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Philosophy

Essays and videos on philosophy, the history of ideas, ethics and life’s big questions
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essay

Nations and empires

A United States of Europe

A free and unified Europe was first imagined by Italian radicals in the 19th century. Could we yet see their dream made real?

Fernanda Gallo

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Stories and literature

Great books are still great

Read with love, rather than critical distance, the classics can provide tools to subvert oppressive hierarchies

Roosevelt Montás

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Economics

The biggest picture

No wonder we cannot agree on how globalisation works and whether it’s a good thing. All the stories we have are flawed

Anthea Roberts & Nicholas Lamp

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Mood and emotion

Feeling, in situ

What if emotions are not universal and hardwired but exquisite acts of meaning-making specific to context and culture?

Elitsa Dermendzhiyska

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Philosophy of religion

Reincarnation now

Modern mindfulness strips Buddhism of its spiritual core. We need an ethics of reincarnation for an interconnected world

Avram Alpert

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video

Cosmopolitanism

A pop-up charity shop in a luxury department store melds art, commerce and justice

10 minutes

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Nations and empires

Roving revolutionaries

Moving between the Russian, Iranian and Young Turk revolutions, cosmopolitan Armenians helped usher in the 20th century

Houri Berberian

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Language and linguistics

Why learning a new language is like an illicit love affair

Marianna Pogosyan

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Stories and literature

Chaucer was more than English: he was a great European poet

Marion Turner

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Cognition and intelligence

What happens to cognitive diversity when everyone is more WEIRD?

Kensy Cooperrider

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Love and friendship

Love in a time of migrants: on rethinking arranged marriages

Farhad Mirza

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History

A history of true civilisation is not one of monuments

David Wengrow

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Language and linguistics

Raising a multilingual family is hard – what makes it work?

Olga Mecking

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Music

Was Cairo’s grand opera house a tool of cultural imperialism?

Adam Mestyan

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Political philosophy

A history of alienation

In the postwar period it was understood to be the fundamental malaise of modern life. Why aren’t we ‘alienated’ any more?

Martin Jay

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Economic history

How Orwell used wartime rationing to argue for global justice

Bruce Robbins

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idea

Economics

Everyone in the world should be taxed on their energy footprint

Iason Athanasiadis

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Cosmopolitanism

When I help you, I also help myself: on being a cosmopolitan

Massimo Pigliucci

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Philosophy of language

The death of languages

Endangered languages have sentimental value, it’s true, but are there good philosophical reasons to preserve them?

Rebecca Roache

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Nations and empires

Why nation-states are good

The nation-state remains the best foundation for capitalism, and hyper-globalisation risks destroying it

Dani Rodrik

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Stories and literature

Readers of the world unite

How markets, Marx, and provincial elites created world literature to fight both empire and nationalism

Martin Puchner

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Nations and empires

Les Anglo-Saxons

Not just American or British, the Anglo-Saxon is a mirror to Frenchness: the country’s alter-ego and most feared enemy

Emile Chabal

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Mathematics

Global cooperation depends on the strength of local connections

Benjamin Allen

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Cities

Common ground

When we think of urban public space in terms of competing rights, we create a battleground. Is there a better way to share?

Farhan Samanani