideas hold up in the information age?

5 minutes

Painting of a serene night scene with a full moon reflecting on a dark blue lake surrounded by silhouettes of rocks and trees.

essay

Stories and literature

The listening gift

It is the dark matter of conversation, the white space around a poem. For Rilke, listening is receiving the divine

Faith Lawrence

Black and white photograph of a cloudy sky with swirling lines resembling bird flight patterns.

video

Biology

Starlings swoosh like brushstrokes across the sky in this dazzling short

3 minutes

A brown wren standing on a rock with a blurred background.

essay

Biology

In praise of subspecies

To lump or to split? Deciding whether an animal is a species or subspecies profoundly influences our conservation priorities

Richard Smyth

Black and white photo of two men using an early voice recording device, seated and holding speaking tubes.

video

Information and communication

‘Astonished and somewhat terrified’ – Victorians’ reactions to the phonograph

36 minutes

A man standing on a balcony of a brick apartment building, with tarps and debris in foreground.

essay

Politics and government

The end of neoliberalism?

The case of Mexico shows that, despite a proliferating discourse that it is over, neoliberalism is as relentless as ever

Inés Escobar González

Two silhouetted figures examining a wall-sized, illuminated display of the periodic table.

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Chemistry

Chemical laws

Often dismissed as the poor cousin of the sciences, chemistry has revealed natural laws that illuminate our Universe

Vanessa A Seifert