Dolls help children create wonderfully vivid and imaginative worlds, while also serving as unsettling reminders of the abyss - by Tishani Doshi Read at Aeon | Continue reading
W Eugene Smith’s photos of the Minamata disaster are both exquisite and horrifying. How might we now look at them? - by Joanna Pocock Read at Aeon | Continue reading
When animals seem to grieve for their dead, such as staying with them for days, is it anthropomorphism or something more? - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
After years of insomnia, I threw off the effort to sleep and embraced the peculiar openness I found in the darkest hours - by Annabel Abbs Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Why did it take archeologists a century to decode the small clay tablet that’s also the oldest known map of the world? - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
How two amateur schools pulled a generation of thinkers from the workers and teachers of the 19th-century American Midwest - by Joseph M Keegin Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Love is a daily act of devotion for two brothers – one mentally, the other physically disabled – in a shared apartment - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Sailors, exiles, merchants and philosophers: how the ancient Greeks played with language to express a seaborne imagination - by Giordano Lipari Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Rather than being a cringey personal failing, awkwardness is a collective rupture – and a chance to rewrite the social script - by Alexandra Plakias Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Evolution isn’t linear and it doesn’t have a masterplan – a microbiologist explains the role of randomness in the process - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
In order to make headway on knotty metaphysical problems, philosophers should look to the methods used by scientists - by Nina Emery Read at Aeon | Continue reading
‘We can make beautiful things, even in a place like Guantánamo’: how Moath al-Alwi preserves his humanity in prison - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
For Indians to be truly free, Gandhi argued they must take up traditional crafts. Was it a quixotic hope or inspired solution? - by Benjamin Studebaker Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Members of a Japanese religious movement carve out happy lives in small-town Colorado in this short documentary - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
For those who hear voices, the ‘broken brain’ explanation is harmful. Psychiatry must embrace new meaning-making frameworks - by Justin Garson Read at Aeon | Continue reading
The brilliant Trinidadian thinker is remembered as an admirer of the US but he also warned of its dark political future - by Harvey Neptune Read at Aeon | Continue reading
This is what an old lesbian looks like: the huge, joyful project capturing queer elder women’s stories before they’re lost - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
The tide has turned – evidence shows ordinary citizens in the Western world are now richer and more equal than ever before - by Daniel Waldenström Read at Aeon | Continue reading
A close look at the exquisite work of a master luthier as he transforms pieces of wood into a world-class cello in six months - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
It’s not just the planet and not just our health – the impact of a warming climate extends deep into our cortical fissures - by Clayton Page Aldern Read at Aeon | Continue reading
A year at a public school in rural Indiana chronicles how community and education intersect in the American Midwest - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Modernists and historians alike loathed the millions of new houses built in interwar Britain. But their owners loved them - by Michael Gilson Read at Aeon | Continue reading
For John Rawls, liberalism was more than a political project: it is the best way to fashion a life that is worthy of happiness - by Alexandre Lefebvre Read at Aeon | Continue reading
In a transfixing melding of art and science, a pianist improvises to a star system’s ‘unusually harmonious’ ratios and rhythms - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Generative AI has lately set off public euphoria: the machines have learned to think! But just how intelligent is AI? - by Deepak P Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Two personal perspectives and the views of world religions on the moral considerations of conceiving one child to save another - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
If human knowledge can disappear so easily, why have so many cultural practices survived without written records? - by Helena Miton Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Experimenting with Japan’s tree surplus, two artists create crayons to help cultivate a closer relationship with forests - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
For far too long, medicine has ignored the valuable insights that patients have into their own diseases. It is time to listen - by Charlotte Blease & Joanne Hunt Read at Aeon | Continue reading
The stunningly complex behaviour of plants has led to a new way of thinking about our world: plant philosophy - by Stella Sandford Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Are those who ponder existence far ahead, or far behind? A search for meaning and purpose in the novel ‘The Moviegoer’ - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
What makes touch on some parts of the body erotic but not others? Cutting-edge biologists are arriving at new answers - by David J Linden Read at Aeon | Continue reading
After violence erupts on the streets of Milwaukee, musicians perform as an act of healing and a protest against hopelessness - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
He was a Catholic, then a rationalist, then a Protestant. Most of all, he exemplified the rise of Arab-Ottoman modernity - by Peter Hill Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Meet the strange starfish that raises its young like birds do, in a deep-sea documentary that uses stunning microscopy - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Knowledge is often a matter of discovery. But when the nature of an enquiry itself is at question, it is an act of creation - by Céline Henne Read at Aeon | Continue reading
To survive, we are asked to forget that our lands and bodies are being violated, policed, ripped up, silenced, sacrificed - by Kelsey Day Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Spud diplomacy – can a potato salad contest ease tensions over a controversial power station between Czech and Polish neighbours? - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
When babies are born, they cry in the accent of their mother tongue: how does language begin in the womb? - by Darshana Narayanan Read at Aeon | Continue reading
A rare insight into the extraordinary work of creating a prosthetic leg through measuring, moulding, fitting and feeling - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
The philosophy of personalism inspired Martin Luther King’s dream of a better world. We still need its hopeful ideas today - by Bennett Gilbert Read at Aeon | Continue reading
The evocative language of myth and the precise language of geology frame a distinctive portrait of a singular place in Canada - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
So-called ‘classical’ music was as revolutionary as the modern novel in its storytelling, harmony and depth - by Joel Sandelson Read at Aeon | Continue reading
At times complicit in racism and oppression, psychology has also been a fertile ground for radical and liberatory thought - by Rami Gabriel Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Find new appreciation for beetles by watching them fly in ultra-slow motion – while comedian Joe Pera narrates each takeoff - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
In her final unfinished work, Hannah Arendt mounted an incisive critique of the idea that we are in search of our true selves - by Samantha Rose Hill Read at Aeon | Continue reading
The D-Day landings turned the tide of war, but their success rested on the uncertain calculations of Allied meteorologists - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Nation-states are no longer fit for purpose to create a habitable future for humans and nature. Which political system is? - by Jonathan S Blake & Nils Gilman Read at Aeon | Continue reading