Meet Haddon Salt – the would-have-been Colonel Sanders of fish and chips | Aeon Videos
Haddon Salt, the ‘Colonel Sanders of fish and chips’, and his salty story of the fast-food...
Imagine Scythia’s fierce warrior women, the real Amazons | Aeon Essays
Let your imagination take flight to the hunting, riding, adventurous lives of Scythia’s warrior women, the...
How insects become airborne, slowed down to a speed the human eye can appreciate | Aeon Videos
Watch how praying mantises, beetles and weevils become airborne, shown at a speed slow enough for...
An unflinching speech encouraged Germany to face the Nazi past | Aeon Essays
In 1985 West Germany’s president gave an unflinching speech. It helped a new generation to face...
Life in one of Canada’s northernmost villages, where the land is sinking into the sea | Aeon Videos
Life in Tuktoyaktuk, one of Canada’s northernmost villages, where the summers grow longer and the land...
Why the great books still speak for themselves, and for us | Aeon Essays
Read with love, rather than critical distance, the classics can provide tools to subvert oppressive hierarchies...
An artistic collaboration across centuries brings a 1432 battle scene to arresting life | Aeon Videos
Horses leap and arrows fly as knights charge into battle in a Renaissance masterpiece brought to...
True hope takes a hard look at reality, then makes a plan | Aeon Essays
Even when you know that prospects are grim, hope can help. It’s not just a feeling,...
A funeral director takes in bodies that social stigma leaves unclaimed | Aeon Videos
‘We treat people like they are a member of our family’: a funeral director who takes...
How chocolate went from exotic curiosity to worldwide commodity | Aeon Essays
The humble cocoa bean’s journey from its Amerindian origins to worldwide dominance is a lesson in...
What Zen Buddhist riddles reveal about knowledge and the unknowable | Aeon Videos
To achieve enlightenment, resist the urge to know the unknowable with these unsolvable riddles from Zen...
Horse-human cooperation is a neurobiological miracle | Aeon Essays
The horse is a prey animal, the human a predator. Our shared trust and athleticism is...
Reading the strings and knots that keep the secrets of the Inka Empire | Aeon Videos
From military strategies to tax obligations – what khipu knots reveal about the inner workings of...
Economics is once again becoming a worldly science | Aeon Essays
After generations of ‘blackboard economics’, Berkeley and MIT are leading a return to economics that studies...
Tension, bureaucracy and deep humanity define life aboard a refugee rescue ship | Aeon Videos
Flickers of joy punctuate the chaos of life aboard a refugee rescue ship, but rescue is...
Paraconsistent logics find structure in our inconsistent world | Aeon Essays
When logic fails to make sense of a world noisy with inconsistency, paraconsistent logics hold out...
Absorb the infectious rhythms of Setapa – a joyous dance from southern Africa | Aeon Videos
Absorb the infectious energy of Setapa, a dance from southern Africa, in all its rhythmic stomping...
There’s more to Sparta than martial valour and austerity | Aeon Essays
Mythological home of Helen, war-making polis of Leonidas and now a modest municipality: the city is...
The history of holes tells a story of power and potential | Aeon Essays
Dig into the voids, pin-pricks and cut-outs of art and history, and those absences speak volumes...
Honouring the caribou, in dreams and memories from an Innu singer-songwriter | Aeon Videos
Interweaving dreams and memories of hunting caribou, Florent Vollant’s beautiful songs preserve his Indigenous culture’s spirit...
Anger is a state of agitated enervation that moves the world | Aeon Essays
Is anger like energy, forever changing form but never dissipating, or part of our repertoire of...
Revisiting ‘Powers of Ten’ – what we’ve learned about the Universe since 1977 | Aeon Videos
An update to Charles and Ray Eames’s film ‘Powers of Ten’ explores what we’ve learned about...
Ours is the Waste Age: that’s the key to tranforming the future | Aeon Essays
Recognising that waste is central, not peripheral, to everything we design, make and do is key...
A dispatch from the end of travel’s brief, troubled golden age | Aeon Essays
Driven by the need for a storied life, I relished the opportunity for endless travel. Is...
It’s a massive, winged Cretaceous beast – could a human ride one? | Aeon Videos
How to fly a giant, winged Cretaceous beast – a not-entirely frivolous intro to the intricacies...
