Society
essay
Architecture
The subtle art of elevation
Architectural drawing speaks of mathematical precision, but its roots lie in the theological exegesis of a prophetic book
Karl Kinsella
video
Sex and sexuality
For ages, solo sex was hardly taboo. What led to its centuries-long dry spell?
4 minutes
video
Stories and literature
A French Creole folktale nearly lost to time is given new, gorgeously animated life
6 minutes
video
Art
Why a forcefully phallic portrait of Henry VIII is a masterful work of propaganda
6 minutes
video
Global history
Meet the jesters who’ve spoken truth to power around the globe and across centuries
5 minutes
video
Stories and literature
Myths from Earth’s edge – what the Icelandic sagas reveal about Norse morality
57 minutes
video
Anthropology
A riveting collage portrays a century of Inuit history, and envisions a vibrant future
14 minutes
essay
War and peace
Chorus of testimony
Anne Frank’s diary is one of thousands of desperate, secret and vivid journals each bearing witness to the reality of war
Nina Siegal
video
Biography and memoir
The busboy who comforted Robert F Kennedy as he lay dying shares his story
3 minutes
essay
History
Warfare as mercy and love
The daggers that knights carried to the crusades help us understand why they thought of holy war as an act of love
William Chester Jordan
video
Demography and migration
One story, in a sea of millions, of swimming from China to freedom in Hong Kong
14 minutes
essay
History
The life of Wanda Półtawska
Her closeness to Pope John Paul furnished him with anti-abortion ideals, fuelled by her survival of the Ravensbrück camp
Joy Neumeyer
essay
The ancient world
Guide to a foreign past
The iconoclastic French historian Paul Veyne illuminated the past by showing how deeply alien it is to the present
Carlos Noreña
essay
Human rights and justice
Lydia Maria Child, abolitionist
Taking up arms against slavery, the famous novelist foreshadowed the vexed role of the white woman activist today
Lydia Moland
essay
History
Medieval babycare
From mansplaining about breastfeeding to debates on developmental toys, medieval parenting was full of familiar dilemmas
Katherine Harvey
essay
Archaeology
What the tablets say
Some 3,700 years ago, an enslaved girl, a barber, and a king crossed paths in a city by the Euphrates. This is their story
Amanda H Podany
essay
History
Women at the barricades
The transgressions of working-class women formed the revolutionary heart of the 1871 Paris Commune
Carolyn Eichner
essay
History
The politics of pain
Medical science can only tell us so much. To understand pain, we need the cultural tools of history, philosophy and art
Rob Boddice
essay
Global history
Geopolitics is for losers
The concept of geopolitics comes from German and Russian attempts to explain defeat and reverse loss of influence
Harold James
essay
Stories and literature
The honesty of pornography
Often vilified as a weapon of male supremacy, pornography in fact has much to tell us about ourselves and our culture
Kathleen Lubey
essay
History
The doxxing of Rose Mainville
When a young street vendor found her name in a guidebook to the sex workers of Paris, she couldn’t live with the shame
Amanda E Herbert & David N Woodworth
video
History
From manners to mud – two women recall coming of age in Victorian London
10 minutes
essay
History
Freedom from liquor
Ken Burns’s account of prohibition tells a popular story of booze in America. The historical record is far more sobering
Mark Lawrence Schrad
essay
History
History by numbers
Is history a matter of individual agency and action, or of finding and quantifying underpinning structures and patterns?
Claire Lemercier & Claire Zalc