How Dardistan became one of the most multilingual places on Earth | Aeon Essays
At the crossroads of south and central Asia lies one of the world’s most multilingual places,...
Death is a trip – how new research links near-death and DMT experiences | Aeon Videos
What does it feel like to die? What near-death experiences and hallucinogenic drugs can tell us...
How the brains of social animals synchronise and expand one another | Aeon Essays
Bat friends, monkeys sharing, and humans holding hands: the brains of social animals synchronise and expand...
Photographs of rainforests dissolving in acid strike a beautiful note of warning | Aeon Videos
This arresting work of audiovisual art alerts us to the tragedy of deforestation by dissolving images...
Adaptive technologies have helped Stephen Hawking, and many more, find their voice | Aeon Videos
How technology gives people with speaking disabilities a voice in a society where their rich inner...
Without a Rosetta Stone, can linguists decipher Minoan script? | Aeon Essays
Linear B has yielded its secrets, but Linear A remains elusive. Can linguistic analysis unlock the...
Experience the dazzling displays that fireflies create when humans are far away | Aeon Videos
Protected from human activity and artificial light, synchronous fireflies in southern India create dazzling displays -...
‘When you’re done, you stay human!’ What gender transition means to John | Aeon Videos
‘When you’re done, you stay human!’ A conversation about gender transition, between John and his twin...
Simone de Beauvoir on facing old age and avoiding bad faith | Aeon Essays
Here’s a puzzle: why do we neglect and disdain the one vulnerable group we all eventually...
Solaris and beyond – Stanisław Lem’s antidotes to the bores of American sci-fi | Aeon Videos
Solaris and beyond: how Stanisław Lem’s visionary sci-fi anticipated the technologies and anxieties of the modern...
What types of conflict are good for democracy? | Aeon Essays
Democracy is a system of politics that has disagreement at its heart. But how do we...
A history of the smile through art, culture and etiquette | Aeon Essays
How our toothy modern smile was invented by a confluence of French dentistry and Parisian portrait-painting...
To renew Yosemite, California should embrace a once-outlawed Indigenous practice | Aeon Videos
To renew Yosemite Valley, California should embrace once-outlawed Indigenous practices of managing fire to sustain resources...
The female body under the female gaze poses a monster problem | Aeon Essays
When 1970s women artists put the female body under the female gaze, why did the critics...
Before the Beatles dropped acid, a BBC workshop was creating far-out sounds | Aeon Videos
High-tech gadgetry and practical ingenuity came together in the BBC workshop that jumpstarted an electronic music...
What do the dreams of nonhuman animals say about their lives? | Aeon Essays
The psychic lives of nonhuman dreamers reveal colours, harmonies and beauties of which we had little...
Language is a game, but not a frivolous one – John Searle on Ludwig Wittgenstein | Aeon Videos
Ludwig Wittgenstein and the ‘language game’ we all play but can never escape: John Searle in...
Zhuangzi’s ancient fable about the personal and the political | Aeon Essays
Zhuangzi thought Confucians were like frogs trapped in a well, unable to perceive the limitlessness of...
Is paying with hand-drawn banknotes artistry or forgery? The knotty case of J S G Boggs | Aeon Videos
Is it forgery to draw banknotes and call them art? The audacious art project that changed...
What do caged animals really tell us about our mental lives? | Aeon Essays
Scientists study animals to illuminate human psychology. So why are we blind to the mental lives...
Portugal stole Goa’s lands and narratives. Can they ever truly be returned? | Aeon Videos
‘What is liberation when so much has already been taken?’ A lyrical meditation on cultural memory...
From enemies to neighbours: British merchants in the Maghreb | Aeon Essays
For a century before the rise of European empires, Britons and North Africans lived together in...
In the jungle of Suriname, Maria Sibylla Merian discovered insect metamorphosis | Aeon Videos
Maria Sibylla Merian’s groundbreaking illustrations of the metamorphosis of insects are a tribute to patient observation...
The psychologist Carl Rogers and the art of active listening | Aeon Essays
To listen well is not only a kindness to others but also, as the psychologist Carl...
