Culture
video
Film and visual culture
‘Bags here are rarely innocent’ – how filmmakers work around censorship in Iran
8 minutes
video
Language and linguistics
Closed captions suck. Here’s one artist’s inventive project to make them better
8 minutes
video
Music
The peculiar beauty of a song caught between composition and improvisation
3 minutes
video
Technology and the self
An artist swaps her head with everyday objects in a musing on consumerism
4 minutes
video
Film and visual culture
An augmented-reality filter reveals the hidden movements all around us
7 minutes
video
Film and visual culture
Stop-motion origami unfurls in a playful exploration of how senses overlap
3 minutes
essay
Film and visual culture
The truth of photographs
It’s often said that a successful picture ‘captures the essence’ of a subject. But a great photograph does so much more
Daniel Star
essay
Space exploration
Uncertain contact
The detection of alien life won’t be obvious. It’ll be partial and inconclusive: a perfect task for the scientific method
Jaime Green
essay
Film and visual culture
Fighting kung fu
From chopsocky films to disco earworms, Asian caricatures have proliferated since the 1970s. Can Hollywood kick the habit?
Stephanie Wong
essay
Film and visual culture
Exposed
Slum photography was at the heart of progressive campaigns against urban poverty. And it was a weapon against poor people
Sadie Levy Gale
video
Physics
A dreamy tribute to the music of Brian Eno, rendered in paint, soap and water
2 minutes
video
Anthropology
A riveting collage portrays a century of Inuit history, and envisions a vibrant future
14 minutes
essay
Food and drink
Crème de la crème
How French cuisine became beloved among status-hungry diners in the United States, from Thomas Jefferson to Kanye West
Kelly Alexander & Claire Bunschoten
essay
Quantum theory
All possible worlds
Long a matter of philosophical speculation, the idea of multiple realities has been given new artistic licence by physics
Timothy Andersen
video
Biology
A dazzling slice-by-slice exploration of wood exposes hidden patterns and hues
2 minutes
video
Philosophy of mind
An enigmatic ‘story of consciousness’ told through 19th-century engravings
7 minutes
video
History of technology
Who owns history? How remarkable historical footage is hidden and monetised
18 minutes
essay
Family life
Honey, I sold the kids
We have laws to protect children from factory work. Why aren’t they protected from parents who monetise their lives online?
Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore
essay
Art
Milk, pity and power
Since antiquity, artists have depicted a perverse scene of a daughter breastfeeding her aged father. What does it mean?
Margie Orford
video
Film and visual culture
The old-time cinema experience endures in a quiet corner of Japan
5 minutes
video
Stories and literature
The key to a vampire’s immortality? Meeting the anxieties of the moment
15 minutes
video
Chemistry
A square inch in a Petri dish becomes a grand stage for chemical transformations
4 minutes
video
Art
Edward Hopper came of age with cinema. As an artist, he left a lasting mark on it
12 minutes
essay
Beauty and aesthetics
What does art do?
Good art, laced with irony, ambiguity and suspense, is not obviously political. That’s what makes it politically interesting
Vid Simoniti