All Issues   ·  Issue 01 · Spring 2025

Origins

Where does identity begin? Before language, before memory, before the self can name itself — something is already there. Twelve writers explore what came first.

Origins is about what precedes choice. Before you could decide who to be, a great deal had already been decided — by the body you were given, the language you were born into, the stories your family told about who they were. These twelve pieces ask what that means. They do not agree. That is the point.

— Sofia Rakhimova, Editor in Chief

In this issue — 12 pieces
  1. I Am Not the Same Person I Was Ten Years Ago. Am I?

    24 min
  2. The Default Mode Network and the Wandering Self

    12 min
  3. Mirror Neurons and the Architecture of Empathy

    8 min
  4. The Languages That Shape What We Can Feel

    10 min
  5. The False Memory Factory

    16 min
  6. Collective Identity and the Myth of the Individual

    14 min
  7. Free Will, Determinism, and the Feeling of Agency

    18 min
  8. On Being Called a Foreigner in My Own Country

    11 min
  9. What Instagram Did to How We Present Ourselves

    9 min
  10. The Neuroscience of Code-Switching

    13 min
  11. Writing in a Second Language, Thinking in a Third

    15 min
  12. A Conversation with Anil Seth on Consciousness

    20 min

We are shaped by the stories we inherit and the ones we choose to tell.

— Editorial, Issue 01
Coming next

Issue 02 — Threshold

On change, transition, and the moment before you become someone you do not yet recognize.

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