Who decides what art means?
AdultsArtCreativityHistoryPhilosophyCultureThere is a question that has been tossed around by philosophers and art critics for decades: how much should an artist's intention affect your interpretation of the work?
How far would you have to go to escape gravity?
AdultsPhilosophyScienceSpaceEvery star, black hole, human being, smartphone and atom are all constantly pulling on each other due to one force: gravity.
What Is A Paradox?
AdultsMathPhilosophyLanguageScienceA paradox is a statement that, despite apparently sound reasoning from true premises, leads to an apparently self-contradictory or logically unacceptable conclusion.
A Selfish Argument for Making the World a Better Place
AdultsPhilosophyPsychologyWorldWhy should you care about the well-being of people half a globe away?
How Much Money Could We Sell The Earth For?
AdultsEconomyWorldSciencePhilosophyIf aliens came to Earth and offered to buy it, how much should we sell it for?
What Is Light?
AdultsScienceTravelPhilosophyWe are so used to some things that we stopped wondering about them. Like light. What is light? Some kind of wavy thing, right? Kind of.
Emergence - How Stupid Things Become Smart Together
AdultsAnimalsNatureSciencePhilosophyHow can many stupid things combine to form smart things? How can proteins become living cells? How become lots of ants a colony? What is emergence?
Should You Eat Every Day?
AdultsFoodHealthPhilosophyAn intermittent fasting diet is one of the hippest new nutrition and fitness philosophies, based around the idea that going hungry can be good for your health.
Open offices are overrated
AdultsPhilosophyWorkProductivityBusinessIf you work in an office, there's a good chance it's an open one. How did we get here? And why is it so bad?
Are you a body with a mind or a mind with a body? - Maryam Alimardani
AdultsPsychologySciencePhilosophySelfNeuroscienceOur bodies - the physical, biological parts of us - and our minds - the thinking, conscious aspects - have a complicated, tangled relationship. Which one primarily defines you or your self? Are you a body with a mind or a mind with a body? Maryam Alimardani investigates.
What's the definition of comedy? Banana. - Addison Anderson
AdultsCreativityHumorPsychologyPhilosophyCultureWhat makes us giggle and guffaw? The inability to define comedy is its very appeal; it is defined by its defiance of definition. Addison Anderson riffs on the philosophy of Henri Bergson and Aristotle to elucidate how a definition draws borders while comedy breaks them down.
Is Reality Real? The Simulation Argument
AdultsHumanSciencePhilosophyFutureWhat if we are not creators, but creations?
What Happens If We Bring the Sun to Earth?
AdultsScienceSpaceWorldPhilosophyWhat happens if we bring the sun to earth? No, seriously.
How To Be A Genius
AdultsCultureHumanSocietyCreativityEducationPhilosophy"We hear a lot about genius. We are taught to admire the minds of those infinite, baffling but astonishing geniuses like Einstein, Tolstoy or Picasso. Quite what genius might actually be is left a little vague. It's a codeword for 'brilliant but perhaps too other-worldly ever really to fathom.' We are invited to stand in awe at the achievements of geniuses but also to feel that their thought processes might be quasi-magical and that it is ultimately simply mysterious how they were ever able to come up with the ideas they have had..."
Why Socrates Hated Democracy
AdultsHistoryPoliticsPhilosophyWe're used to thinking hugely well of democracy. But interestingly, one of the wisest people who ever lived, Socrates, had deep suspicions of it.
How to use rhetoric to get what you want - Camille A. Langston
AdultsHistoryPhilosophyLanguageHow do you get what you want, using just your words? Aristotle set out to answer exactly that question over two thousand years ago with a treatise on rhetoric. Camille A. Langston describes the fundamentals of deliberative rhetoric and shares some tips for appealing to an audience's ethos, logos, and pathos in your next speech.
LITERATURE - Voltaire
AdultsCreativityHistoryPhilosophyBooksVoltaire was one of the wisest, funniest and cleverest people of the 18th century. He continues to have lots to teach us about toleration, modesty and kindness.
Who am I? A philosophical inquiry - Amy Adkins
AdultsPhilosophyPsychologySelfThroughout the history of mankind, the subject of identity has sent poets to the blank page, philosophers to the agora and seekers to the oracles. These murky waters of abstract thinking are tricky to navigate, so it's probably fitting that to demonstrate the complexity, the Greek historian Plutarch used the story of a ship. Amy Adkins illuminates Plutarch's Ship of Theseus.
The philosophy of Stoicism - Massimo Pigliucci
AdultsHistoryPhilosophySelfWhat is the best life we can live? How can we cope with whatever the universe throws at us and keep thriving nonetheless? The ancient Greco-Roman philosophy of Stoicism explains that while we may not always have control over the events affecting us, we can have control over how we approach things. Massimo Pigliucci describes the philosophy of Stoicism.