Culture & Society for CAT RC, in 10 essays

Anthropology, sociology, food, travel, ritual and language: this is the genre where the author often argues against a common assumption. These essays help you track the claim, the counter-claim and the author's own position.

Read them in order: they go from easiest to hardest. Answer the questions under each before moving on.

1. 1The Identity Card That Turned a Label into a LineA colonial census in the 1930s took labels that had once been flexible and wrote them onto a card that outlived the empire that issued it.Medium · 2 min
2. 2The Runner Disqualified for a Car Ride and the Winner Fed StrychnineAt the St. Louis Olympics of 1904 one marathoner was thrown out for riding in a car and another was crowned after being given strychnine. The difference had less to do with fairness than with what the rule book happened to say.Medium · 2 min
3. 3The Traveller Who Never Carried the Noodle to ItalyThe story that Marco Polo brought pasta home from China is told in kitchens everywhere, yet a notary in Genoa wrote down a basket of macaroni before he returned.Medium · 2 min
4. 4The Outing That Became a Business ModelA shilling train ride to a temperance meeting in 1841 turned into the template for the package holiday. The business idea inside it was older than the holiday.Medium · 2 min
5. 5The Quiet Radicalism of NudismA reflection on nudism and how removing clothing reshapes identity, softens judgment, and reveals a more basic human connection beneath social symbols.Medium · 3 min
6. 6The Immortality of UsefulnessA philosophical reflection on whether Hanuman lives not as a body, but as a timeless force shaping human courage, discipline, and devotion.Medium · 3 min
7. 7How a Modest Note About Snow Became a HoaxA careful remark in 1911 about four Arctic roots for snow grew into the belief that whole peoples live in different worlds. The belief is easier to repeat than to test.Medium · 3 min
8. 8Ashwatthama | The Curse of ContinuingA reflection on immortality through Ashwatthama, showing how endless life becomes a burden of memory, consequence, and unfinished identity rather than a gift.Medium · 3 min
9. 9The Word Nobody InventedA Disney nanny sang a thirty four letter word in 1964 and the Sherman brothers claimed to have made it up. A court disagreed, and the dispute exposes how little anyone knows about where words come from.Medium · 3 min
10. 10The Animal Within UsCivilisation often tells a flattering story about itself. It claims that reason lifted humans above instinct and that culture replaced the wild impulses of our evolutionary past. Yet beneath the language of ambition, morality, and progress, the ancient animal within us continues to shape our desires, fears, and social behaviour. This essay explores how human civilisation is not an escape from our animal nature but an ongoing negotiation with it, where instinct supplies the energy of life and reflection attempts to guide it.Medium · 4 min

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