Senior Editor, Aeon+Psyche
Marina is a former arts editor of the New Statesman and deputy arts editor of the Evening Standard newspaper in London. Her books include, Living at the End of the World which looked at end-time cults, Rocket Dreams, an off-beat elegy to the Space Age, and Last Days in Babylon, the story of the Jews of Iraq. Marina specialises in the culture of science, developmental psychology and strong personal narratives. Her acclaimed memoirs The Middlepause and Insomnia have been translated into 9 languages. Her latest memoir A Little Give will be published in 2023. She can be found on Twitter @marinab52.
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Cognition and intelligence
Playing games for real
My father was hopelessly, joyously addicted to gambling and I his moral critic. How did I end up playing pro blackjack?
Marina Benjamin
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Childhood and adolescence
My daughter, myself
Storms of doubt and change I expected as the parent of an adolescent, I just thought they would be hers, not mine
Marina Benjamin
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Information and communication
How to hate
The manifesto was always a hotheaded call to arms. Then it got a slick, digital makeover in the cause of coldblooded hate
Tyler Thier
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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
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Subcultures
Of memes and magick
Bending a mysterious world to your will was the goal of esoteric practices. Now it’s the unashamed aim of the tech titans
Tara Isabella Burton
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Language and linguistics
Language is medicine
For First Nations people, health is not a matter of mechanical fitness of the body, but of language, identity and belonging
Erica X Eisen
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Space exploration
Uncertain contact
The detection of alien life won’t be obvious. It’ll be partial and inconclusive: a perfect task for the scientific method
Jaime Green
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Biography and memoir
Flat places
Whenever I stand in a flat landscape, I feel myself becoming weightless, taken out of my childhood full of painful nothing
Noreen Masud
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Film and visual culture
Exposed
Slum photography was at the heart of progressive campaigns against urban poverty. And it was a weapon against poor people
Sadie Levy Gale
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Psychiatry and psychotherapy
Analysis for the people
Group therapy promised to be both democratic and radical, but it failed to take hold. Has its time finally come?
Jess Cotton
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Food and drink
Crème de la crème
How French cuisine became beloved among status-hungry diners in the United States, from Thomas Jefferson to Kanye West
Kelly Alexander & Claire Bunschoten
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Personality
The myth of mirrored twins
What do the lives of twins tell us about heritability, selfhood and the age-old debate between nature and nurture?
Gavin Evans
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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
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Mood and emotion
In praise of irritation
Unlike anger, irritation has neither glamour nor radicalism on its side. Yet it might just be the mood we need right now
Will Rees