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Three stories

Oleg Sentsov 28 June 2018

Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov is on permanent hunger strike in Russia’s Far North. Here we republish three short stories by him.

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Revealed: the US ‘Christian fundamentalists’ behind new Netflix film on millennial sex lives

Claire Provost and Lara Whyte 10 May 2018

A new film about youth ‘hookup culture’ follows students at ‘Spring Break’ beach parties in Florida. Does it have a hidden agenda?

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The Backlash podcast episode 2: "you can't eat a condom"

Lara Whyte and Claire Provost 11 April 2018

Anti-choice activists at the United Nations argue that rural women need food, not reproductive choice. But unsafe abortions kill women.

Was Machiavelli a democrat? Is he relevant today?

Stein Ringen 4 March 2018

However you read The Prince, it is a reminder that the elementary condition of good government is effective government.

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The Backlash podcast episode 1: women and the far right

Lara Whyte 22 February 2018

We talk to three women who know more about the far right than most: councillor Jolene Bunting in Northern Ireland, researcher Marilyn Mayo in the US, and Akanksha Mehta at the University of Sussex.

Don’t call it an echo chamber – it’s a spatial contract

Antonis Vradis 13 February 2018

Don’t focus on the reverberating sounds of the echo chamber, look at the structure that has formed it, before you even realised, and right before your eyes.

Listen to a recorded audio version of this article courtesy of curio.io.

What Bruce Springsteen can teach us about identity politics

Lasse Thomassen 3 August 2017

In the US and the UK, the left could learn something from Bruce Springsteen: to articulate a different narrative about collective identities – about how people 'lost control' – it must talk in a common language.

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My own private basic income

Karl Widerquist 27 June 2017

One person’s experience becoming a business owner shows how our economy is based on luck rather than merit and how it rewards people who own stuff rather than people who do stuff.

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The curious rise of the ‘white left’ as a Chinese internet insult

Chenchen Zhang 11 May 2017

Meet the Chinese netizens who combine a hatred for the ‘white left’ with a love of US president Donald Trump.

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Why stories matter

Paul Tritschler 26 April 2017

Stories cultivate the frequently forgotten yet uniquely human traits that build solidarity.

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Ukraine: sex work in times of war

Valeria Costa-Kostritsky 3 April 2017

Ukraine’s military conflict and economic crisis are affecting the country’s sex workers. Read how these women’s lives and concerns are changing, in their own words.

Seeing the myth in human rights

Jenna Reinbold 29 March 2017

To call human rights a “myth” would appear to discredit them, but myth was central in drafting the Universal Declaration. Español.

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Don’t mention Jesus! Why excluding beliefs from the public sphere is mistaken

Christina Easton 29 March 2017

Should we hide our deepest values in the public sphere or shout them from the rooftops?

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When Black is not the only colour

Kamila Zahno 20 February 2017

Too Black for the adoption agencies but not Black enough for the political campaigners. On growing up an adoptee of mixed heritage in Britain.

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The internet can spread hate, but it can also help to tackle it

Mana Farooghi 18 January 2017

Hate picks no sides—it merely fills the gaps left by broken communication.

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End of the line: surveillance, precarity and resistance in the call centre

Jamie Woodcock 13 January 2017

I spent six months undercover in call centres, researching how workers are subject to constant watch, psychological pressure, and what they do to resist. This is what I discovered.

Listen to a recorded audio version of this article on curio.io.

Why do people go to cat cafes? Loneliness and relaxation in a time of neoliberalism

Lorraine Plourde 5 January 2017

After I began researching the explosion of ‘cat cafes’ in post-economic bubble Japan, I discovered an entire healing industry devoted to the commodification of intimacy.

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Severe ME left me in a world of pain and darkness. 26 years on, why is it still so poorly understood?

Naomi Whittingham 19 December 2016

We need to draw attention not only to the illness itself, but the political neglect that allows it to continue destroying lives.

Listen to a recorded audio version of this article courtesy of curio.io.

‘A training in violence’: the connecting line between France’s ‘war on drugs’ and jihadism

Johann Hari 19 August 2016

In France, there are many ways in which the pool of violence caused by drug prohibition bleeds into home-grown jihadism. But there is an alternative.

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Whose data is it anyway?

Elinor Carmi 13 June 2016

Collection, categorisation, and experimentation on people’s data are presented as legitimate because online advertising is funding the free internet. But what about privacy, free expression, and autonomy?

Listen to a recorded audio version of this article courtesy of curio.io.

I discovered the truth about Singapore's 'war on drugs'. Now I campaign against the death penalty

Kirsten Han 18 May 2016

The Singaporean criminal justice system expected Yong Vui Kong to die for a mistake he’d made when he was just 19 years old. There are many other stories like his.

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Is unearned income acceptable?

Andrew Sayer 19 January 2015

The rich get rich through wealth extraction, not wealth creation. It’s time that was put to an end.

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Is cruelty the key to prosperity?

Margaret Somers and Fred Block 27 October 2014

According to many politicians, removing benefits is necessary to compel the unemployed to work even if their children suffer as a consequence. What’s the origin of this idea?

Listen to a recorded audio version of this article courtesy of curio.io.