A philosophy of home The household is a community, as much as the state, and ancient philosophy had much more…
Life recombined In the early 1970s, genetic engineers launched the most controversial revolution in science since the atomic bomb –…
Artist of sympathy and cruelty Mozart’s genius lay in writing music of such power that he could draw his audience…
Being small Nobody quite recovers from being a child: the asymmetry of power between parents and children always leaves a…
Gen Z but two centuries ago A generation of young people with ‘full hearts in an empty world’ sought hope…
The eye in your pocket Things have jobs: pillows are made for comfort, scissors are sharp, and digital devices are…
To be is to participate For Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, a person is not self-contained, but the outcome of a lifelong process…
Does reading do us any good? Stripped of easy moralising, literature makes us relish the search for truth in an…
The invention of the soul Humans weren’t given souls by God or genes. We made them ourselves with language –…
Patterns without desires The art expert is the fulcrum of all value and significance in the museum and auction world….
When trauma becomes trope Humanitarian journalism is a moral calling to document human suffering. But in practice, it’s an ethically…
Catastrophe markets Americans love to gamble. But placing bets on wildfires, floods and storms comes with serious moral and social…
Bitch: a history The word can morph from noun to verb to adjective, from dog to human, from female to…
A duty to oneself African philosophical values of harmony and vitality have much to offer our thinking about what we…
Savage care Neat ethical principles have nothing to say to doctors like me, faced with the brutal, bloody compromises of…
There are no psychopaths Virtually everything you think you know about psychopathy has been thoroughly debunked. Why does this zombie…
Going-against-the-grainers If our ethical beliefs come from our social environment, how do some people find the moral courage to defy…
Guarding the guardians Good institutions are social technologies that scale trust from personal relations to entire nations. How do they…
How selfish are we? An age-old debate about human nature is being energised with new findings on the tightrope of…
Inside, the valley sings Where does the mind go in solitary confinement? An evocative animation exploring three individual experiences –…
Computers can’t surprise As AI’s endless clichés continue to encroach on human art, the true uniqueness of our creativity is…
The shape of time In the 19th century, the linear idea of time became dominant – with profound implications for…
Red tape on a blue planet All our laws and rules to protect coral reefs now stand in the way…
Children’s game: pau de sebo In a town park in Portugal, prizes dangle just out of reach up a greasy…
Voices of Russia In rare interviews, Russians speak candidly about their lives in the presence of war – animated to…
Philosopher of pride For Mandeville, humankind has a bottomless need to be liked: it is this perennial craving that forms…
Undefinable yet indispensable Despite centuries of trying, the term ‘religion’ has proven impossible to define. Then why does it remain…
Medieval moons Some saw the Moon as representing creation, yearning for the Divine, some saw the Moon as almost Divine…
The guitarist’s palette In the hands of a great musician, the gloriously simple guitar can create the most complex works…
Not in our name The gravest of all decisions, to go to war, happens without the consent of the people….
Mask on/mask off People with ADHD and autism have to mask their instincts if they want to be included. But…
Mapping Bob Dylan’s mind Generative AI sheds new light on the underlying engines of metaphor, mood and reinvention in six…
Power and flesh As struggles over the human body escalate, we should return to the work of cinema’s greatest anatomist:…
Monstrification For centuries we’ve used the declaration of ‘monster’ to eject individuals and groups from being respected as fully human…
A poet on Mars Could autism explain Virginia Woolf’s unique voice? Her extraordinary eye for detail and connections suggests it…
Art must act Throughout decades of writing, Harold Rosenberg exhorted artists to resist cliché and conformity and instead take action…
From nothing, everything The idea of nothing pushes at the limits of thought, spawning paradoxes that have long nourished art,…
Should we edit nature? Countless species are dying from human-induced environmental change. Should we use genetic technology to alter and…
Breaking the chain The role of the conscious observer has posed a stubborn problem for quantum measurement. Phenomenology offers a…
Katie’s story Frontotemporal dementia is rare and ruthless. When it robbed Katie of her husband at 33, his story became…
Society needs hope Youths around the world are in a profound crisis of despair. Adults must help them to believe…
Ntaria Scenes from Aboriginal Australian pottery, brought to animated life, capture the turn of the seasons in central Australia –…
Reality is evil Everything eats and is eaten. Everything destroys and is destroyed. It is our moral duty to strike…
Socrates would be pleased With a class of college students and inmates, teaching philosophy in prison is a rowdy, honest…
The incompleteness of ethics Many hope that AI will discover ethical truths. But as Gödel shows, deciding what is right…
A life in Zen Growing up in countercultural California, ‘enlightenment’ had real glamour. But decades of practice have changed my…
Beyond food and people Nietzsche shows us how to embrace our connection with nature – without denying its essential conflict,…
The grammar of a god-ocean To truly explore alien languages, linguists must open themselves to the maximum conceivable degree of…
Memories without brains Certain slime moulds can make decisions, solve mazes and remember things. What can we learn from the…
Homo crustaceous ‘Everything becomes crab’ is more than an absurd meme. The crab is a deep symbol of our devil’s…
