A revolution in archaeology has exposed the extraordinary extent of human influence over our planet’s past and its future | Continue reading
Postwar prosperity depended on a truce between capitalist growth and democratic fairness. Is it possible to get it back? | Continue reading
Forget ‘glass ceilings’, says Mary Beard. Break from Ancient Greek archetypes to give powerful women a whole new framework | Continue reading
A revolution in archaeology has exposed the extraordinary extent of human influence over our planet’s past and its future | Continue reading
Aeon is a magazine of ideas and culture. We publish in-depth essays, incisive articles, and a mix of original and curated videos — free to all. | Continue reading
Our solar system is much less stable than it seems: why a millimetre makes a world of difference to planetary trajectories | Continue reading
A virtuous person respects the rules. So when should the same person make a judgment call and break or bend them instead? | Continue reading
Their bodies are in prison but their minds are elsewhere – eight men reflect on their crimes and imagine other lives | Continue reading
Attachment therapy helps us recognise and heal our childhood wounds so we can be free to become good parents ourselves | Continue reading
Some philosophers think maths exists in a mysterious other realm. They’re wrong. Look around: you can see it | Continue reading
In fiction, it grips us. In life, it can unravel us. How can brains hooked on certainty put its opposite to good use? | Continue reading
In fiction, it grips us. In life, it can unravel us. How can brains hooked on certainty put its opposite to good use? | Continue reading
It’s a human impulse to create in-groups and out-groups, but formal rituals can bring diverse people together as one | Continue reading
Americana has never looked as eerie as at the annual Cajun crawfish festival: video art by a Québécois filmmaking trio | Continue reading
It’s not just that Hegel and Rousseau were racists. Racism was baked into the very structure of their dialectical philosophy | Continue reading
Centuries before Columbus, Vikings came to the Western hemisphere. How far into the Americas did they travel? | Continue reading
Raw emotion, hard truths and silence as a daughter calls her mother with an update on her breast-cancer treatment | Continue reading
Centuries before Columbus, Vikings came to the Western hemisphere. How far into the Americas did they travel? | Continue reading
Slime mould seems to be intelligent despite lacking a nervous system. The artist Heather Barnett puts its smarts to the test | Continue reading
Why Søren Kierkegaard saw doubt – though disorienting and horrifying – as the cornerstone of a sound philosophical practice | Continue reading
Here’s the paradox of articulation: are you excavating existing ideas, or do your thoughts come into being as you speak? | Continue reading
Despite its confounding reputation, quantum mechanics both guides and helps explain human intuition | Continue reading
The consolidation of the ‘attention economy’ to a handful of companies is an experiment that demands our attentive resistance | Continue reading
How a generation of political thinkers has underestimated the abilities of ordinary people and undermined democracy | Continue reading
In an age thick with anger and fear, we might dream of a purely rational politics but it would be a denial of our humanity | Continue reading
Why Søren Kierkegaard saw doubt – though disorienting and horrifying – as the cornerstone of a sound philosophical practice | Continue reading
The heart-tug tactics of 1950s ads steered white American women away from activism into domesticity. They’re still there | Continue reading
There’s a strange, and deeply human, story behind how we taught machines to breathe for critically ill patients | Continue reading
The consolidation of the ‘attention economy’ to a handful of companies is an experiment that demands our attentive resistance | Continue reading
There’s a strange, and deeply human, story behind how we taught machines to breathe for critically ill patients | Continue reading
Jet-age glamour was more than just aesthetic: its promise of motionless movement reshaped perception of time and space | Continue reading
To understand a society’s values and history, look at its public art: a 1973 guide to Manhattan’s charms and contradictions | Continue reading
Here’s the paradox of articulation: are you excavating existing ideas, or do your thoughts come into being as you speak? | Continue reading
Perched on the cusp between biology and chemistry, the start of life on Earth is an event horizon we struggle to see beyond | Continue reading
The idea of the ‘supply chain’ shackles how we think about economic justice. What forces could new metaphors unleash? | Continue reading
Watch the perpetual motion of life and sand in eastward drift across the windswept Frisian Islands of the North Sea | Continue reading
Jet-age glamour was more than just aesthetic: its promise of motionless movement reshaped perception of time and space | Continue reading
Does a terrorist deserve a respectful burial? The question that divided a city in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing | Continue reading
Perched on the cusp between biology and chemistry, the start of life on Earth is an event horizon we struggle to see beyond | Continue reading
Every cover is a true original when it’s been crafted by hand: watch the artisanal process behind marbled book jackets | Continue reading
Far from a social luxury, tact becomes imperative when life is cheapened. We exercise it to show gentle respect for another | Continue reading
William Blake saw angels and ghosts and the Hallelujah sunrise, even on the darkest day. We need to foster his state of mind | Continue reading
How we came to represent (through inky marks) the vagaries of the mind, inflections of the voice, and intensity of feeling | Continue reading
William Blake saw angels and ghosts and the Hallelujah sunrise, even on the darkest day. We need to foster his state of mind | Continue reading
William Blake saw angels and ghosts and the Hallelujah sunrise, even on the darkest day. We need to foster his state of mind | Continue reading
Can we ever know everything about something we can’t experience? A thought experiment from the philosopher Frank Jackson | Continue reading
How we came to represent (through inky marks) the vagaries of the mind, inflections of the voice, and intensity of feeling | Continue reading
The tireless team working to clear the Zone Rouge in northeastern France from the deadly debris of the First World War | Continue reading