One genetic study of over a quarter million people highlights the cognitive benefits of exercise, while another, based on 30 years of scientific literature, says the opposite. Who’s right and who’s wrong?
‘Rhetoric’ has a bad rap – but some of the original rhetoricians’ techniques can actually help foster productive conversations.
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Ryan Leack, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Ancient Greek philosophers despised the Sophists’ rhetoric because it searched for relative truth, not absolutes. But learning how to do that thoughtfully can help constructive debates.
Sure, you can try to force people to agree with you – but respectful persuasion is something else.
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France’s trade unions have managed to galvanise the largest movement in decades in opposition to pension reform. What will happen to them once the bill has been passed or abandoned?
Increasingly, the mood in the UK is leaning towards repatriating the Parthenon Marbles.
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With the discovery of several thousand new pages of Hegel’s lecture notes, fans are hoping his famously tricky philosophy may become easier to understand – this expert isn’t so sure.
Chautauqua’s lectures and performances drew hundreds of people with their promise of self-transformation.
L.E. Walker/New York Public Library
The Chautauqua movement symbolized progressive reformers’ hopes that public learning could create a healthy democracy.
Speaking in Strasbourg on 9 May, Emmanuel Macron called on the “democratic European nations adhering to our core values” to “find a new area of political cooperation, security and cooperation”.
Ludovic Marin/AFP
Inspired by François Mitterrand’s idea of a European confederation, French president Emmanuel Macron has outlined the idea of a political body that would be separate from the EU.
A man fishes the head of a statue of Queen Victoria from the Assiniboine River in Winnipeg. Her statue and a statue of Queen Elizabeth were toppled and vandalized on Canada Day.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Kelly Geraldine Malone
Movements that challenge former national icons demonstrate the importance of history-making in an age of racial reconciliation. But ‘history wars’ won’t get us anywhere.
White supremacists clash with police in Charlottesville in 2017.
Evan Nesterak/Wikipedia
Despite moments of hope, worries about the present and fears that the future may be even worse have been rising for decades. What can geopolitics teach us about the global impact of fear?
Open scholarship and the use of corporate software services such as Zoom are not always compatible.
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For science to be open, one can reasonably think that it would have to use open software. However, being completely open is not that easy.
The first debate of the U.S. presidential election was a disturbing but unsurprising display of white privileged masculinity.
(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
Bullying tactics are increasingly under scrutiny, yet the display we saw during the first U.S. presidential debate is proof that some men still think those old rules are still at play.
President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden at the first debate of the presidential campaign.
AP/Julio Cortez and AP/Patrick Semansky
They shouted, they interrupted, they insulted – and not entirely in equal measure. But Biden and Trump also touched on the issues occasionally. Our panel of experts analyzed three key exchanges.
Badgers are hunted down as ‘harmful’ species.
Pixabay
All animals plays a role in nature, and in times of biodiversity loss and climate change, hunting “common” species such as foxes and badgers is irresponsible .
Trump’s supporters appreciate his strong opinons.
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Three new approaches in the field of competitive academic debate offer ideas that could help presidential debates serve both their public purposes.
Israeli flags fly in the middle of a date plantation in the Israeli settlement of Shlomtzion in the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank on 27 January 2020.
Emmanuel Dunand/AFP
The Jordan Valley, which US president Donald Trump has proposed integrating into Israel, has been transformed by the introduction of date palms, emptying it of its Palestinian inhabitants.
Buttigieg, Sanders, Biden and Warren stand on the debate stage on Feb. 7.
AP Photo/Charles Krupa