A Palme d’Or-winning animation toys with the way our eyes perceive light | Aeon Videos
The optical illusion known as persistence of vision bursts to vivid life in this Palme d’Or...
Can music give you an orgasm? The short answer is yes | Aeon Essays
A song can take you on a journey of ecstatic arousal. Is music imitating sex, inviting...
How we can protect the vast living space of the deep ocean | Aeon Essays
Instead of letting waves of exploitation sweep through the deep ocean, we could choose to protect...
How a self-taught autistic artist mines creativity from life’s endless variations | Aeon Videos
The animated story of the autistic, self-taught artist Gregory Blackstock who mines creativity from life’s endless...
Fear not! Horror movies build community and emotional resilience | Aeon Essays
You might think that horror movies are a delicious, trashy pleasure. But watching them has surprisingly...
An afternoon with hobbyist diamond miners in Arkansas is a thing of rare beauty | Aeon Videos
Unearthing stories of trauma, struggle and love among the hobbyist miners at the Crater of Diamonds...
Women were the unseen healthcare providers of the Middle Ages | Aeon Essays
Looking past conventional histories of medicine we see that women delivered much of medieval healthcare. Just...
What can a Kurosawa classic tell us about reality, knowledge and truth? | Aeon Videos
The ‘Rashomon effect’ is real. Learn how hidden factors including biases can influence your view of...
Why is simplicity so unreasonably effective at scientific explanation? | Aeon Essays
Does the existence of a multiverse hold the key for why nature’s laws seem so simple?...
What if emotions aren’t universal but specific to each culture? | Aeon Essays
What if emotions are not universal and hardwired but exquisite acts of meaning-making specific to context...
Witness the majesty of moths taking flight at 6,000 frames per second | Aeon Videos
The incredible biophysics of moths taking flight is a spectacle to behold – especially at 6,000...
Jocelyn Bell discovered pulsars. The Nobel Prize went to her supervisor | Aeon Videos
In 1967, when Jocelyn Bell was still a postgraduate, she discovered pulsars. But the Nobel Prize...
On the art and science of making buildings sound natural | Aeon Essays
Our movies and offices are engineered to sound natural based on what rang false in the...
A bluesy ballad tells the story of Old Bet, the first circus elephant in the US | Aeon Videos
A bluesy ballad tells the captivating story of Old Bet, the first circus elephant in the...
For Arendt, hope in dark times is no match for action | Aeon Essays
For Hannah Arendt, hope is a dangerous barrier to courageous action. In dark times, the miracle...
Family history and the problem of slavery in everyday life | Aeon Essays
The story of Marie Aymard and five generations of her family tells an intimate history of...
In this 1975 lecture, the maglev train’s inventor deconstructs his ingenious design | Aeon Videos
The engineer who invented the magnetic levitation train deconstructs his ingenious design in this archival lecture...
How memories persist where bodies, and even brains, do not | Aeon Essays
How can animals whose brains have been drastically remodelled still recall their kin, their traumas and...
To know or not to know? Lillian weighs the costs of a life-changing genetic test | Aeon Videos
Lillian has a coin’s flip chance of testing positive for Huntington’s disease, a deadly condition. Should...
Belonging among the beasts and the gods in Mayan cosmology | Aeon Essays
For the K’iche’ Mayans, animals were not lower beings but neighbours, alter egos and a way...
There are many ways to make a flat map of the world – each of them a unique distortion | Aeon Videos
This clever stop-motion animation from 1947 uses fruit to show how every flat map of the...
Chairwork invites you to shift perspective on who you are | Aeon Essays
It is a powerful, liberating therapy that lets you (literally) shift perspective on who you are,...
Patients and psychiatrists fought against fascism together at Saint-Alban | Aeon Essays
Patients and psychiatrists at Saint-Alban in France fought against fascism side by side. What can we...
Liquid experiments show how beautiful things can happen when chemicals meet | Aeon Videos
See how dormant potential energy explodes in psychedelic swirls when chemicals meet by combining oils, alcohols...
Is there a symmetry between metacognition and mindreading? | Aeon Essays
Knowing the content of one’s own mind might seem straightforward but in fact it’s much more...