The beat of goombay Diasporas are made of vast constellations of countless people, fused together through memory, meaning – and…
Merveilleux-scientifique With brain swaps and death rays, a little-known French sci-fi genre explored science’s dark possibilities a century ago –…
Animals taught us culture Prehistoric humans didn’t create art and architecture out of nothing. They took inspiration from the nonhuman…
Why philosophy of physics? Some physicists reject philosophy as a distraction from ‘real’ science but it is in fact both…
Our diverse togetherness While initiatives for inclusive education mean well, schools fail to provide neurodivergent students what they need to…
The other Homo sapiens We are just one branch of a diverse human family tree. Aside from Neanderthals, who were…
Permission to be ill It took months for my functional neurological disorder to finally be diagnosed. It’s a condition that…
Extraterrestrial tongues Imagining how aliens might communicate prepares us for first contact and illuminates the nature of our own languages…
Methodical banality Like today’s large language models, 16th-century humanists had techniques to automate writing – to the detriment of novelty…
Just a pale blue dot When we see the Earth as ‘a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam’ what…
Have they been here? When we look for extraterrestrials, we often peer into the depths of space. But alien life…
On unstable ground A ‘great reshuffle’ of the land is underway. It will force us to reconsider traditional ideas of…
What actors know Acting is an ancient and intrinsically human way to establish vibrant connections with one another. And it’s…
Why the cat wags her tail Here’s a puzzle: how could evolution favour such a costly, frivolous and fun activity…
Suffused with causality Humans have a superpower that makes us uniquely capable of controlling the world: our ability to understand…
Ghosts among the philosophers Cambridge, home of analytic philosophy, was also a hotbed of psychical research. How did this spooky…
The necessity of Nussbaum Martha Nussbaum’s philosophy is dynamic and challenging, but also elegant and lucidly written: she is the…
The winter of civilisation Byung-Chul Han’s relentless critiques of digital capitalism reveal how this suffocating system creates hollowed-out lives –…
Chatbots of the dead We can now create compelling experiences of talking with our dead. Is this ghoulish, therapeutic or…
Beyond causality In order to bridge the yawning gulf between the humanities and the sciences we must turn to an…
Guardians of the gibbons Humans are both the gravest threat and the greatest hope for the survival of the rare…
Hearts and brains Humans always end up with clogged arteries, right? That’s not what the lives of the Tsimane in…
Chemical laws Often dismissed as the poor cousin of the sciences, chemistry has revealed natural laws that illuminate our Universe…
The penumbral plunge Diving into the ring of darkness beyond things easily answerable, asking ‘Why?’ questions is what make humans…
There are no pure cultures All of our religions, stories, languages and norms were muddled and mixed through mobility and…
Laboratories of the impossible By testing the boundaries of reality, Spanish-language authors have created a sublime counterpart to experimental physics…
Boat people The self-sacrifice of ants to save their colonies is an allegory and a euphemism in one family’s story…
Why history is always political In his work on republicanism as a living idea, J G A Pocock showed that…
The stories of Daniel Dennett Often metaphorical and allusive, the philosopher’s work will long be remembered for how it grappled…
A linkless internet In creating anonymous summaries, AI flattens out all the fascinating architecture of thought that makes the internet…
The underground university During the Cold War, Oxford philosophers worked together to aid dissidents behind the Iron Curtain. I was…
Compassionate time On his final journey through Asia, Thomas Merton found some peace in the dialectic between refusing the world…
The cochlear question As the hearing parent of a deaf baby, I’m confronted with an agonising decision: should I give…
We need raw awe In this tech-vexed age, our life on screens prevents us from experiencing the mysteries and transformative…
The city of wisdom Don’t be intimidated by physics: it is made of stories and metaphors. Learn these and the…
Rage against the machine For all the promise and dangers of AI, computers plainly can’t think. To think is to…
The spectre of insecurity Liberals have forgotten that in order for our lives not to be nasty, brutish and short,…
The joy of clutter The world sees Japan as a paragon of minimalism. But its hidden clutter culture shows that…
An undulating thrill Once lauded as a wonder of the age, cocaine soon became the object of profound anxieties. What…
Main character syndrome Why romanticising your own life is philosophically dubious, setting up toxic narratives and an inability to truly…
The forging of countries Two distinct and conflicting forms of nationalism – civic and ethnic – helped create the nation-states…
The risk of beauty W Eugene Smith’s photos of the Minamata disaster are both exquisite and horrifying. How might we…
Make it awkward! Rather than being a cringey personal failing, awkwardness is a collective rupture – and a chance to…
The great wealth wave The tide has turned – evidence shows ordinary citizens in the Western world are now richer…
Old lesbians This is what an old lesbian looks like: the huge, joyful project capturing queer elder women’s stories before…
C L R James and America The brilliant Trinidadian thinker is remembered as an admirer of the US but he…
Rawls the redeemer For John Rawls, liberalism was more than a political project: it is the best way to fashion…
Seeing plants anew The stunningly complex behaviour of plants has led to a new way of thinking about our world:…
Land loneliness To survive, we are asked to forget that our lands and bodies are being violated, policed, ripped up,…
Decolonising psychology At times complicit in racism and oppression, psychology has also been a fertile ground for radical and liberatory…
