Education was once imagined as a space for objective facts and neutral knowledge, but that idea is now under serious pressure. https://bit.ly/4w7fULP James Cleverly, Minna Salami, and John Ralston Saul debate whether education can ever truly be objective, and whether that was ever the right goal.

With Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey in cinemas, Andy Owen examines current geopolitics through the lens of Homer’s epic. | https://bit.ly/4fedfZv Owen argues honor is still a vital part of modern war, and that ignoring this may cause ongoing wars around the world to persist longer than necessary

Evolution has been told as a simple story: random genes change, natural selection does the rest. | https://bit.ly/4f3vW3p Eva Jablonka questions these assumptions, asking whether living systems can be genuinely goal-directed, and if so, what does that mean for how we understand evolution itself?

Philosophy has confidently resumed debating the nature of ultimate reality, treating metaphysics like just another science. https://bit.ly/4w6O0jd But this confidence is unearned, argues Nicholas Stang. Kant showed we lack any good explanation of how language can refer to such an ultimate reality.

We’re taught we have five senses, but what if we're missing the one that matters most? https://bit.ly/4aU1R3P Barry Smith introduces interoception: a constant, subconscious monitoring of our body. Smith argues these internal signals are the hidden drivers behind our moods and decisions.

AI can now imitate great artists so well that we often can’t tell the difference. | https://bit.ly/4hhw3JU But philosopher Derek Matravers argues that a painting without intention is not art at all. However beautiful the objects AI might make, they are empty of the meaning that we seek in art.

New observations show far more spiral galaxies spinning clockwise than counter-clockwise. | https://bit.ly/4w5ZaVi This pattern shouldn't exist under our current model of the universe, and Lior Shamir argues the implications may require a whole new cosmological theory.

Are we wrong to apply computing principles to reality as a whole? | https://bit.ly/3Rt9wiT John D. Norton argues against new claims that information is fundamental. Considerations of information and computing complicate thermodynamic analysis and contribute precisely nothing.

New evidence from the James Webb Telescope is leading some to propose radically different alternatives to our current account of the universe. | https://bit.ly/3SRkqiU Join George Ellis, Claudia de Rham, and Bjørn Ekeberg to debate the future of cosmology in light of these new discoveries.

Attention is the most fundamental process in our brains, argues Michael Graziano. | https://bit.ly/4wTksWn In this article, he claims subjective experience arises when the brain attends to its own attention in order to control it, like an artist painting a picture of themselves painting pictures.

Language does far more than describe the world. | https://bit.ly/4h02TPs In this interview, cognitive scientist and linguist Lera Boroditsky reveals how language actively shapes how we perceive space, time, colour, and causality, and emphasises why losing it is so dangerous.

We’re often both attracted and repelled by the uncanny. | https://bit.ly/3SEf4HM Mark Windsor argues this reveals something about our psychology: the uncanny arises when experience contradicts our most deeply held beliefs, revealing to us our implicit theories and probing their limits.

From Japanese precision to Italian conviviality, philosophy reaches beyond the lecture hall to the dinner table. | https://iai.tv/video/the-hidden-philosophy-of-food Join Julian Baggini as he examines the hidden philosophy of food.

Oxford neuroscientist Thomas Parr argues that perception isn't a window onto reality, it's a prediction machine. | https://iai.tv/articles/your-brain-does-not-percieve-reality-it-predicts-it-auid-3614 We act not just to get what we want, but to know our world better.

For centuries, scientific progress meant taming complexity with simple, unified theories, guided by Occam’s Razor. | https://bit.ly/4fd2vMd But philosopher Eric B. Winsberg argues we’ve entered a revolutionary new scientific age, in which progress no longer requires crafting simple theories.

We now think on our phones and through the machines we talk to, but the law still treats everything in our pockets as data the state can freely demand? | https://bit.ly/3TdYQVL Simon McCarthy-Jones argues our digital thoughts deserve the same protection as the ones inside our heads.

Join American sceptic Michael Shermer as he defends an ancient idea: reality exists independent of belief. | https://iai.tv/video/reality-doesnt-care-what-you-think Abandoning objective truth does not liberate us. Without facts, disagreement becomes noise rather than argument.

Economist Cahal Moran argues economics suffers from "physics envy": it chases mathematical legitimacy while losing touch with reality. | https://bit.ly/4fe9q7O He contends economics should move past detached models and jargon, and focus on what people need, and bring it into public life.

The second law of thermodynamics says disorder always increases. But life defies this by creating order. | https://bit.ly/4ggDAZ7 Philosopher Dorothea Olkowski draws on Ilya Prigogine's work to ask whether the classical version of the law ever described the reality of life at all.

Are scientific simulations genuine windows into reality? | https://iai.tv/video/the-simulation-matrix Paulette Clancy, John Ioannidis, and Steve Koonin debate whether simulations are vital shortcuts to drive powerful theories, or reflections of the beliefs and biases built into them.

Physicists increasingly argue that time is simply physical change in a block universe. https://iai.tv/articles/physicists-are-mistaken-time-is-not-an-illusion-auid-3609 But philosopher Brian Kierland suggests that if time can flow independently of physical change, this view may be too quick.

Carlo Rovelli says consciousness is just another physical thing, but Manfred Frank argues this misses something fundamental. | https://bit.ly/4aGNIXJ Consciousness does not observe itself in the way we observe objects; rather, it dissolves the distinction between observer and observed altogether.

Are we the cultivators of ideas, or are they merely the result of “social contagion”? | https://bit.ly/4v15Z9t Join Tony D. Sampson, Victoria Trumbull, and Sylvie Delacroix to debate ideas and creativity. Hosted by Jonny Thomson.

The real driver of homophobia isn't bigotry, but a politics of self-restraint that takes hold when economies come under stress, argues classicist Harry Tanner. | https://bit.ly/4eCz1G8 Tanner traces the pattern of attitudes towards sexuality from ancient Athens to the populist right today.

Our understanding of memory often focuses on its failures. But what if forgetting is not a flaw, and memory is far more powerful and purposeful than we realise? | https://bit.ly/4xJoqlk Join Charan Ranganath to explore the cutting-edge neuroscience behind how memory truly works.

Amy Kind argues imagination is the skill we draw on to make our hardest decisions. https://bit.ly/4vuIw1q Like all skills, it weakens without use, and we're using it less. If we don't exercise it, we'll lose the capacity to conceive of things being different, and risk being trapped in the present.

We tend to think that discovering our beliefs were shaped by arbitrary social influences rationally compel us to abandon them. | https://bit.ly/43NK1vo But leading epistemologist Miriam Schoenfield argues this standard is impossibly high; no one can meet the demand for the view from nowhere.

Why have trauma and 'lived experience' become the professional class's favourite currency? | https://bit.ly/4w945EE Catherine Liu argues that trauma, once a clinical term for the aftermath of real violence, has been hijacked by liberal elites as a tool of self-branding and class distinction.

We're living in a period of transformation. The economic order that has dominated the past fifty years is breaking down, and new ideologies are taking hold. | https://bit.ly/4eppxiz Drawing on his original research, Branko Milanović explores the scale and impact of the transformation now underway.

The debate surrounding advanced AI systems and their potential to harm humanity has often focused on imminent risks and abrupt takeovers. | https://bit.ly/3QDORrX But Roman Yampolskiy argues that if a highly advanced AI were to harbour adversarial intentions, it might not act immediately.