What is it like to clean the world for tomorrow while the rest of a city sleeps? | Aeon Videos
A nocturnal tour of Salt Lake City from the little-seen, often overlooked yet oddly meditative perspective...
How firefly flashes illuminate the physics of complex systems | Aeon Essays
Solving the mystery of how and why fireflies flash in time can illuminate the physics of...
Caring for the vulnerable opens gateways to our richest, deepest brain states | Aeon Videos
The psychologist and philosopher Alison Gopnik explains how the act of caring puts us in touch...
The idea of the West has always been in motion and in crisis | Aeon Essays
While the West belonged to a European geography, its name meant something. Now it is a...
A quantitative theory unlocks the mysteries of why we sleep | Aeon Essays
Adults sleep less than babies. Sperm whales sleep less again. A new mathematical theory unlocks the...
How did ‘personal responsibility’ evolve into its opposite, ‘everyone for themselves’? | Aeon Videos
‘Personal responsibility’ used to mean our duty to others, now it argues the opposite. How did...
Sex-ed in the US is a lesson in the complex legacy of religion | Aeon Essays
Sex education is a battlefield over morals and young bodies, and has exposed fractures in American...
The nearly forgotten origin myth of Hawaii’s third-gender healers, as told by one | Aeon Videos
A retelling of a Hawaiian story recalls how third-gender healers came to inhabit the islands, and...
Animals wrestle with the concept of death and mortality | Aeon Essays
Having a concept of death, far from being a uniquely human feat, is a fairly common...
A whirlwind tour of Hong Kong’s high-rises is an awesome meditation on urbanity | Aeon Videos
An artist finds inspiration in the repetition of Hong Kong’s vast vertical sprawl, where each window...
Amalia Holst, and how the German Enlightenment failed women | Aeon Essays
Brilliant and fierce, the philosopher and educator Amalia Holst demonstrated how the German Enlightenment failed women...
Look into the secret world of numerology and puzzles in Bach | Aeon Essays
Look beneath the surface of Bach’s music and you will find a fascinating hidden world of...
The Standard Model might be the most successful theory in science. But what is it, exactly? | Aeon Videos
The Standard Model is as revolutionary as heliocentrism and the theory of evolution but much harder...
Machine writing is closer to literature’s history than you know | Aeon Essays
Machine-written literature might offend your tastes but until the dawn of Romanticism most writers were just...
An artist grapples with the loss of his brother, and the problem of canine abduction | Aeon Videos
When an artist spots his brother leading a canine abduction at a funeral, it starts a...
Was there no room for the queer individual in Arab history? | Aeon Essays
Was there no room for the queer individual in Arab history? Have people like us simply...
After a day’s toil in California’s fields, labourers let loose in street races | Aeon Videos
‘The song of a world without work’: in Bakersfield, California, street racing lets field labourers breathe...
Will we ever get a clear idea about what foods we should eat? | Aeon Essays
Vitamins or whole foods; high-fat or low-fat; sugar or sweetener. Will we ever get a clear...
Did Jefferson believe that his university would reform the South? | Aeon Essays
Thomas Jefferson founded a university believing it would safeguard republican freedom. Slavery was another matter altogether...
Remarkable historical footage is locked behind paywalls. It’s time to set it free | Aeon Videos
Remarkable 20th-century footage is hidden behind paywalls. Unless those images can be set free, our history...
Why the selfish genes metaphor remains a powerful thinking tool | Aeon Essays
The ‘selfish gene’ persists for the reason all good scientific metaphors do: it remains a sharp...
Bigger isn’t better – the renegade ‘Buddhist economics’ of E F Schumacher | Aeon Videos
For the economist E F Schumacher, the ‘postwar miracle’ sowed the seeds of ruin. The solution?...
Can enlightenment still be found on the banks of the Ganges? | Aeon Essays
Pilgrims have long sought in India’s holiest city an antidote to the modern West, but Varanasi...
What do tropical fish make of the strange creatures who love them so? | Aeon Videos
Watching humans watching fish at a tropical fish shop in a gentrifying part of London is...
Why there’s no such thing as the mind and nothing is mental | Aeon Essays
The terms ‘mind’ and ‘mental’ are messy, harmful and distracting. We should get rid of them...