The Forum

Are we entering an era when robots will finally liberate people, and particularly women, from the drudgery of housework? There is certainly a buzz around domestic robots right now and every month seems to bring us a new autonomous machine that can fold your clothes or stack your dirty dishes. But while impressive, these robots are still much slower and clumsier than any human, even a child. The fo...

One of the first recorded examples of a marriage ceremony is dated more than 4000 years ago in Mesopotamia. And it seems that through the ages, weddings have never lost their appeal. The global wedding industry is today worth billions of dollars, and it is one that keeps on growing. While aspects of weddings differ across many cultures, they celebrate the coming together of two people in a form of...

When magazines first emerged, they were the preserve of an elite who could afford to pay for them. But as time went on, the cost of paper fell, printing technology became more streamlined, literacy improved and would-be publishers spotted an opportunity to connect with audiences hungry for information and entertainment. Magazines found a place to appeal to all types of interest, in the same way th...

The speed with which cinema caught the public’s imagination is remarkable. The first film screenings took place in the 1890s and just two decades later, in the US alone there were thousands of nickelodeons and other spaces where you could watch a movie. Luxurious picture palaces followed soon after and not just in the West: some of India’s Art Deco cinemas are real feasts for the eyes. But the arr...

The quality of customer service can make or break a company. That has always been true but the kind of customer experience we now expect when things go wrong with our purchases is vastly different from what we wanted half a century ago. 1960s answering services, the new organisations managing calls on behalf of businesses, relied on a single technology: the telephone. Now a firm needs to offer its...

Nostalgia is one of those complicated emotions: we long to be transported to a place or moment in the past that we have loved but at the same time feel sad that it has gone forever. It is also a bit of a slippery intellectual concept: regarded as a malady when the term was first coined in the 17th century, nostalgia is now thought to be benign or even mildly therapeutic. And beyond personal recoll...

Airports: at their most basic level places to fly from to reach destinations near and far. And yet so much more. Iszi Lawrence and guests take a look at the evolution of airports, from their beginnings as military airstrips to the modern-day behemoths with their luxury shopping outlets, gardens and art galleries. The early European airports were modelled on railway stations, as that was the only b...

What is the purpose of libraries in the era of the internet and AI? Whether at a school or in a community, libraries used to be key providers of information and enjoyment for many. But now, in a digital age, more books and periodicals are available online than even the biggest library can hold. If terabytes of text can now be stored on a single laptop, do we need to think differently about the way...

From Colombia to Vietnam and beyond, the US dollar is the currency in which much of international business is conducted, and which many people outside the US use as a means of exchange and a store of value. So how did a country with just over 4 percent of the world’s population come to dominate global banking and trade? When the position of the US dollar as the linchpin of global commerce was conf...

Where do charismatic personalities come from? Are they people born with special or even divine gifts? Or have they simply mastered a few effective techniques for cordial social interaction that anyone can learn? As business, entertainment and politics increasingly turn into popularity contests conducted through social media and TV, charisma seems to matter more and more: hence the proliferation of...

When the writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed off his most famous literary creation, Sherlock Holmes, readers were so angry that thousands cancelled their subscriptions to the magazine in which the stories appeared. The editor and Conan Doyle himself were overwhelmed with letters from a furious public - fans who instead of accepting the death of their favourite fictional character then started to...

Jewellery can enthral us in many ways: it can delight, inspire and uplift us or it can transport us to the place where we acquired it. It can also make us avaricious or jealous. But why? What explains our enduring fascination with shiny metal and colourful stones? Iszi Lawrence is joined by Dr. Emily Stoehrer, Senior Curator of Jewelry at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and author of several books...

Do you find it difficult to get a good night's sleep? If you do, you are not alone. According to the US National Institutes of Health, between 6 and 30 per cent of adults suffer from insomnia or lack of restorative sleep. Since the establishment of sleep medicine a century ago, we have learnt a lot about the causes of sleeplessness. And yet, as the continuing development of new sleep aids demonstr...

The first public run of the Japanese ‘bullet train’, the Shinkansen, on the 1st of October 1964, captured public imagination worldwide. And it wasn’t just the train’s sleek look or its high speed that made the headlines. Behind the train’s futuristic exterior lay a whole host of engineering innovations: new pantographs, automatic signalling, revolutionary drive units. Since then, very fast train t...

During the Covid-19 pandemic, many people found that keeping a diary was one way of reducing stress during uncertain times. They also felt that it was important to chart their day to day experience of a historic moment in world history. Such diaries will be valuable sources in years to come for historians, providing future scholars with a glimpse into the lives of ordinary people. These diaries fo...

Humans have always co-existed with mountains, as ancient remains found in glaciers prove. But our interest in them may have been more spiritual or religiously motivated, rather than as a place to go to improve our health and wellbeing. In some cultures today, mountains are still considered to be the home of deities. So when did mountaineering become a popular pastime and how did the obsession with...

Many of us remember the first portable music device we owned: a transistor radio, a boombox, a Walkman or perhaps an iPod. We might even recall the songs we played on it. But we might be less aware of how profoundly audio technology developments from the 1950s to 2000s changed the ways in which we consume music and other audio outside of the home or concert venue. Transistor radios allowed outdoor...

Among all the talk about ‘knowledge economy’ it is easy to forget that universal schooling is a relatively new phenomenon. Mandated first in a few European countries in the 18th century, it did not reach many others until the 20th. And the idea that women have an equal right to be educated frequently encountered stiff opposition, often from the privileged who feared that knowledgeable females woul...

In February 2024, the renowned Indian geneticist Dr. MS Swaminathan was posthumously awarded the country’s highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna. This was in recognition of the dramatic increase in the yields of food staples, such as rice and wheat, that Indian agriculture experienced under his stewardship of the ‘green revolution’ in the 20th century. That revolution is credited with saving m...

‘Always pass the salt and pepper together, even if your fellow diner has asked just for one of them’. That’s the standard advice given by countless dining etiquette manuals, one of the many rules regarding proper manners that have been handed down from generation to generation. But what if some of the rules have become outdated, silly or just wrong? And why do we have etiquette in the first place?...

Supermarkets: they are ubiquitous yet hard to define, lauded and vilified in roughly equal measures, and in many countries they have a huge influence on what we eat. Technological innovations, big social changes and new shopping habits have all shaped their development and today’s megastores are a far cry from their small-scale ancestors of the 1930s. And yet, some quirks of supermarket design rem...

In the 1990s, an advert for a brand of chocolate depicted a sophisticated gathering hosted by the foreign ambassador of an unspecified country. It hinted at a gilded existence of cocktail parties and small talk among influential, wealthy guests. Iszi Lawrence finds out how the stereotype of the diplomatic world compares with the reality of international relations. Who does the real work behind the...

The humble plastic bag is actually a marvel of engineering: it is cheap, light, strong, waterproof and it has conquered the world. In countries where plastic bags have been banned, they are still being smuggled in. The environmental pollution and other problems that discarded plastic can cause has made it a focus of passionate debate. But is plastic really the problem or is it our increasing use o...

Political parties come in all shapes and sizes and their ideas are just as varied. But what kind of parties best reflect 21st-century society? How do we, as voters, choose between them at elections? What are their ever-increasing expenses spent on? And - perhaps most importantly - how well do political parties respond to the needs and views of the public? Iszi Lawrence discusses these questions wi...

We can probably all think of examples of bad bosses – the people who we love to gossip about with our colleagues outside work. And even if you’re lucky enough to have had good experiences of management, you may be familiar with bad bosses from popular culture. But what makes a good manager and how can you inspire people in the workplace? It’s a question that’s been debated since the Industrial Rev...