How heaven became a place among the stars | Aeon Essays
For hundreds of years, Christians knew exactly where heaven was: above us and above the stars....
An unvarnished, poetic account of a new mother’s struggle to breastfeed | Aeon Videos
‘You cried and I didn’t know how to soothe you’ – the raw poetry of a...
Geopolitics is a loser’s buzzword with a contagious idea | Aeon Essays
The concept of geopolitics comes from German and Russian attempts to explain defeat and reverse loss...
What did the Rosetta Stone’s inscription actually communicate? | Aeon Videos
What did the Rosetta Stone actually intend to say, and what can it tell us about...
What Andrea Dworkin missed about pornography | Aeon Essays
Often vilified as a weapon of male supremacy, pornography in fact has much to tell us...
Why making if-then connections might be the key to consciousness | Aeon Videos
How the advent of consciousness 500 million years ago gave way to an evolutionary ‘arms race’...
How to solve moral problems with formal logic and probability | Aeon Essays
Subjecting the problems of ethics to the cool quantifications of logic and probability can help us...
In classical Chinese philosophy, all actions are collective | Aeon Essays
A dragon needs the clouds and the wind in order to fly. What happens when we...
Bernard Williams on Descartes’s audacious endeavour to prove knowledge is possible | Aeon Videos
How Descartes took the world apart to reconstitute it anew, laying the foundations for modern philosophy...
The Roman Empire was a cosmopolitan network of adventurers | Aeon Essays
The Roman Empire enabled an early version of globalisation that offered travellers adventure, novelty and opportunity...
The cast of ‘misfit toys’ who keep life on an idyllic tourist island afloat | Aeon Videos
Welcome to Block Island: holiday hotspot for wealthy tourists, and seasonal home for the workers who...
Was Colin Wilson a fascist? Or was he fascist-adjacent? | Aeon Essays
For thousands of fans, he made philosophy thrillingly relevant. Yet there is a deep unsavoury undercurrent...
When his elderly parents make a suicide pact, Doron struggles to accept their choice | Aeon Videos
A filmmaker turns his lens on the beauty of family life as he tries to make...
The insight of Darwin’s work on corals, worms and co-evolution | Aeon Essays
Darwin was the first to see that all lifeforms, from worms to corals, transform the planet....
What Akiko saw at the centre of the Hiroshima blast, and the indelible mark it left | Aeon Videos
An unsparing animation depicts the hell of the bombing of Hiroshima and its aftermath, as told...
On the advantages of believing that nothing is true | Aeon Essays
Alethic nihilism is the theory that nothing is true. There is much to gain by taking...
To understand the limits of human senses, look to the wild world of animal cognition | Aeon Videos
From tasting feet to electric navigation: the wild world of animal senses lies beyond the limits...
How black hole thought experiments help explain the Universe | Aeon Essays
The Universe cannot always be understood through observation. Instead, physicists explore by devising thought experiments -...
From sheep to sea – an ode to the iconic sweater that warms Cornish sailors | Aeon Videos
It all begins with the sheep who wears the fleece: a seafaring ode to the sweater...
Evidence grows that mental illness is more than dysfunction | Aeon Essays
Evidence is growing that mental illness is more than dysfunction, with enormous implications for treatment -...
What did the Russians dig up when they dug trenches in Chernobyl? | Aeon Essays
Disturbing and inhaling radioactive dust, in their haste Russian soldiers unburied the wrecked, undead Earth itself...
The revolutionary artist who propelled the Black Panther movement with imagery | Aeon Videos
How Emory Douglas, the revolutionary artist behind the Black Panthers, created an iconography of resistance and...
Give and take: how gift-giving forges society, and ourselves | Aeon Essays
The gifts we exchange are both generous and yet fraught with social rules and obligations. Marcel...
Yes, the Inuit have dozens of words for snow – but what does each one mean exactly? | Aeon Videos
Travel by snowmobile through a pristine white landscape in north Quebec in search of the dozens...
How Percy Shelley invented free love in 1792 | Aeon Essays
Percy Shelley thought romantic love freed men and women from the strictures of monogamy, but did...
