Hillbilly Elegy: a memoir of a family and culture in crisis by JD Vance

Appalachia. No place like it. A place often romanticised and, consequently, misunderstood. A place that holds deep secrets and unspeakable tragedy.

12.2018 | Peter van der Walt

Science fiction becomes science fact

First the dreamers, then the engineers … how much of the technology in our lives today do we owe to stories of an imagined future?

12.2018 | Alistair Duff

Climate change

The rise of anti-science discourse: forehead-slapping conversations with climate change deniers.

12.2018 | Kim Segel

The money tree

Growing up in a strict, very middle-class family in the 1940s and 1950s and learning the virtue of thrift, “money does not grow on trees” was a constant refrain. But there is a tree which grows money.

12.2018 | Clarence Dreyer

Superhero films − how big genres live and die

Although the superhero genre has been around since the mid-1940s, over the past two decades these films have occupied the top spot among all genres available to us, on the big and small screen alike.

11.2018 | Lee Blake

Don’t believe me

In most knowledge systems doubt excludes you from membership. Questioning authority, tradition and dogma is taboo. But in science, doubt is the key to entry.

11.2018 | André Croucamp

Travelling through Africa with a salty narrator

Arja Salafranca reviews Zukiswa Wanner’s Hardly Working, a travel memoir brimming with astute observations and wry humour.

11.2018 | Arja Salafranca

Expats and immigrants

“I am German when we win, an immigrant when we lose.” – Mesut Ozil

But what is the difference?

11.2018 | Nicole Wills

The Blue Zone phenomenon

Where to go to live longer … and happier.

11.2018 | Chrisoula Adonopoulos

The profit made from war and words

It is in documenting our conflicts that propaganda first began.

06.2018 | Lee Blake

But like, you know, how did it take over the language?

We all use them… even though we are not specifically aware of doing so.

06.2018 | Peter Dearlove

Are genres gendered?

Why are the majority of memoirs written by women? Is it because they relate better to their subjects?

06.2018 | Tendani Mulaudzi

Don’t worry about the last fish in the sea

Catching the last fish in the sea should be the least of your worries. Here’s why.

06.2018 | Jon Stilwell

Nicknames

They may be badges of honour, scars of shame, compliments or insults – and they can only become stamps when seasoned by time.

06.2018 | Peter Dearlove

Observations on the entrepreneur and the corporate animal – a biased view from an entrepreneur

Is time of less value in big buildings?

05.2018 | Nicole Wills

An analysis of President Donald Trump’s use of language

Is Trump’s unique brand of presidential oratory deliberate and strategic, is it the disjointed output of a disordered mind, or is it something else?

04.2018 | Tiffany Markman

Dirty John

Dirty John is the crack cocaine of podcasts. Just ask any one of the five million listeners who got hooked on the series within the first three weeks of its launch.

04.2018 | Denise Slabbert and Nicole Wills

Anger Series: Kids and anger – let’s get them while they’re young

To address issues of violence, we need to start with children, and boys in particular. As social reformer, writer and statesman Frederick Douglass said: “It’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

04.2018 | Martin Scheepers

My Special Place Series: Georgina Thomson

Paris and home – two very different places, but both are special places for Georgina Thomson, director of Dance Forum.

01.2018 | Arja Salafranca

AI Series: The impact of artificial intelligence on our work identity

The rise of advanced artificial intelligence is real and lurks on the horizon, requiring a significant shift in the way we view ourselves and our place in society.

01.2018 | Barry Morisse

AI Series: Can machines make ethical choices?

Once we start to see our ethics reflected back to us in the form of machine decision-making, are we going to like what we see?

01.2018 | Barry Morisse

Weed tourism means big business

Knowing that cannabis and the tourism dollar are fast friends would most likely have Bob Marley rolling about in his grave.

12.2017 | Denise Slabbert

Anger Series: Taking a long hard look at anger (and violence)

Read the headlines on any given day and you’ll find a new story in which the violent details take your breath away. How do we begin to fix that?

12.2017 | Martin Scheepers

Why service delivery successes in South Africa don’t always translate into community satisfaction

Despite the refrain to the contrary, living standards in South Africa today are much higher than at any point in the history of the country.

10.2017 | Frans Cronje

The history of IQ

An 11-year-old Harvard undergrad inspired the ubiquitous saying “early ripe, early ruin”.

10.2017 | Alistair Duff

Wanting to work – the story of South Africa’s labour market since 1994

South Africa has not been experiencing jobless growth since 1994. Rather, it has been suffering from a skills mismatch.

07.2017 | Frans Cronje

The unlikely aesthetic premium that millennials are willing to pay for luxury goods

How millennials rent luxury lifestyles – and savvy brands are cashing in.

07.2017 | Victoria Aadnesgaard

The ethical sources of terrorist power: Understanding asymmetric war

Conventional wars are fought between states. Asymmetrical wars are different, and so are the weapons.

07.2017 | Mervyn Frost

Have you floated before? Money for nothing

The sensory deprivation tank seems fundamentally different to all other luxuries. It promises nothing.

06.2017 | Deena Dinat