Laboratories of the impossible
By testing the boundaries of reality, Spanish-language authors have created a sublime counterpart to experimental physics
Popular this month
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Cosmology
Exploding the Big Bang
It was thought that science could tell us about the origins of the Universe. Today that great endeavour is in serious doubt
Daniel Linford
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Nations and empires
What is decolonisation?
There’s more talk of decolonisation than ever, while true independence for former colonies has faded from view. Why?
Lydia Walker
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Metaphysics
Many worlds, many selves
If it’s true that we live in a vast multiverse, then our understanding of identity, morality and even God must be reexamined
Emily Qureshi-Hurst
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Philosophy of religion
Compassionate time
On his final journey through Asia, Thomas Merton found some peace in the dialectic between refusing the world and loving it
Drew Calvert
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Deep time
Roaming rocks
Metamorphic rocks are our emissaries from the deep, travelling to alien realms and revealing the restless nature of Earth
Marcia Bjornerud
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Family life
One family’s harrowing escape from postwar Vietnam, told in a poignant metaphor
10 minutes
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Human rights and justice
What’s in the rule of law?
The British Empire used a great democratic ideal to manufacture racial difference and rationalise colonial domination
Kanika Sharma
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Fairness and equality
Visit the small Texas community that lives in the shadow of SpaceX launches
14 minutes
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Film and visual culture
Our world has very different contours when a millimetre is blown up to a full screen
8 minutes
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Philosophy of mind
The stories of Daniel Dennett
Often metaphorical and allusive, the philosopher’s work will long be remembered for how it grappled with everyday thought
Tim Bayne
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War and peace
A frontline soldier’s moving account of the fabled ‘Christmas truce’ of 1914
12 minutes
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Dance and theatre
Why the old man dances
Religious ritual to appease the gods or free expression of human agency? For the ancient Romans, dance could be both
Karin Schlapbach
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Bioethics
What a 1970 experiment reveals about the possibility and perils of ‘head transplants’
6 minutes
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Education
A valiant experiment
The progressive and remarkably innovative Woodmead School briefly flourished amid the viciousness of apartheid South Africa
David Dyzenhaus
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History of technology
Replicating Shakespearean-era printing brings its own dramas and comedy
19 minutes
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Cosmology
Exploding the Big Bang
It was thought that science could tell us about the origins of the Universe. Today that great endeavour is in serious doubt
Daniel Linford
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Future of technology
A linkless internet
In creating anonymous summaries, AI flattens out all the fascinating architecture of thought that makes the internet hum
Collin Jennings
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Animals and humans
The wild tale of a young animal keeper, an angry tiger and a torn circle net
10 minutes
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Political philosophy
The order of anarchy
How San Francisco’s free rides system can help us understand anarchist theory and the work of the late, great James C Scott
Reyko Huang
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Technology and the self
Why single Chinese women are freezing their eggs in California
24 minutes
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Home
How to lose your home
In a changing climate, the instinct is to save everything you can. But maybe letting go is braver – and better for the future?
Dan Hancox
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Beauty and aesthetics
Can you see music in this painting? How synaesthesia fuelled Kandinsky’s art
10 minutes
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Human evolution
The eugenicist of UNESCO
Why did Julian S Huxley, first director of the UN agency, think eugenics held the key to a more evolved, harmonious world?
Stefan Bernhardt-Radu
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Political philosophy
The underground university
During the Cold War, Oxford philosophers worked together to aid dissidents behind the Iron Curtain. I was one of them
Cheryl Misak
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The ancient world
Petty squabbles and bloody battles – the life of an ancient Roman soldier
18 minutes
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Metaphysics
Many worlds, many selves
If it’s true that we live in a vast multiverse, then our understanding of identity, morality and even God must be reexamined
Emily Qureshi-Hurst
video
Childhood and adolescence
The police camp where tween girls enter a sisterhood of law and order
28 minutes
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Biography and memoir
A grief with no name
As a child, I was torn from a culture that I never knew. It is a loss that defines me, even as I struggle to define the loss
Jelena Markovic