Library
A curated set of reading and video resources for those who want to delve deeper into each event
The search for enchantment
How the internet became the modern purveyor of ancient magic
Tarot cards: a tool of cold tricksters or wise therapists?
In praise of the magical thinking that sustains our humanness
Early Christians struggled to distinguish themselves from pagans
Why we need a new expression of the sacred: a pagan theology
Are our minds wild enough?
- The tradeoffs of savanna restoration in a tree crazed world
- The wilderness fetish is bad for people and for the planet
- How one modest shrub entrapped humans in its service
- Nature is out of balance but its still worth saving
- Video: How our developing understanding of plants changed our knowledge of life itself
- Video: The grassroots project that’s restoring an endangered Hawaiian ecosystem
Feminist futures
- Feminists never bought the idea of a mind set free from its body
- We need the toolkit of utopian thinking now more than ever
- What Frankenstein’s creature can really tell us about AI
- Why is the language of transhumanists and religion so similar
- Why longtermism is the world’s most dangerous secular credo
- The future of humanism from Toni Morrison to Nick Bostrom
Listening to the language of the brain
- Brain scans look stunning but what do they actually mean?
- Is deep brain stimulation for better health worth the risk?
- It takes neuroscience and poetry to map the tributaries of touch
- Mapping the brain’s connective structure could unlock immortality
- How might telepathy actually work outside the realm of sci-fi?
- Video: Can a tiny slice of mouse brain help us understand the complex human mind?
How to be long-minded
- The role of history in a society afflicted by short-termism
- To imagine our own extinction is to be able to answer for it
- Trees of deep time are a portal to the past and the future
- Feeling overwhelmed in the present? Try mental time travel
- Why longtermism is the world’s most dangerous secular credo
- Deep time’s uncanny future is full of ghostly human traces
- Video: From sky charts to atomic clocks, time is a mysterious story that humans keep inventing
Friends, foes and family
- How families and feelings built human culture
- Why childhood and old age are key to our human capacities
- How trance states forged human society through transcendence
- Social darwinism is back but this time its a good thing
- There really is no natural or right way to be a parent
- Video: Evolution is not only about competition: the cellular origins of a very big idea
Can we imagine power without violence?
- Writing and righting: Literature in the age of human rights
- Political violence is not just for poor countries anymore
- For Arendt, hope in dark times is no match for action
- Do human beings have an instinct for waging war
- Video: ‘What’s essential is, I must understand’: a rare candid interview with Hannah Arendt
- Video: Ten million people around the world are stateless. Is citizenship a human right?
