High-tech gadgetry and practical ingenuity came together in the BBC workshop that jumpstarted an electronic music revolution - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
The psychic lives of nonhuman dreamers reveal colours, harmonies and beauties of which we had little inkling until now - by David M Peña-Guzmán Read at Aeon | Continue reading
No, English isn’t uniquely vibrant or mighty or adaptable. But it really is weirder than pretty much every other language | Continue reading
Ludwig Wittgenstein and the ‘language game’ we all play but can never escape: John Searle in conversation with Bryan Magee - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
For Ludwig Wittgenstein, words derive their meaning within the ‘language game’ that we all play but can never escape - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Scientists study animals to illuminate human psychology. So why are we blind to the mental lives of our caged subjects? | Continue reading
Zhuangzi thought Confucians were like frogs trapped in a well, unable to perceive the limitlessness of the sea - by Tao Jiang Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Is it forgery to draw banknotes and call them art? The audacious art project that changed how the Bank of England prints notes - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Scientists study animals to illuminate human psychology. So why are we blind to the mental lives of our caged subjects? - by Garet Lahvis Read at Aeon | Continue reading
‘What is liberation when so much has already been taken?’ A lyrical meditation on cultural memory after colonisation in Goa - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
For a century before the rise of European empires, Britons and North Africans lived together in amicable peace - by Nat Cutter Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Maria Sibylla Merian’s groundbreaking illustrations of the metamorphosis of insects are a tribute to patient observation - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
To listen well is not only a kindness to others but also, as the psychologist Carl Rogers made clear, a gift to ourselves - by M M Owen Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Our excrement is a natural, renewable and sustainable resource – if only we can overcome our visceral disgust of it | Continue reading
The most protected place on Earth has become one of the most threatened – and threatening. Can its problems be solved? - by Alejandra Mancilla & Peder Roberts Read at Aeon | Continue reading
How our brains repurpose primitive circuitry to help us grasp abstract concepts, behave socially and navigate the modern world - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
We need a new kind of approach to learning that shifts imagination from the periphery to the foundation of all knowledge - by Stephen T Asma Read at Aeon | Continue reading
An endurance runner explains how pain, elation and transcendence converge on the 50-mile trail through the Grand Canyon - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
In the long 19th century, many women philosophers were marginalised or ignored. We need to rediscover them - by Kristin Gjesdal & Dalia Nassar Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Take a deep dive into Hieronymus Bosch’s Renaissance triptych on earthly pleasures to see its deeply conservative message - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Today, the ancient Greek storyteller would be winning Oscars. To learn how, turn to the Poetics, his masterwork on writing | Continue reading
‘You are such an interesting conversation.’ Pádraig Ó Tuama’s tender poem is a guide to being comfortable in one’s own company - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Metaphysical debates in quantum physics don’t get at ‘truth’ – they’re nothing but a form of ritual, activity and culture - by Timothy Andersen Read at Aeon | Continue reading
A golden generation of French philosophers dismantled truth and other traditional ideas. What next for their successors? - by Peter Salmon Read at Aeon | Continue reading
The feminist academic who heard the call of the forgotten women of surrealism and went on a mindbending trip to find them - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
In a tight spot, you’d probably intuit that a human life outweighs an animal’s. There are good arguments why that’s wrong - by Jeff Sebo Read at Aeon | Continue reading
View the Universe in terms of processes, not objects, and you’ll see improvements in science, public policy and relationships - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
To understand why early cities thrived, look not to the temples of kings but to their subjects’ bustling neighbourhoods - by Michael E Smith Read at Aeon | Continue reading
How the deep neural network that can restore, date and place ancient texts is working to fill in the blanks of history - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Last year 200 million children did not get enough to eat, yet it would be cheap and easy for the world to feed them all - by Sharman Apt Russell Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Love is both a wonderful thing and a cunning evolutionary trick to control us. A dangerous cocktail in the wrong hands - by Anna Machin Read at Aeon | Continue reading
We must keep the flame of pessimism burning: it is a virtue for our deeply troubled times, when crude optimism is a vice | Continue reading
Alan Turing was a pioneer of machine learning, whose work continues to shape the crucial question: can machines think? | Continue reading
Street dogs in the ancient Turkish city of Kars roam free, fight and and occasionally join in the humans’ call to prayer - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Street dogs in the ancient city of Kars roam free, fight and and occasionally join in the humans’ call to prayer - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Why we need to stop thinking about parents, offspring and sex when we try to understand how life reproduces itself - by Gunnar O Babcock Read at Aeon | Continue reading
The story of China’s one-child policy is told by felt puppets with fabricated memories in this acclaimed short animation - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
We must keep the flame of pessimism burning: it is a virtue for our deeply troubled times, when optimism is a vice - by Mara van der Lugt Read at Aeon | Continue reading
In the hands of a ceramicist-animator, pottery is a cyclical, elemental art form, deeply connected to the rhythms of nature - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Our excrement is a natural, renewable and sustainable resource – if only we can overcome our visceral disgust of it - by Lina Zeldovich Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Marx’s idea that societies were naturally egalitarian and communal before farming is widely influential and quite wrong | Continue reading
One grim day (when youth is over) you find that new music gets on your nerves. But why do our musical tastes freeze over? | Continue reading
Time seems to stand still on a small island in Belgrade where a father lives alone, grieving his daughter in quiet solitude - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Too many nature writers descend into poetic self-absorption instead of the sharp-eyed realism the natural world deserves - by Richard Smyth Read at Aeon | Continue reading
What would a sketch of your partner, or your twin, or you look like if drawn by an artist working from your words alone? - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Indigenous peoples around the world tell myths which contain warning signs for natural disasters. Scientists are now listening | Continue reading
Classic evolutionary theory holds that species separate over time. But it’s fuzzier than that – now we know they also merge | Continue reading
You likely think of the American West as deeply conservative and rural. Yet history shows this politics is very new indeed - by Daniel J Herman Read at Aeon | Continue reading