The only man permitted in Bhutan’s sacred mountains chronicles humanity’s impact | Aeon Videos
A lone glaciologist performs spiritual and scientific rituals to assess humanity’s impact in Bhutan’s sacred mountains...
Why the emotional labour of hospital staff is dirty work | Aeon Essays
In caring for and bearing with human suffering, hospital staff perform extreme emotional labour. Is there...
Pioneering sociologist Erving Goffman saw magic in the mundane | Aeon Essays
Pioneering sociologist Erving Goffman realised that every action is deeply revealing of the social norms by...
The Indian astronomer whose innovative work on black holes was mocked at Cambridge | Aeon Videos
When scientific pursuits are subject to human shortcomings: the Indian scientist made to wait 50 years...
‘If you’re creative, why can’t you create a solution?’ One artist’s imaginative activism | Aeon Videos
How Rick Lowe transformed the idea of ‘art as an object’ into ‘art as a process’...
Only the deep past can make sense of terrifying nuclear futures | Aeon Essays
To understand the terrifying futures unleashed by nuclear weapons, we urgently need to return to the...
An ancient Roman’s hilarious (and perhaps relatable) response to a social snub | Aeon Videos
‘You prefer to dine at some nobody’s house!’ How an ancient Roman responded to the deep...
Why governments and business like to offload risk to individuals | Aeon Essays
Under the guise of empowerment and freedom, politicians and business are offloading lifethreatening risk to individuals...
Machiavelli on the problem of our impure beginnings | Aeon Essays
Niccolò Machiavelli’s profound insights about the violent origins of political societies help us understand the world...
For Iris Murdoch, selfishness is a fault that can be solved by reframing the world | Aeon Videos
Selfishness is an enduring part of the human condition. For Iris Murdoch, the antidote is to...
A hunter’s lyrical reflection on the humbling business of being mortal | Aeon Videos
‘We’re both caught up in the music’: A hunter tries to understand his place in the...
The hunter-gatherers of the 21st century who live on the move | Aeon Essays
Why do hunter-gatherers refuse to be sedentary? New answers are emerging from the depths of the...
After his son’s terrorist attack, Azdyne seeks healing – and his granddaughter | Aeon Videos
A father seeks to heal his community and find his granddaughter, after his son’s terrorist attack...
Are the exact words of a language arbitrary or necessary? | Aeon Essays
Humans have a strong impulse to see things that are arbitrary or conventional as natural and...
The iconic brain map that’s changing neurosurgery and gaming | Aeon Essays
When we discovered that the brain contained a map of the body it revolutionised neuroscience. But...
Seven years later, what can we make of our first confirmed interstellar visitor? | Aeon Videos
It wasn’t aliens, but the first interstellar object found in our solar system still has much...
For girls, silence is the bad bargain with patriarchy | Aeon Essays
Girls are still in a bad bargain with patriarchy: the price of relationship is keeping their...
Is it possible to design a shape to roll along any fixed path? | Aeon Videos
How a playful experiment, motivated by scientists’ curiosity, could have novel applications in the realm of...
How Savarkar invented Hindu supremacy and its cult of violence | Aeon Essays
Vinayak Savarkar ridiculed Gandhi, preaching that anti-Muslim violence was the only means to unite India into...
More than breathtaking, ‘The Birth of Venus’ signalled an aesthetic revolution | Aeon Videos
How medieval Christianity met humanist philosophy in Botticelli’s masterful Renaissance painting ‘The Birth of Venus’ -...
Folktales like philosophy startle us into rethinking our values | Aeon Essays
Both folktales and formal philosophy unsettle us into thinking anew about our cherished values and views...
On the shared genetic memories between us, the cat and the fly | Aeon Essays
Science must become attuned to the subtle conversations that pervade all life, from the primordial to...
The two women behind a world-changing scientific discovery | Aeon Videos
The making of a revolution – the exciting history of the CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough, from the...
The birth of our system for describing web content | Aeon Essays
Over a weekend in 1995, a small group gathered in Ohio to unleash the power of...
Striking shadow puppetry illuminates a skater kid’s memories of Boy Scout camp | Aeon Videos
‘It was a Boy Scout camp, and I was far from a Boy Scout’ – shadow...
