Should art be useful and retrain our brains or is it more important than that?

Plato throws down a challenge to us all on how to engage in free and open-ended public debate

Unthinkable: Philosopher Simone Weil died in 1943 aged 34, but she may have had the answer many of us are seeking

Unthinkable: Better start sucking up to your microwave

Unthinkable: Parents may be partly to blame for heightened anxiety among under-30s

Unthinkable: It’s only a few years since the last global economic crash. Will the next one be worse?

Unthinkable: Toxic positivity may be exacerbating a sense that we’re losing in life

Unthinkable: Irish missionaries have left an example of positive evangelisation, even if we are seeing the last of them

Unthinkable: In an era when crooks and despots cling to power at all costs, Ireland could model a different type of democracy by picking a president at random

Unthinkable: To create a shared future on this island, and internationally, we must move beyond uncritically celebrating the actions of any particular tribe

Self-help books spoon-feed us ‘lessons for life’. But are we inspired to ask better questions?

Unthinkable: Moral superiority in Ireland over ‘populist’ uprisings in the US and UK ignores how we’ve become slaves to global capital

Unthinkable: Hope is not a strategy when it comes to tackling urgent challenges like climate change

Unthinkable: We should think more about the consequences of actions and less about perceived character flaws in others

Unthinkable: Socrates said immorality is the result of ignorance - Trump is proof of that