Inside the unique London community built by residents to defy housing discrimination | Aeon Videos
‘It was a very spiritual thing to do.’ How Black Londoners built a community – and...
A history of the pleasures and powers of showing the nude body | Aeon Essays
Naturists believed nudity was profoundly beneficial to society. In order to spread the message, they took...
With human help, AIs are generating a new aesthetics. The results are trippy | Aeon Videos
Running images through an AI feedback loop generates a trippy wave of visuals unbound from the...
Why the pull of addictive cravings is so hard to resist | Aeon Essays
The neuroscientific picture of addiction overlooks the psychological and social factors that make cravings so hard...
From manners to mud – two women recall coming of age in Victorian London | Aeon Videos
Two 90-year-old women remember the clothes, manners and copious mud of Victorian London when they were...
Eric Voegelin, Hans Kelsen and the debate over Nazism | Aeon Essays
Eric Voegelin and Hans Kelsen fled the Nazis. In the US, they clashed over the nature...
The joys and complications of raising a baby without gender in a binary world | Aeon Videos
‘It’s a celebration of gender’: when a couple sets out to raise their baby gender-neutral, there...
Virtual medicine and the ethics of presence and absence | Aeon Essays
For over a century telemedicine has promised healthcare for all. But will it ever replace seeing...
Why nonhuman beings should be granted personhood rights | Aeon Essays
She has deep emotions, complex social needs and a large, elephant brain. Her legal personhood should...
Bodies, bikes and groovy music propel this stylish classic film from 1965 | Aeon Videos
Follow the mesmerising movements of the peloton on a ride through the Canadian countryside, via this...
Parwati Soepangat’s pioneering Buddhist feminist theology | Aeon Essays
In Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim nation, Parwati Soepangat pioneered a Buddhist feminist theology with deep...
Can art in a swanky restaurant ever be transcendent? On Rothko’s Seagram Murals | Aeon Videos
Through his painting, Rothko sought meaning in a disenchanted world. A lucrative commission challenged his artistic...
States have a moral responsibility to settle their debts | Aeon Essays
Even when individual perpetrators and victims are dead, states and institutions have a responsibility to make...
Like pop music, humpback whale songs spread, mutate, and fall out of fashion | Aeon Videos
Humpback whale songs spread through the oceans like pop music, raising deeper questions about whale cultural...
The legacies of Calvinism in the Dutch empire | Aeon Essays
In the 17th century, Dutch proselytisers set out for Asia, Africa and the Americas. The legacy...
Why did the Romans create a massive, entirely impractical map of their empire? | Aeon Videos
Unravelling the mysteries of the only known map of the Roman world – spanning from Spain...
A history of botany and colonialism touched off by a moss bed | Aeon Essays
Inside a rainforest or on the city pavement, moss asks so little yet offers so much:...
The staggering cruelty of Ireland’s Church-run ‘mother and baby homes’ | Aeon Videos
‘If you got pregnant, that was a crime’: uncovering the Catholic zealotry and cruelty of Ireland’s...
Why Ken Burns got the prohibition story so very, very wrong | Aeon Essays
Ken Burns’s account of prohibition tells a popular story of booze in America. The historical record...
Peter Singer charts the path from Hegelian philosophy to Marxist revolution | Aeon Videos
How Hegel’s ‘notoriously obscure’ philosophy of history revolutionised the world via Marx, as explained by Peter...
Ten questions about the hard limits of human intelligence | Aeon Essays
Science and mathematics may never fully capture the physical universe. Are there hard limits to human...
Historical data is not a kitten, it’s a sabre-toothed tiger | Aeon Essays
Is history a matter of individual agency and action, or of finding and quantifying underpinning structures...
A peace activist’s harrowing account of nuclear war is a visceral case for disarmament | Aeon Videos
‘You are all children of the atomic age’: an award-winning 1982 documentary shows the horrors of...
Can cities learn to embrace wetlands while letting them be wild? | Aeon Essays
Unkempt, beguiling and lacking conventional geometry, wetlands bring a roguish, raffish wildness to the city -...
