Nefertiti’s bust

How did this ancient and enigmatic sculpture of a beautiful Egyptian queen end up as fortune’s hostage in Germany? | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

The chimney swift

A harrowing, hand-drawn animation exploring the perilous life of a child chimney sweep in 19th-century London | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

How to restore a savanna

Massive tree-planting programmes have come to substitute for the tradeoffs and complexity of restoring real ecosystems | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists

Incentives, rewards, bonuses and bonding experiences – Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

The Philosopher’s Zombie

The infamous thought experiment, flawed as it is, does demonstrate one thing: physics alone can’t explain consciousness | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

The philosopher’s zombie

The infamous thought experiment, flawed as it is, does demonstrate one thing: physics alone can’t explain consciousness | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

Forever

A thought-provoking, experimental animation on what it means for a supposedly ‘objective’ AI to predict an early death | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

The dropout: a history

The dropout was not just a hippy-trippy hedonist but a paranoid soul, who feared brainwashing and societal control | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

When will economists embrace the quantum revolution?

Financial markets are entangled and uncertain. When will economists let go of physics envy to embrace the quantum revolution? | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

The invention of trousers

Unravelling the epic story of the world’s oldest pair of trousers, found inside an immaculately preserved grave in China | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

A softer economics

Financial markets are entangled and uncertain. When will economists let go of physics envy to embrace the quantum revolution? | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

The painter who revolutionised landscapes

The sublime power of Caspar David Friedrich’s Romantic landscapes comes from placing a humble human amid nature’s grandeur | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

Pivotal mental states

Spiritual highs and mental breakdowns are both products of the same evolved brain system granting us the power to transform | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

The king of fish and chips

Haddon Salt, the ‘Colonel Sanders of fish and chips’, and his salty story of the fast-food empire that never quite was | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

Tattoos and trousers

Let your imagination take flight to the hunting, riding, adventurous lives of Scythia’s warrior women, the real Amazons | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

Insects take flight

Watch how praying mantises, beetles and weevils become airborne, shown at a speed slow enough for the human eye to appreciate | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

Those born later

In 1985 West Germany’s president gave an unflinching speech. It helped a new generation to face the Nazi past honestly | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

Arctic summer

Life in Tuktoyaktuk, one of Canada’s northernmost villages, where the summers grow longer and the land is sinking into the sea | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

Why you should eat meat

Not eating animals is wrong. If you care about animals, then the right thing to do is breed them, kill them and eat them | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

Great books are still great

Read with love, rather than critical distance, the classics can provide tools to subvert oppressive hierarchies | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

The Battle of San Romano

Horses leap and arrows fly as knights charge into battle in a Renaissance masterpiece brought to violent, chaotic life | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

Hope is not optimism

Even when you know that prospects are grim, hope can help. It’s not just a feeling, but a way to step into the future | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

A Funeral Director Takes In Bodies That Social Stigma Leaves Unclaimed

‘We treat people like they are a member of our family’: a funeral director who takes in those that stigma leaves unclaimed | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

Departing gesture

‘We treat people like they are a member of our family’: a funeral director who takes in those that stigma leaves unclaimed | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

The chocolate route

The humble cocoa bean’s journey from its Amerindian origins to worldwide dominance is a lesson in the power of trade | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

Zen kōans

To achieve enlightenment, resist the urge to know the unknowable with these unsolvable riddles from Zen Buddhist monks | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

The horse is a prey animal, the human a predator. Our shared trust and athleticism is a neurobiological miracle | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

Becoming a centaur

The horse is a prey animal, the human a predator. Our shared trust and athleticism is a neurobiological miracle | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

Inka khipu

From military strategies to tax obligations – what khipu knots reveal about the inner workings of the Inka Empire | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

The worldly turn

After generations of ‘blackboard economics’, Berkeley and MIT are leading a return to economics that studies the real world | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

Unsafe passage

Flickers of joy punctuate the chaos of life aboard a refugee rescue ship, but rescue is no guarantee of a safe onward journey | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

This paradoxical life

When logic fails to make sense of a world noisy with inconsistency, paraconsistent logics hold out (im)possible solutions | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

Setapa

Absorb the infectious energy of Setapa, a dance from southern Africa, in all its rhythmic stomping and joyful singing | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

Uncovering Sparta

Mythological home of Helen, war-making polis of Leonidas and now a modest municipality: the city is a palimpsest | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

In pursuit of the hole

Dig into the voids, pin-pricks and cut-outs of art and history, and those absences speak volumes about what’s been missed | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

Florent Vollant: I dream in Innu

Interweaving dreams and memories of hunting caribou, Florent Vollant’s beautiful songs preserve his Indigenous culture’s spirit | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

The meaning of anger

Is anger like energy, forever changing form but never dissipating, or part of our repertoire of desires, the cry of a need unmet? | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

Powers of ten, updated

An update to Charles and Ray Eames’s film ‘Powers of Ten’ explores what we’ve learned about the Universe since 1977 | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

The Waste Age

Recognising that waste is central, not peripheral, to everything we design, make and do is key to transforming the future | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

The mind does not exist

The terms ‘mind’ and ‘mental’ are messy, harmful and distracting. We should get rid of them | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

The end of travel

Driven by the need for a storied life, I relished the opportunity for endless travel. Is that a moment in time, now over? | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

How to ride a pterosaur

How to fly a giant, winged Cretaceous beast – a not-entirely frivolous intro to the intricacies of pterosaur biodynamics | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

How disruptions happen

Major disruptions in world history follow a clear pattern. What can upheavals of the past tell us about our own future? | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

Trolls be gone – The right to be anonymous should be curtailed

Anonymous users generate most toxic abuse and conspiracy theories online. The right to be anonymous should be curtailed | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

The six sides of Merce Cunningham

How Merce Cunningham challenged traditional notions of storytelling in dance via technology, philosophy and randomness | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

Stoics as activists

You might think of it as a philosophy for turning away from the world, but ancient Stoics took a stand against tyranny | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

Thanks for All the Fish

The search for dolphin intelligence and the quest for alien life have moved in historical lockstep. What does the future hold? | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago

Sounding the Sumburgh foghorn

Behold the elegant sights and powerful sound of a mechanical foghorn in Shetland awaking from its year-long slumber | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 2 years ago