Those with this little-known trait think more deeply and feel more empathy. But they also deal with significant challenges - by Elaine Aron Read at Aeon | Continue reading
‘Designed to be ignored’ – uncover the surprisingly fascinating origins of background music in this video essay on Erik Satie - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Glimpse into the daily life of a female shaman who hosts ayahuasca ceremonies for tourists in the Peruvian Amazon - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
For years, I practised medicine with cool certainty, comfortable with life-and-death decisions. Then, one day, I couldn’t - by Ronald W Dworkin Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Byung-Chul Han’s relentless critiques of digital capitalism reveal how this suffocating system creates hollowed-out lives - by Josh Cohen Read at Aeon | Continue reading
One in three parasitic species is in danger. Here’s why humans may need to power through the ‘ick’ to save them - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Early childhood development interventions in the Global South is a huge industry built on highly questionable assumptions - by Francesca Mezzenzana & Gabriel Scheidecker Read at Aeon | Continue reading
What is the meaning of ‘now’? An Italian physicist takes us on a journey to the edges of our understanding of time - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
The consulting office reflects the personality of the therapist, while also subtly shaping the experience of their patients - by Anna Parker Read at Aeon | Continue reading
When Lars von Trier seeks applications for a ‘female girlfriend/muse’, a filmmaker puts forward her 72-year-old lesbian neighbour - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Since states are founded on violence and expulsion, their existence is always bound up in thorny questions about justice - by Andrew F March Read at Aeon | Continue reading
We can now create compelling experiences of talking with our dead. Is this ghoulish, therapeutic or something else again? - by Amy Kurzweil & Daniel Story Read at Aeon | Continue reading
River bank or bank account? How chatbots learned to make the quantum leap to context by training on billions of prompts - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Though natural selection favours self-interest, humans are extraordinarily good at cooperating with one another. Why? - by Saira Khan Read at Aeon | Continue reading
In this immersive portrait of play, children transform the streets of Havana into a racetrack with handmade ‘chivichanas’ - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
When I moved to India for work, I found that rape was a cultural feature of the country, as deeply embedded as caste - by Evelyn Fok Read at Aeon | Continue reading
‘I think that freedom everywhere, anywhere is love.’ Father Giles, a monk for 47 years, shares his radical view of freedom - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Nothing lasts forever: not humanity, not Earth, not the Universe. But finitude confers an indelible meaning to our lives - by Thomas Moynihan Read at Aeon | Continue reading
In order to bridge the yawning gulf between the humanities and the sciences we must turn to an unexpected field: mathematics - by Gordon Gillespie Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Striking slow-motion footage captures the awesome evolutionary diversity – and handy usefulness – of a lizard’s tongue - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
For most of history, the Moon was regarded as a mysterious and powerful object. Then scientists made it into a destination - by Danny Robb Read at Aeon | Continue reading
‘Will you send us our wages for the time that we served you?’ A freed slave answers his old master’s request to come back - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
For Mary Midgley, the Western philosophical tradition is shaped by the fact that its greatest practitioners were bachelors - by Ellie Robson Read at Aeon | Continue reading
A ceramicist puts a playful twist on Italian Renaissance pottery with dirty jokes, emojis and colourful commentary on menopause - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
By understanding the pernicious myths surrounding poverty, we can make progress towards a lofty goal: dignity for all - by Anirudh Krishna & Dirk Philipsen Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Humans are both the gravest threat and the greatest hope for the survival of the rare hoolock gibbons in northeast India - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Moral panics about erotica have coursed through the country’s history. Why do so many Americans think of porn as harm? - by Rebecca L Davis Read at Aeon | Continue reading
A history of the ‘exquisite corpse’ in art shows how it embodies surrealist ideas of freedom, community and radical creativity - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
The modern era is often seen as the triumph of science over supernaturalism. But what really happened is far more interesting - by Peter Harrison Read at Aeon | Continue reading
In animations that evoke the fog of memory, Susan returns to her childhood in Korea, speaking a language she no longer knows - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
More than any other conflict, Israel/Palestine has provoked extraordinarily fervent emotion throughout the world. Why? - by Derek Jonathan Penslar Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Humans always end up with clogged arteries, right? That’s not what the lives of the Tsimane in the Amazon basin tell us - by Ben Daitz Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Is privacy inherently valuable, or just one more variable in a society’s blueprint? The philosophers’ view, from Plato on - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
It is the dark matter of conversation, the white space around a poem. For Rilke, listening is receiving the divine - by Faith Lawrence Read at Aeon | Continue reading
A filmmaker collaborates with a murmuration of starlings to create spellbinding visuals at the intersection of science and art - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
To lump or to split? Deciding whether an animal is a species or subspecies profoundly influences our conservation priorities - by Richard Smyth Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Hear echoes of the Victorian age, captured in some of the world’s first audio recordings, in this video essay on the phonograph - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
The case of Mexico shows that, despite a proliferating discourse that it is over, neoliberalism is as relentless as ever - by Inés Escobar González Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Often dismissed as the poor cousin of the sciences, chemistry has revealed natural laws that illuminate our Universe - by Vanessa A Seifert Read at Aeon | Continue reading
An inventor traces the evolution of a single engineering idea, from Michael Faraday’s first motors to levitating trains - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
How Pentecostalism’s prosperity gospel replaced Catholic liberation theology in Latin American life - by Elle Hardy Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Take a trip to Luna Parc, New Jersey, a former hunting lodge, now part living museum, part work of art, and wholly individual - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
For twenty years, I was a practising psychotherapist. Today I believe it has no foundation in science and often causes harm - by Niklas Serning Read at Aeon | Continue reading
What drives us to create zoos and natural history museums – is it a curiosity about the world, or a need to dominate it? - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
What distinguishes fiction from nonfiction? The answer to this perennial question relies on how we understand reality itself - by Hannah H Kim Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Diving into the ring of darkness beyond things easily answerable, asking ‘Why?’ questions is what make humans awesome - by Eric Schwitzgebel Read at Aeon | Continue reading
A British Museum curator explains why making sense of archeological ruins is like finding a single brick in a huge soil heap - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
How French modernists from Proust to Mallarmé were alarmed and inspired by the voracious dynamism of the newspaper world - by Max McGuinness Read at Aeon | Continue reading