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Psychology

Essays and videos offering insights into the self, relationships, cognition and neuroscience
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Childhood and adolescence

The unique fellowship between teens and young puffins on a remote Icelandic island

20 minutes

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Technology and the self

Tomorrow people

For the entire 20th century, it had felt like telepathy was just around the corner. Why is that especially true now?

Roger Luckhurst

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Ageing and death

Peregrinations of grief

A friend and a falcon went missing. In pain, I turned to ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’ – and found a new vision of sorrow and time

Emily Polk

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Rituals and celebrations

Flirtation, negotiation and vodka – or how to couple up in 1950s rural Poland

5 minutes

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Technology and the self

In the town once named Asbestos, locals ponder the voids industry left in its wake

16 minutes

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Mental health

The last great stigma

Workers with mental illness experience discrimination that would be unthinkable for other health issues. Can this change?

Pernille Yilmam

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Cities

A lush, whirlwind tribute to the diversity of life in a northern English county

3 minutes

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Stories and literature

Robert Frost’s poetic reflection on youth, as read in his unforgettable baritone

5 minutes

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Sex and sexuality

After a sextortion scam, Eugene conducts an unblushing survey of masturbation

14 minutes

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Wellbeing

Learning to be happier

In order to help improve my students’ mental health, I offered a course on the science of happiness. It worked – but why?

Bruce Hood

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Consciousness and altered states

Acid media

How perforated squares of trippy blotter paper allowed outlaw chemists and wizard-alchemists to dose the world with LSD

Erik Davis

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Language and linguistics

Closed captions suck. Here’s one artist’s inventive project to make them better

8 minutes

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Anthropology

Why are witchcraft accusations so common across human societies?

4 minutes

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Subcultures

Drop into London’s eclectic skate scene, where newbies and old-timers find community

5 minutes

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Technology and the self

A deepfake porn victim confronts the pain of having her likeness stolen and vandalised

19 minutes

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Wellbeing

Born in China, Zee seeks a gender-affirming life in the American Midwest

11 minutes

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Metaphysics

The enchanted vision

Love is much more than a mere emotion or moral ideal. It imbues the world itself and we should learn to move with its power

Mark Vernon

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Human rights and justice

My elusive pain

The lives of North Africans in France are shaped by a harrowing struggle to belong, marked by postcolonial trauma

Farah Abdessamad

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Rituals and celebrations

A beginner’s guide to a joyful Persian tradition of spring renewal and rebirth

3 minutes

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Neuroscience

How to make a map of smell

We can split light by a prism, sounds by tones, but surely the world of odour is too complex and personal? Strangely, no

Jason Castro

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Love and friendship

Love looks a bit different for a chain-smoking couple in a small apartment

11 minutes

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Psychiatry and psychotherapy

The therapist who hated me

Going to a child psychoanalyst four times a week for three years was bad enough. Reading what she wrote about me was worse

Michael Bacon

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Consciousness and altered states

A reader’s guide to microdosing

How to use small doses of psychedelics to lift your mood, enhance your focus, and fire your creativity

Tunde Aideyan

Artwork depicting a family group composed of angular lines and triangles, some but not all coloured, on a paper background
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Family life

A patchwork family

After my marriage failed, I strove to create a new family – one made beautiful by the loving way it’s stitched together

Lily Dunn