One woman prepares for the risky solitude of Georgia O’Keeffe’s American West | Aeon Videos
‘Emancipation is curiously coupled with risk’ – one woman’s exploration of the beauty, solitude and perils...
Lessons in corporate governance from the Jesuits | Aeon Essays
As corporations struggle to survive in a more uncertain world, they should look to the success...
How one of history’s most beautiful books was used to find fate in the cosmos | Aeon Videos
A manual produced for emperors to decode the stars, the Astronomicum Caesareum is also an extraordinarily...
On the deadly practice of doxxing in Revolutionary Paris | Aeon Essays
When a young street vendor found her name in a guidebook to the sex workers of...
Sappho’s homoerotic poetry was beloved in ancient Greece – and burned centuries later | Aeon Videos
Sappho was a priestess of love, whose homoerotic poetry was revered in ancient Greece – and...
Why aesthetic value should take priority over moral value | Aeon Essays
The ultimate value of the world can be discovered if you are sensitive to what is...
Symmetry rules life on Earth – but it comes with many fascinating exceptions | Aeon Videos
Nature is full of symmetries, from spiral galaxies to florets of broccoli. So why do complex...
If killing is antithetical to Buddhism, how can they do it? | Aeon Essays
The Buddha taught not to kill, yet his followers have at times disobeyed him. Can murderers...
Bruno Latour showed us how to think with the things of the world | Aeon Essays
Bruno Latour showed us how to think with the things of the world, respecting their right...
There’s no one way for an insect to fly, but they’re all amazing in close up and slo-mo | Aeon Videos
From the camera-shy to the natural-born performers, close-up, slow-motion footage reveals the varied wonders of insect...
If all we do is argue about politics, maybe the arts can help | Aeon Essays
Good art, laced with irony, ambiguity and suspense, is not obviously political. That’s what makes it...
Beyond ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’ – could a range of verdict options be more just? | Aeon Videos
Binary legal verdicts give rise to injustices. Could an alternative system reflecting degrees of uncertainty be...
Neither philosophy nor religion can contain Maimonides | Aeon Essays
It’s shocking that histories of medieval philosophy celebrate only Christian thinkers, ignoring Islamic and Jewish thought...
From set-up to close, a day at the farmers market is a whirlwind sensory feast | Aeon Videos
A bustling day at the farmers market prompts reflections on the journey of fresh produce from...
From the Jurassic to Star Wars, the drama of revision goes on | Aeon Essays
As Brontosaurus tells us, in science as in fiction, the stories we tell to understand the...
From calluses to burnt shoes, the elegance of ballet is built from the ground up | Aeon Videos
Sewn, cut, burnt – for ballet dancers, preparing their shoes is a meditative process that reveals...
James Lovelock: the death of scientific independence? | Aeon Essays
James Lovelock was a visionary whose greatest ideas were made possible by his unshakeable independence -...
Timothée built his identity around his absent father. What happens when they meet? | Aeon Videos
Superhero visuals animate the identity quest of Timothée, born after a hook-up between an Iraqi refugee...
What the Gospel of Judas says about the betrayal of Jesus | Aeon Essays
The mystery of why Judas forsook Jesus goes to the heart of Christianity. A newly translated...
Living out of a truck, Maikhuu finds promise and peril on Mongolia’s ‘coal highway’ | Aeon Videos
The heartbreaks and boredom of life on the ‘coal highway’, where truck drivers eke out a...
How will our beloved reefs survive in the oceans of the future? | Aeon Essays
A warming planet and acid oceans will radically transform marine ecosystems. How will our beloved reefs...
Only lunar telescopes can answer the mysteries of the Universe | Aeon Essays
Our future in space relies on settling the Moon and using it as a base to...
Is the question ‘Why is there something instead of nothing?’ even worth asking? | Aeon Videos
The philosopher A C Grayling explains why the question ‘Why is there something instead of nothing?’...
How the Right wing is trying to turn religion into identity | Aeon Essays
Authoritarian leaders who play the religious card are not mere hypocrites. There’s something far more troubling...
From back pain to addiction – one man’s struggle with opioids, as told to his sister | Aeon Videos
This heartfelt portrait of one man’s addiction makes a powerful case for a patient-centred approach to...