A history of disruption, from fringe ideas to social change | Aeon Essays
Major disruptions in world history follow a clear pattern. What can upheavals of the past tell...
Technology, philosophy, randomness – how Merce Cunningham pushed dance to its limits | Aeon Videos
How Merce Cunningham challenged traditional notions of storytelling in dance via technology, philosophy and randomness -...
When Stoicism is a political not just a personal virtue | Aeon Essays
You might think of it as a philosophy for turning away from the world, but ancient...
Behold as a mechanical foghorn in Shetland awakes from its year-long slumber | Aeon Videos
Behold the elegant sights and powerful sound of a mechanical foghorn in Shetland awaking from its...
Curtailing anonymity is a first step to reducing online abuse | Aeon Essays
Anonymous users generate most toxic abuse and conspiracy theories online. The right to be anonymous should...
How to fulfil the need for transcendence after the death of God | Aeon Essays
The modern world is disenchanted. God remains dead. But our need for transcendence lives on. How...
Embodied cognition seems intuitive, but philosophy can push it to some strange places | Aeon Videos
‘Your action upon the world becomes the world’s way of perceiving you’: the many strange ‘flavours’...
We should be wary about what Big History overlooks in its myth | Aeon Essays
Sweeping the human story into a cosmic tale is a thrill but we should be wary...
An unflinching look at a provocative public dissection of a ‘surplus’ zoo lion | Aeon Videos
A provocative, unflinching look at a zoo’s controversial public dissection programme asks: is it educational? Is...
A surprise story is a self-exploding confidence game | Aeon Essays
Some twists infuriate; others are brilliant. But they both use the surprise story as a self-exploding...
Models capture the world-warping physics of what happens when stars meet black holes | Aeon Videos
What happens when stars cross paths with a black hole? Computer models offer a new view...
How to fix the disaster of human roads to benefit wildlife | Aeon Essays
Human roads have utterly fragmented the world of wild animals but the engineering to reconnect the...
Eilat Mazar dug with a Bible in one hand and a spade in the other | Aeon Essays
Archaeologist Eilat Mazar dug with a spade in one hand and a Bible in the other....
An ageing artist’s unguarded thoughts on what it takes to be great – and why he lacks it | Aeon Videos
An unguarded portrait of the artist Bill Blaine reflecting on what it takes to be great...
How the French bohemian elite celebrated predatory behaviour | Aeon Essays
How did certain French intellectuals get away with preying upon young girls, shamelessly, in public and...
The astonishing resonances between patterns in nature, microscopic and cosmic | Aeon Videos
Exploring natural surfaces at a range of scales – from the microscopic to the cosmic –...
Songs of conquest from Tallis to the bells of Mexico City | Aeon Essays
From Tallis’s choral beauty to the unnerving bells of Mexico City, early modern power created a...
Workplace diversity isn’t just about equality – it’s a competitive advantage | Aeon Videos
The power of cognitive diversity is profound. In the workplace, it’s a tool for innovation that...
‘Shut up and calculate’ does a disservice to quantum mechanics | Aeon Essays
The cliché has it that the Copenhagen interpretation demands adherence without deep enquiry. That does physics...
What happened to the ideal of multireligious Arab modernity? | Aeon Essays
In 1900 my grandfather’s generation imagined a modernising Arab world, multireligious and progressive. What happened? -...
Not just a meme, but a masterpiece – why the Mona Lisa earns its exalted place in art | Aeon Videos
Diving into the literal and figurative layers behind that mysterious smile to explain why the Mona...
When is a scientific experiment like a beautiful work of art? | Aeon Essays
Science has become extraordinarily technocratic and complex. Is the simple and decisive experiment still a worthy...
How the Hindu myth of Annapurna, goddess of food, connects sustenance with spirituality | Aeon Videos
A golden bowl of porridge after a long famine – how the Hindu legend of Annapurna...
How we came to depend on the week despite its artificiality | Aeon Essays
The week is the most artificial and recent of our time counts yet it’s impossible to...
Who, exactly, authored this AI-generated spin on Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo? | Aeon Videos
To make this version of ‘Vertigo’, an artificial intelligence computer watched Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film 20...