essay
Stories and literature
Do liberal arts liberate?
In Jack London’s novel, Martin Eden personifies debates still raging over the role and purpose of education in American life
Nick Romeo
essay
Stories and literature
Terrifying vistas of reality
H P Lovecraft, the master of cosmic horror stories, was a philosopher who believed in the total insignificance of humanity
Sam Woodward
essay
Stories and literature
The real Miss Julie
Victoria Benedictsson assumed a male identity, achieved literary stardom, and took her own life. Then Strindberg stole it
Elisabeth Åsbrink
essay
Comparative philosophy
Folklore is philosophy
Both folktales and formal philosophy unsettle us into thinking anew about our cherished values and views of the world
Abigail Tulenko
essay
Religion
There was no Jesus
How could a cult leader draw crowds, inspire devotion and die by crucifixion, yet leave no mark in contemporary records?
Gavin Evans
essay
Stories and literature
The best stories smell
When scents are used to intensify a narrative, they heighten young readers’ emotions and enrich their memory banks
Natalia Kucirkova
essay
Stories and literature
Saved by Infinite Jest
Bereft and suicidal, I lay on my sofa. Only David Foster Wallace’s novel kept me tethered to life, and still does
Mala Chatterjee
essay
Stories and literature
Citizens
Devon, 1970s: I’m a rector’s son, hanging out with Boz the biker. My life is about to open up – what does it promise for him?
Tim Pears
video
Stories and literature
A French Creole folktale nearly lost to time is given new, gorgeously animated life
6 minutes
video
Mood and emotion
Moments of poetry pierce through the mundane at a small-town grocery
13 minutes
essay
Stories and literature
Vergil’s secret message
Long derided as mere coincidences, acrostics in ancient poetry are finally being taken seriously – with astonishing results
Julia Hejduk
essay
Philosophy of language
Quantum poetics
How Borges and Heisenberg converged on the notion that language both enables and interferes with our grasp of reality
William Egginton
essay
Human rights and justice
Beyond obscenity
A century after the trial against ‘Ulysses’, we must revisit the civil liberties arguments of its defender, Morris Ernst
Brett Gary
video
Stories and literature
Myths from Earth’s edge – what the Icelandic sagas reveal about Norse morality
57 minutes
essay
Stories and literature
Poet of impermanence
Enheduana is the first known named author. Her poems of strife and upheaval resonate in our own unstable times
Sophus Helle
essay
Stories and literature
Solace and saudade
In the face of an inscrutable, indifferent universe, Pessoa suggests we cultivate a certain longing for the elusive horizon
Jonardon Ganeri & Sarah Seymour
essay
Stories and literature
The diaries of Kafka
By day an insurance official, by night he was an incessant, insomniacal scribe of the space between waking and dreaming
Ross Benjamin
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
Stories and literature
What makes John Keats’s ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ so enduringly powerful?
10 minutes
essay
Stories and literature
The sonnet machine
A sonnet contains an emotional drama of illusion and deception, crisis and resolution, crafted to make us think and feel
Timothy Hampton
video
Dance and theatre
Leaf through Shakespeare’s First Folio for a riveting journey into theatre history
13 minutes
essay
Knowledge
Meaning beyond definition
In science our concepts have neat, hard edges. In poetry our concepts stretch and expand. Both are necessary for knowledge
James Camien McGuiggan
essay
Language and linguistics
The problem with English
Is Earth’s most-spoken language a living ‘gift’ or a many-headed ‘monster’? Both views distract us from the real dilemma
Mario Saraceni
video
Stories and literature
The key to a vampire’s immortality? Meeting the anxieties of the moment
15 minutes