The ancient Cynics taught that masturbation is about more than pleasure: it suggests how to live simply and autonomously - by M D Usher Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Why architects should take inspiration from the sustainable ways that animals build, and integrate wildlife into their work - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Now is the time to revitalise our relationship with nature and immerse ourselves in the little wonders of the universe - by Ed Simon Read at Aeon | Continue reading
The ancient philosophy of monism and the physics of quantum entanglement agree: all that exists is one unified whole - by Heinrich Päs Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Why did Maoist mango mania grip China in the 1960s? Animating the history of the Cultural Revolution’s painful decade - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Now associated with childhood fun, the swing has a near-universal history of ritual transgression and transformation - by Javier Moscoso Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Investigating where the ‘free will’ debate currently stands, from the vantage of neuroscience, physics and moral philosophy - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Unlike anger, irritation has neither glamour nor radicalism on its side. Yet it might just be the mood we need right now - by Will Rees Read at Aeon | Continue reading
With a deep view of time, a regenerative forester extracts resources to cultivate growth in an ancient English rainforest - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
When the rules break down, you must judge what to do on your own. Discretion is necessary for navigating the muddle of life - by Lorraine Daston Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Once considered fanciful, today data visualisation charts, and changes, our world. But it can misinform as much as it informs - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
We humans are forward-facing, gravity-bound plodders. Can the liquid motion of the octopus radicalise our ideas about time? - by David Borkenhagen Read at Aeon | Continue reading
From flowers to teapots to amphibians, hundreds of 19th-century engravings form a dizzying contemplation of consciousness - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
The iconoclastic French historian Paul Veyne illuminated the past by showing how deeply alien it is to the present - by Carlos Noreña Read at Aeon | Continue reading
On the eve of a pivotal presidential election in Tunisia, women at a hair salon debate the 26 candidates – and their future - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Machine learning theory is shedding new light on how to think about the mysterious and ineffable nature of art - by Peli Grietzer Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Cruel and unscientific, the ‘vegetative state’ diagnosis stems from a hierarchical and bigoted view of all living things - by Ben Platts-Mills Read at Aeon | Continue reading
The colourised deep-space images from NASA are more than just intergalactic eye candy – they help us understand better - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
How medieval thinkers foreshadowed modern physics in investigating the character of machines, devices and forces - by Henrik Lagerlund & Sylvain Roudaut Read at Aeon | Continue reading
A knife cuts, an eye sees. And, to achieve our highest purpose, humans should philosophise – according to Aristotle - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
To understand helpless human babies, our big brains and oddly involved dads, look to the evolution of birds not mammals - by Antone Martinho-Truswell Read at Aeon | Continue reading
From civil rights marches to moonwalks, historical imagery that belongs to everyone is locked away behind paywalls. Why? - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Economics is the language of power and affects us all. What can we do to improve its impoverished menu of ideas? - by Ha-Joon Chang Read at Aeon | Continue reading
‘It’s like being in love with someone’: Barry Duncan, MIT’s master palindromist, spells out his ‘doubly satisfying’ process - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
The stories of oral societies, passed from generation to generation, are more than they seem. They are scientific records - by Patrick Nunn Read at Aeon | Continue reading
A fun toy or a terrible warning – what does the arrival in 1964 of the first TV transmitter to Scottish Shetland portend? - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
He was the first great observer of nature. But his theory of human reproduction was deeply sexist – and enduring - by Emily Thomas Read at Aeon | Continue reading
How Goya went from royal portraiture and Church commissions to a series of ‘Black Paintings’ without even a hint of God - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
In science our concepts have neat, hard edges. In poetry our concepts stretch and expand. Both are necessary for knowledge - by James Camien McGuiggan Read at Aeon | Continue reading
We have laws to protect children from factory work. Why aren’t they protected from parents who monetise their lives online? - by Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Carl Sagan explains how, with just ‘sticks, eyes, feet and brains’, an ancient Greek polymath first calculated Earth’s size - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
This ancient practice, nurturing animals and trees in an ecological system, fights climate change and restores the land - by Liz Carlisle & Niki Mazaroli Read at Aeon | Continue reading
They appear from the sea ice – the eerie tradition celebrated by the Labrador Inuit people of Canada every 6 January - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Scholars cannot agree whether the letters of Plato are fake or genuine. Is this just a symptom of misplaced reverence? - by James Romm Read at Aeon | Continue reading
If all artists take inspiration from previous artists’ work, does AI art really pose a new threat to human creativity? - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Taking up arms against slavery, the famous novelist foreshadowed the vexed role of the white woman activist today - by Lydia Moland Read at Aeon | Continue reading
I am an unequivocal rationalist and yet I still want to see something strange and wonderful in life’s weird coincidences - by Paul Broks Read at Aeon | Continue reading
From clay to ceramic, making a Korean moon jar is a meticulous process that reflects ancient Confucian values - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
It takes nerve to go against the grain and take your child out of school. But, for some, that’s when learning really starts - by Naomi Fisher & Heidi Steel Read at Aeon | Continue reading
‘Reclaiming myself and my image’ – one woman’s powerful, lyrical meditation on childhood trauma and personal transformation - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Alexandre Kojève was an immense influence on many French thinkers. What was so compelling about his lectures on Hegel? - by Samantha Rose Hill Read at Aeon | Continue reading
A slice-of-life documentary on Mumbai’s curious poster politics offers a wry commentary on self-image in the digital age - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
The idea of the soul is obviously a nonsense, yet its immaterial mysterious nature has deep hooks in the human psyche - by David P Barash Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Since antiquity, artists have depicted a perverse scene of a daughter breastfeeding her aged father. What does it mean? - by Margie Orford Read at Aeon | Continue reading
How an imaginative piece of medieval cartography navigates history, mythology and religion to orient us in the Middle Ages - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Is Earth’s most-spoken language a living ‘gift’ or a many-headed ‘monster’? Both views distract us from the real dilemma - by Mario Saraceni Read at Aeon | Continue reading
The Great Salt Lake’s ecosystem in free fall. What’s the emotional toll of watching it evaporate before your eyes? - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Straight men rarely write about the end of their marriages. Our enduring ideas about gender explain this silence - by Joshua Coleman Read at Aeon | Continue reading