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Society

Essays and videos on social issues, history, political life and the future
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Art

‘If you’re creative, why can’t you create a solution?’ One artist’s imaginative activism

17 minutes

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Biography and memoir

A gentle soul in an oppressive land – Bonnie’s story of life in America

11 minutes

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Race and ethnicity

Battling implicit bias

Training is a cheap solution to a hard problem. It is the systems that allow for biased behaviour that need to change

Jeffrey To

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Fairness and equality

A tragicomic account of how the Los Angeles Police Department blew up a city block

19 minutes

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Thinkers and theories

The Indian pragmatist

Ambedkar was not only a politician, but a profound thinker whose philosophy of democracy challenged the caste system

Scott R Stroud

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Fairness and equality

To build a fair society, we must first be able to envision it. John Rawls can help

64 minutes

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Social psychology

Don’t let them fool you

The fear of being duped is ubiquitous, but excessive scepticism makes it harder to trust one another and cooperate

Tess Wilkinson-Ryan

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Virtues and vices

The virtue of discretion

When the rules break down, you must judge what to do on your own. Discretion is necessary for navigating the muddle of life

Lorraine Daston

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Human rights and justice

Thirty years after one teenager shot another, is it time to forgive?

28 minutes

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Human rights and justice

Abolish life sentences

It is unjust, cruel and profoundly wasteful to consign a person to prison for life. A decent society must not do it

Judith Lichtenberg

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Fairness and equality

How the first woman of colour to be elected to the US Congress remade education

21 minutes

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Economics

We all play by economic rules set by men. What could a feminist economics look like?

30 minutes

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Poverty and development

A fairly fed world

Last year, 200 million children did not get enough to eat, yet it would be cheap and easy for the world to feed them all

Sharman Apt Russell

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Fairness and equality

Poor sleep

Being on-call, out-of-sync and underslept is not just personal but a pervasive political injustice. Bold change is needed

Jonathan White

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Fairness and equality

With barely a possession to his name, Rabbit builds a life around fighting corruption

10 minutes

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Politics and government

High crimes and cabals

The official definition of corruption – the abuse of public office for private gain – does little to capture the reality

Sudhir Chella Rajan

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Bioethics

We are all frail

We should be able to acknowledge that disabilities can cause pain and suffering without disabled people feeling dehumanised

Tom Shakespeare

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Economics

Stock-picking for humanity

Everyone on the planet has a stake in making investment more ethical. What’s new is that they have the power to do so too

Ellen Quigley

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Human rights and justice

How did the NRA transform from a sporting group to a mighty political force?

10 minutes

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Personality

Meet the British bouncer in LA on an expired visa who has no time for immigrants

10 minutes

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Demography and migration

The hopes and fears of the migrants selling souvenirs in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower

15 minutes

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Genetics

The genes we’re dealt

The new field of social genomics can be used by progressives to combat racial inequality or by conservatives to excuse it

Erik Parens

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Gender

Angels in the market

The heart-tug tactics of 1950s ads steered white American women away from activism into domesticity. They’re still there

Ellen Wayland-Smith

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Work

The flexible work fallacy

Breaking free of the 9-to-5 was originally a feminist project. So how did it become part of oppressive 24/7 work culture?

Sarah Stoller