Society
video
Animals and humans
Are zoos and natural history museums born of a desire to understand, or to control?
57 minutes
video
Archaeology
What’s an ancient Greek brick doing in a Sumerian city? An archeological investigation
16 minutes
essay
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
video
Family life
The migrants missing in Mexico, and the mothers who won’t stop searching for them
21 minutes
essay
Earth science and climate
The planetary fix
Despite decades of inaction we can avert the climate Hellocene and restore the atmosphere to keep our world habitable
Rob Jackson
essay
Global history
There are no pure cultures
All of our religions, stories, languages and norms were muddled and mixed through mobility and exchange throughout history
Inanna Hamati-Ataya
video
Ecology and environmental sciences
The tree frog die-off that sparked a global mystery – and revealed a dark truth
15 minutes
video
History
From Afghanistan to Virginia – the Muslims who fought in the American Civil War
22 minutes
essay
Art
Threads of resistance
Knitting and embroidery are laden with stereotypes of domestic femininity – and the subversive potential for protest
Gemma McKenzie
essay
History
Why history is always political
In his work on republicanism as a living idea, J G A Pocock showed that contesting history is part of a robust civic life
Rosario López
video
Family life
One family’s harrowing escape from postwar Vietnam, told in a poignant metaphor
10 minutes
video
Fairness and equality
Visit the small Texas community that lives in the shadow of SpaceX launches
14 minutes
essay
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
video
War and peace
A frontline soldier’s moving account of the fabled ‘Christmas truce’ of 1914
12 minutes
essay
Education
A valiant experiment
The progressive and remarkably innovative Woodmead School briefly flourished amid the viciousness of apartheid South Africa
David Dyzenhaus
video
History of technology
Replicating Shakespearean-era printing brings its own dramas and comedy
19 minutes
essay
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
video
Animals and humans
The wild tale of a young animal keeper, an angry tiger and a torn circle net
10 minutes
essay
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
video
Technology and the self
Why single Chinese women are freezing their eggs in California
24 minutes
essay
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
essay
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
video
The ancient world
Petty squabbles and bloody battles – the life of an ancient Roman soldier
18 minutes
essay
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