The case for liberal socialism in the 21st century | Aeon Essays
As the crisis of democracy deepens, we must return to liberalism’s revolutionary and egalitarian roots -...
A Zen Buddhist priest voices the deep matters he usually ponders in silence | Aeon Videos
‘If we have any chance at all, then this is our chance – that we become...
What should a sports fan do when their team lets them down? | Aeon Essays
Players, coaches and team owners sometimes do terrible things. What, if anything, should their fans do...
The strange and turbulent global world of ant geopolitics | Aeon Essays
Over the past four centuries quadrillions of ants have created a strange and turbulent global society...
Meet the entrepreneur whose business is crafting perfect peak experiences | Aeon Videos
Before the clock strikes on new year’s day, meet the man who made it his life’s...
Why the son of God story is built on mythology, not history | Aeon Essays
How could a cult leader draw crowds, inspire devotion and die by crucifixion, yet leave no...
A reporter orphaned by night raids in Afghanistan investigates their cruel legacy | Aeon Videos
Orphaned by military night raids, a reporter returns to her native Afghanistan to investigate the trauma...
Can philosophy help us get a grip on the consequences of AI? | Aeon Essays
Generative agents will change our society in weird, wonderful and worrying ways. Can philosophy help us...
Does capitalism make ‘non-playable characters’ of us all? An uncanny exploration | Aeon Videos
The daily grind of non-playable characters offers a clever critique of capitalism’s ‘infinite loop of labour...
The radical political writings of Sophie de Grouchy | Aeon Essays
As a republican, Sophie de Grouchy argued that sympathy, not domination, must be the glue that...
How smells can boost children’s learning and pleasure | Aeon Essays
When scents are used to intensify a narrative, they heighten young readers’ emotions and enrich their...
A ‘virtual outing’ on Google Maps reveals a treasured image from Diego’s past | Aeon Videos
Afraid of flying, Diego travels the world through Google Maps where he discovers a treasured memory...
How changing the metaphors we use can change the way we think | Aeon Essays
Woven into the fabric of language, metaphors shape how we understand reality. What happens when we...
‘I listen to the land’ – poetry and greenery intertwine in Emilio Ambasz’s architecture | Aeon Videos
Emilio Ambasz’s pioneering designs begin with a recognition that nature is human-made, paving the way for...
The cruelty of crypto in its promise to revive the American dream | Aeon Essays
Selling itself as the new American dream, crypto exposes the vulnerable to fraud and scams, and...
The ornate, the aromatic, the cruel – Valentine’s cards before the age of Hallmark | Aeon Videos
From hearts and flowers to mean ‘vinegar Valentines’ – a fascinating look through the V&A’s cards...
Bathing should be a right in 21st-century cities | Aeon Essays
Water is a great healer. Can New York’s public pools and ‘blue spaces’ be engineered for...
What it’s like to care for Yellowstone during its quietest – and coldest – months | Aeon Videos
For its winter caretaker of 50 years, Yellowstone National Park is a fragile place, not the...
Who are the leaders in our heads – and how did they get there? | Aeon Essays
How the biblical King David and Machiavelli’s Prince can help us understand the dominant view of...
Why surgery and barbering were one occupation in the Middle Ages | Aeon Videos
Medieval barbers didn’t just give haircuts – they performed a variety of surgeries, from tooth extraction...
How a single unglamorous ship tells the history of the world | Aeon Essays
How a single, unglamorous, workaday merchant vessel tells the history of the 19th-century world in many...
‘My art is oratory, Socrates.’ An ancient warning on the power and peril of rhetoric | Aeon Videos
Cryptic visuals combine with a haunting score to deliver a Socratic exchange on the nature (and...
The future of humanism, from Toni Morrison to Nick Bostrom | Aeon Essays
Humanity’s future remains as unthinkable as the still-uncolonised galaxy or the enduring mystery of our own...
How Alan Watts re-imagined religion, desire and life itself | Aeon Essays
Alan Watts, for all his faults, was a wildly imaginative and provocative thinker who reimagined religion...
Witch hunts persist as a horrifying, deadly reality in pockets of rural India | Aeon Videos
In rural India, witch hunts are still an enduring, deadly reality. Ana’s disturbing story is just...