How do we solve the paradox of protection in Antarctica? | Aeon Essays
The most protected place on Earth has become one of the most threatened – and threatening....
The brain repurposed our sense of physical distance to understand social closeness | Aeon Videos
How our brains repurpose primitive circuitry to help us grasp abstract concepts, behave socially and navigate...
Why we need a new kind of education: Imagination Studies | Aeon Essays
We need a new kind of approach to learning that shifts imagination from the periphery to...
You need to make friends with pain to run through the Grand Canyon and back | Aeon Videos
An endurance runner explains how pain, elation and transcendence converge on the 50-mile trail through the...
A rescue mission on behalf of women philosophers | Aeon Essays
In the long 19th century, many women philosophers were marginalised or ignored. We need to rediscover...
Grotesque imagery meets religious conservatism in Hieronymus Bosch’s art | Aeon Videos
Take a deep dive into Hieronymus Bosch’s Renaissance triptych on earthly pleasures to see its deeply...
How to write a Hollywood blockbuster, with Aristotle’s Poetics | Aeon Essays
Today, the ancient Greek storyteller would be winning Oscars. To learn how, turn to the Poetics,...
Why a sculptor pivoted from gallery installations to big-box stores design | Aeon Videos
How the US architect and artist James Wines ‘put art where you least expect to find...
Psychotherapy is meant to help. But what about when it harms? | Aeon Essays
Some psychotherapeutic approaches are not only ineffective, they’re actively harmful. We’re now starting to identify them...
Spectacular fractal patterns emerge when electricity meets a wooden surface | Aeon Videos
An electric circuit, a salt solution and a wooden board demonstrate how electricity ignites, in this...
Günther Anders, a forgotten prophet for the 21st century? | Aeon Essays
From the ashes of the Second World War, Günther Anders forecast a new catastrophe: technology would...
How a verbal paradox shattered the notion of total certainty in mathematics | Aeon Videos
How Kurt Gödel used the paradox ‘This statement cannot be proved’ to shatter the notion of...
How the planet became the prime political entity of our century | Aeon Essays
How did the planet replace the nation-state to become the prime political object of the 21st...
When clinging to old hopes gets in the way of healing and growth | Aeon Essays
Hope is usually seen as a positive agent of change that spares us from pain. But...
A tender poem doubles as a guide to sitting comfortably in one’s own company | Aeon Videos
‘You are such an interesting conversation.’ Pádraig Ó Tuama’s tender poem is a guide to being...
How Wittgenstein might ‘solve’ both philosophy and quantum physics | Aeon Essays
Metaphysical debates in quantum physics don’t get at ‘truth’ – they’re nothing but a form of...
How a God-fearing Jewish woman found atheism – and bacon – in her later years | Aeon Videos
The Jewish woman who turned away from God thanks to ‘the Google’, finding atheism – and...
The Black Panthers fed more hungry kids than the state of California | Aeon Essays
It wasn’t all young men and guns: the Black Panther Party’s programs fed more hungry kids...
Before he leaves to go to war, Artem, 18, says goodbye to the man who raised him | Aeon Videos
‘Make sure you come back alive’: the last days at home with his grandfather before Artem,...
After Jacques Derrida, what’s next for French philosophy? | Aeon Essays
A golden generation of French philosophers dismantled truth and other traditional ideas. What next for their...
A mindbending trip that summons the forgotten women of surrealism | Aeon Videos
The feminist academic who heard the call of the forgotten women of surrealism and went on...
Human exceptionalism is a danger to all, human and nonhuman | Aeon Essays
In a tight spot, you’d probably intuit that a human life outweighs an animal’s. There are...
To see the Universe more clearly, think in terms of processes, not objects | Aeon Videos
View the Universe in terms of processes, not objects, and you’ll see improvements in science, public...
Life in early cities: on neighbourhoods and energised crowding | Aeon Essays
To understand why early cities thrived, look not to the temples of kings but to their...
How machine learning can help historians decode ancient inscriptions | Aeon Videos
How the deep neural network that can restore, date and place ancient texts is working to...
How we could end child hunger by making different choices | Aeon Essays
Last year 200 million children did not get enough to eat, yet it would be cheap...