Bookmarks (897)

A devastating loss can shatter the façade we put up for others, exposing our deepest, rawest self. A work of art can do the sameBy Julia F ChristensenRead at Aeon

Does mathematics have a ‘beauty’ problem? Sabine Hossenfelder explains why searching for elegance in nature stifles progressBy Aeon VideoWatch at Aeon

Christine Korsgaard argues that we can extend a Kantian moral framework to include other animals. But her argument failsBy Peter Godfrey-SmithRead at Aeon

The theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli sits by the fire with Hazda hunter-gatherers, pondering our evolutionary pastBy Aeon VideoWatch at Aeon

To respect exiles as real and important political actors, we should get over casting them as saints, threats or victimsBy Ashwini VasanthakumarRead at Aeon

A poignant reflection on celebrity, mourning and Kobe Bryant’s death, crafted from just a few intimate words among familyBy Aeon VideoWatch at Aeon

As a soldier, I was hard-wired to seek meaning and purpose. Gray’s philosophy helped me unhook from utopia and find peaceBy Andy OwenRead at Aeon

The ethical life means being good to ourselves, to others, and to the world. But how do you choose if these demands compete?By Irene McMullinRead at Aeon

Surveillance capitalism tracks everything we do and say, and sells that data. To save ‘free markets’, Big Tech must be stoppedBy Aeon VideoWatch at Aeon

How a country used myth and mystique to tempt global investors – and seeded a toxic Hindu nationalism in the processBy Ravinder KaurRead at Aeon

Gentle, persuasive acts of protest: Gordon Parks used his camera as a ‘weapon’ for empathy with America’s poor and powerlessBy Aeon VideoWatch at Aeon

A powerful cadre of scientists and economists sold Karl Popper’s ‘falsification’ idea to the world. They have much to answer forBy Charlotte SleighRead at Aeon

A day in the life of Maria who lives on the Camino de Santiago route in Spain and counts the pilgrims as they passBy Aeon VideoWatch at Aeon

Boned, spined, spiked, corkscrewed or double-headed: why did so much variety arise when a simple tube would do?By Emily WillinghamRead at Aeon

Sooner or later a technology capable of wiping out human civilisation might be invented. How far would we go to stop it?By Nick Bostrom & Matthew van der MerweRead at Aeon

‘It’s a trip just being out’: at the local Greyhound bus station with newly released men from the Texas State PenitentiaryBy Aeon VideoWatch at Aeon

Susan Stebbing’s little Pelican book on philosophy had a big aim: giving everybody tools to think clearly for themselvesBy Peter WestRead at Aeon

One aimless summer in Colorado, two brothers talk about girls, death and leaving home in the shadow of their fractured familyBy Aeon VideoWatch at Aeon

Americans liked to believe that Japan was Westernising through the 20th century but Japan was vigorously doing the oppositeBy Jon DavidannRead at Aeon

Oscillating atoms and international committees – the peculiar history of how we arrived at the standardised secondBy Aeon VideoWatch at Aeon

A grand research project created our origin myth that early human societies were all egalitarian, mobile and small-scaleBy Manvir SinghRead at Aeon

Can a robot pray? Does an AI have a soul? Advances in automata raise theological debates that will shape the secular worldBy Ed SimonRead at Aeon

Incredible cameraphone and drone footage from Hong Kong reveals the combustible, contested reality of street protestBy Aeon VideoWatch at Aeon

In a clinical setting, playful activities are not distractions; they take patients deep into trauma – and out the other sideBy Susanna CrossmanRead at Aeon

‘I am beside myself, beside the world’: what it’s like to slip into the acute unreality of depersonalisation disorderBy Aeon VideoWatch at Aeon

Captive orcas are tormented by boredom and family separation, but they cannot be simply released. What’s the solution?By Lori MarinoRead at Aeon

Visualising the unseeable – awesome ‘moving paintings’ inspired by quantum weirdness at the Large Hadron ColliderBy Aeon VideoWatch at Aeon

Why the finest minds in 1930s Europe believed that scientists must engage with citizens or risk losing their moral compassBy Deborah R CoenRead at Aeon

Human rights, health, the rule of law – why are these concepts inflated to the status of totalising, secular religions?By John TasioulasRead at Aeon

Each memory is in different strokes: how four siblings remember their dissident parents during Brazil’s military dictatorshipBy Aeon VideoWatch at Aeon

Jobs have become, for so many, a relentless, unsatisfying toil. Why then does the work ethic still hold so much sway?By Jamie McCallumRead at Aeon

Watch as commonplace visuals in a binary, hard-edged world melt and expand into a full-rainbow spectrum of realityBy Aeon VideoWatch at Aeon

I travelled the world and trawled the archive to unearth the hidden lessons from history’s most brilliant peopleBy Craig WrightRead at Aeon

The Plotlands are a place of makeshift beauty, more like the American frontier than the traditional, orderly English landscapeBy Aeon VideoWatch at Aeon

Cognitive scientists and corporations alike see human minds as predictive machines. Right or wrong, they will change how we thinkBy Joseph FridmanRead at Aeon

The glittering city-states of the Persian Gulf fit the classicist Moses Finley’s criteria of genuine slave societiesBy Bernard FreamonRead at Aeon

With fewer than 70 wolves left in Norway, the debate over their protection is dividing communitiesBy Aeon VideoWatch at Aeon

A pang of hunger, a stab of pain, a sense of dread – these experiences emerge on the shore where biology and culture meetBy Mallory Feldman & Kristen LindquistRead at Aeon

Free like a street dog: cynicism evolved from ‘dog philosophers’ such as Diogenes who rejected materialism and mannersBy Aeon VideoWatch at Aeon

‘Natural’ remedies are metaphysically inconsistent and unscientific. Yet they offer something that modern medicine cannotBy Alan Jay LevinovitzRead at Aeon

The immersive exhibition populating London with surreal digital sculptures by Olafur Eliasson, KAWS, Cao Fei and moreBy Aeon VideoWatch at Aeon

Samuel Beckett turned an obscure 17th-century Christian heresy into an artistic vision and an unusual personal philosophyBy Andy WimbushRead at Aeon

The skilful manipulator casts a shadow of doubt over everything that you feel or think. Therapy can bring the daylight inBy Ramani DurvasulaRead at Aeon

How do ants that can’t chew their own food survive? They kidnap other ant species and commit them to a life of servitudeBy Aeon VideoWatch at Aeon

The exclusion of poorer people from their own neighbourhoods is not just a social problem but a philosophical oneBy Daniel PutnamRead at Aeon

An intimate discussion between the pianist Kris Bowers and his grandfather Horace about ambition, race, success – and musicBy Aeon VideoWatch at Aeon

Not all Neanderthals were ‘cavemen’: half were women. What can archaeologists tell us about how they lived?By Rebecca Wragg SykesRead at Aeon

‘I come into the peace of wild things’ – how the poet Wendell Berry finds respite in the awesome now of natureBy Aeon VideoWatch at Aeon

Organisms do not evolve blindly under forces beyond their control, but shape and influence the evolutionary environment itselfBy Kevin Laland & Lynn ChiuRead at Aeon

The injunction to immerse yourself in the present might be psychologically potent, but is it metaphysically meaningful?By John Martin FischerRead at Aeon