With a class of college students and inmates, teaching philosophy in prison is a rowdy, honest and hopeful provocation ...

A hero or a murderer? Stalin’s legacy is still a contentious issue in his birthplace, seven decades after his death ...

Ascend steep cliffs to discover Ethiopia’s ancient churches carved into rock, still serving as places of worship today ...

In this layered portrait, an artist reflects on the complex reality of living with the distressing voice in her head ...

Many hope that AI will discover ethical truths. But as Gödel shows, deciding what is right will always be our burden ...

Life is often experienced as a demanding, ongoing story. But with a little practice, a new space opens for peaceful presence ...

Societal downfalls loom large in history and popular culture but, for the 99 per cent, collapse often had its upsides ...

The little-known painter who found beauty in bugs, transforming pests into wondrous creatures and works of art ...

Growing up in countercultural California, ‘enlightenment’ had real glamour. But decades of practice have changed my mind ...

What, exactly, is boredom? It is a deeply unpleasant state of unmet arousal: we are aroused rather than despondent, but, for one or more reasons, our arousal cannot be met or directed. These reasons ...

At Wat Doi Kham, my local temple in Chiang Mai in Thailand, visitors come in their thousands every week. Bearing money and garlands of jasmine, the devotees prostrate themselves in front of a small ...

We might reasonably fear the process of dying – the decline in health, often painful and undignified, that ends in death. But it looks like a mistake to fear the nothingness that is death itself. When ...