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Culture

Essays and videos on the arts, literature, travel, rituals and celebrations

Architecture Art Biography and memoir Dance and theatre Design and fashion Film and visual culture Food and drink Home Music Nature and landscape Rituals and celebrations Sports and games Stories and literature Subcultures Travel

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Microscopic image showing a close-up view of a butterfly’s proboscis covered with vibrant pink and orange structures.

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Biology

Butterflies become unrecognisable landscapes when viewed under electron microscopes

4 minutes

Painting of a vibrant green hillside with trees and a winding river, showing detailed textures and overlapping colours.

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Nature and landscape

California’s landscapes provide endless inspiration for a woodcut printmaker

10 minutes

Sepia-toned photo of a person in formal Victorian attire, standing with a slightly tilted head, against an ornate backdrop.

essay

Gender and identity

Requeering Wilde

Oscar Wilde is an icon of gay liberation from secrecy. But his life and his sexuality were not so simple – nor so binary

Sam Mills

An older man in a red cap and printed T-shirt looking into the distance.

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Virtues and vices

Why Bennie tried to disappear, and what happened when he was found decades later

16 minutes

A cupcake with pink icing topped with mealworms, surrounded by other cupcakes.

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Food and drink

Adjust your disgust

The future of food is nutritious and sustainable – if we can overcome our instinctual revulsion to insects and lab-grown meat

Alexandra Plakias

Photo of three children in winter jackets sitting on grassland near a stream with a plastic container between them.

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Animals and humans

Join seabirds as they migrate, encountering human communities along the way

13 minutes

Traditional Indian painting of a deity reclining on a serpent on water with another figure on a lotus against a red background.

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Stories and literature

Two variants of a Hindu myth come alive in an animated ode to Indian storytelling

14 minutes

Photo of a diner interior seen through a window with patrons seated at tables and a counter under hanging lights.

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Food and drink

The passage of time is a peculiar thing in a 24-hour diner

14 minutes

Black and white photo of a man with glasses and a beard, resting his chin on his hand, wearing a suit.

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Art

Background music was the radical invention of a trailblazing composer

17 minutes

Photo of a woman meditating by a fire in a dimly lit room with artwork on the walls and others seated in the background.

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Anthropology

For an Amazonian female shaman, ayahuasca ceremonies are a rite and a business

30 minutes

Photo of a study with a wooden desk, red curtains, bust sculptures and a leather chair in a well-lit room.

essay

Psychiatry and psychotherapy

The art in the analyst’s room

The consulting office reflects the personality of the therapist, while also subtly shaping the experience of their patients

Anna Parker

A young woman and an older woman in a living room face the camera, one of them pointing towards it. The image has a webcam recording interface.

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Gender

A filmmaker responds to Lars von Trier’s call for a new muse with a unique application

16 minutes

Illustration of hands typing on a keyboard with handwritten notes and a man in a sequence of frames.

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Computing and artificial intelligence

Chatbots of the dead

We can now create compelling experiences of talking with our dead. Is this ghoulish, therapeutic or something else again?

Amy Kurzweil & Daniel Story

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

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Sports and games

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

5 minutes

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

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Design and fashion

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

14 minutes

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

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Art

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

15 minutes

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

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Language and linguistics

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

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.

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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

Colourful, whimsical house with ornate details and greenery in foreground, photo taken outdoors in daylight.

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Home

How an artist transformed a dilapidated hunting lodge into a house made of dreams

8 minutes

Two weathered, clay duck sculptures facing each other against a grey background.

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Metaphysics

The truth about fiction

What distinguishes fiction from nonfiction? The answer to this perennial question relies on how we understand reality itself

Hannah H Kim

Painting of passengers in a 19th century bus, featuring men and women in period dress, one holding a basket of flowers.

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Stories and literature

Elegance and hustle

How French modernists from Proust to Mallarmé were alarmed and inspired by the voracious dynamism of the newspaper world

Max McGuinness

Photo of a man in a red shirt praying on a church pew, hands clasped, with a notebook beside him in dim lighting.

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Cognition and intelligence

The power of prayer

Praying is a cognitive practice full of problem-solving resources. You can learn from it even if you don’t want to do it

Eleanor Schille-Hudson

Painting of a stormy sea with two sailing ships in distress and people struggling on the rocky shore.

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Beauty and aesthetics

In art, the sublime is a feedback loop, evolving with whatever’s next to threaten us

9 minutes

Colourful painting depicting a range of people eating, drinking and engaging in other activities, with floral patterns.

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Art

Threads of resistance

Knitting and embroidery are laden with stereotypes of domestic femininity – and the subversive potential for protest

Gemma McKenzie