Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
As a young aspiring scientist, the South African cosmologist Renée Hložek, who is now an associate professor at the University of Toronto, noticed that the few female scientists she could look up to seemed to be successful in spite of – and not because of or independently of – their ‘womanness’. And, as she details in this brief animation from Thought Café, when she was getting her start, she began to truly understand the distinct barriers women faced in the male-dominated scientific culture. This includes how the process of tearing down ideas, which is fundamental to scientific practice, can be corrosive to the experience of female scientists – and indeed to science itself – when it bleeds into the interpersonal.
Video by Thought Café
video
Meaning and the good life
Why Orwell urged his readers to celebrate the spring, cynics be damned
11 minutes
video
Making
On the Norwegian coast, a tree is transformed into a boat the old-fashioned way
6 minutes
video
Animals and humans
One man’s quest to save an orphaned squirrel, as narrated by David Attenborough
14 minutes
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
A future in which ‘artificial scientists’ make discoveries may not be far away
9 minutes
video
History
Hags, seductresses, feminist icons – how gender dynamics manifest in witches
13 minutes
video
Wellbeing
Children of the Rwandan genocide face a unique stigma 30 years later
20 minutes
video
Meaning and the good life
Leading 1950s thinkers on the search for happiness in trying times
29 minutes
video
War and peace
Two Ukrainian boys’ summer unfolds just miles from the frontlines
22 minutes
video
Nature and landscape
California’s landscapes provide endless inspiration for a woodcut printmaker
10 minutes