An interstellar voyage explores the ‘paradox’ of twins separated by light years | Aeon Videos
Trek light years into deep space to explore time dilation and the ‘twin paradox’ at the...
How xenobots reshape our understanding of genetics | Aeon Essays
The more we understand how cells produce shape and form, the more inadequate the idea of...
Why a journeyman boxer finds contentment in the art of losing | Aeon Videos
How a journeyman boxer gave up on the dream of a heavyweight title, and found contentment...
Can medicine help those with multiple chemical sensitivity? | Aeon Essays
People with multiple chemical sensitivity seem to be allergic to the world. What, if anything, can...
Living off-grid on a remote Scottish island is a mix of rejection and acceptance | Aeon Videos
After a breakup, Gill moved to an an off-the-grid community on the Scottish island of Erraid....
Why the People’s Republic of China embraced Paul Robeson | Aeon Essays
His communism brought the great American singer Paul Robeson trouble in the US, but helped make...
At the movies with Pauline Kael – in the arthouse cinema where she got her start | Aeon Videos
Pauline Kael was a legendary film critic. But first, she wrote programme notes for a beloved...
How primordial black holes might explain dark matter | Aeon Essays
Could primordial black holes from the beginning of time explain ‘dark matter’, the mysterious missing mass...
‘Let me dream you into my reality’: memories illuminate an unthinkable isolation | Aeon Videos
‘You can smile at the past but longing is for the memory you don’t have yet’...
Why sentencing people to life in prison makes no kind of sense | Aeon Essays
It is unjust, cruel and profoundly wasteful to consign a person to prison for life. A...
Journey deep into the Philippine forest in search of the world’s largest, rarest eagle | Aeon Videos
The Philippine eagle is the world’s largest and rarest. Can incredible close-up images save this masterpiece...
Buddhists missionaries let prospective converts come to them | Aeon Essays
Buddhist monks have mostly escaped the label of proselytisers, but they’ll still spread the word to...
What does an AI make of what it sees in a contemporary art museum? | Aeon Videos
When AIs visit a modern art museum, their reactions are both funny and revealing of the...
How urban density can make our neighbourhoods better | Aeon Essays
Urban density was once seen as a sign of unhealthiness and poverty. But today it is...
How the first woman of colour to be elected to the US Congress remade education | Aeon Videos
The odds-defying story of how the US congresswoman Patsy Takemoto Mink ushered in a revolution in...
On the moral virtues of mischief and mischievous people | Aeon Essays
Mischievousness requires humour, wit and a playful humaneness: qualities that make for a particular kind of...
A history of kidults, from Hello Kitty to Disney weddings | Aeon Essays
To understand why so many adults are acting just like children, don’t blame Millennials – look...
Wesley wants to solve the rooftop mystery – but does he have what it takes? | Aeon Videos
There’s a mysterious rocket on a rooftop in LA. Does Wesley have it in him to...
Dogs are symbolic containers of human hopes, desires and vices | Aeon Essays
In all its baroque and sometimes cruelly overbred forms, the dog is a paramount symbol of...
Tantra is, and was, a subversive philosophy of feminine power | Aeon Videos
A deeper look at Tantra’s long history reveals the far-reaching influence of this subversive philosophy of...
How a small island capital reimagines the bureaucratic state | Aeon Essays
Buka Town in Bougainville shows how bureaucratic states could be reimagined, not as concrete buildings but...
From roaring fire and molten glass an artist creates a healing ritual | Aeon Videos
An artist heals himself and his ancestral home from past trauma through the near-alchemical process of...
Why Purgatory is less a holding pattern and more a tribute to love | Aeon Essays
Think less of a holding pen for Heaven and more as a flow of love from...
Producing food while restoring the planet – a glimpse of farming in the future | Aeon Videos
It’s time for a new agricultural revolution. How can conservation-oriented farming work with the environment to...
Downtime is not an option – meet the stewards of the cloud | Aeon Essays
Hot, strenuous and unsung. There is nothing soft and fluffy about the caretaking work that enables...
Ancient Greek sculptures were colourful. Why does the white marble ideal persist? | Aeon Videos
Ancient Greek sculpture is pearly white to us but the ancients themselves wouldn’t recognise the statues...