The missing women of autism are differently different | Aeon Essays
Long believed to be particularly associated with males, new research is revolutionising our understanding of autism...
California’s landscapes provide endless inspiration for a woodcut printmaker | Aeon Videos
Inspired by Japanese master artists, a woodcut printmaker is constantly reimagining the landscapes of his California...
Why the hunt for reality is an impossible burden for physics | Aeon Essays
Physicists today need to jettison the all-too-attractive myth that they are uncovering the hidden reality of...
How evolution favoured costly and frivolous animal play | Aeon Essays
Here’s a puzzle: how could evolution favour such a costly, frivolous and fun activity as animal...
Never marry a man you love too much, and other views on romance in Sierra Leone | Aeon Videos
A playful collage of audio interviews captures candid and revealing reflections on love, sex and marriage...
How did Kerala go from poor to prosperous among India’s states? | Aeon Essays
Fifty years ago it was one of India’s poorest states, now it is now one of...
Can monumental ‘ice stupas’ help remote Himalayan villages survive? | Aeon Videos
In the remote Himalayas, ice stupas are an elegant yet desperate response to climate change, and...
Sex, life and Oscar Wilde: ‘rarely pure and never simple’ | Aeon Essays
Oscar Wilde is an icon of gay liberation from secrecy. But his life and his sexuality...
Why Bennie tried to disappear, and what happened when he was found decades later | Aeon Videos
‘If I’m gonna to be this person, I gotta live by morals and standards’: how one...
Causal understanding is not a point of view, it’s a point of do | Aeon Essays
Humans have a superpower that makes us uniquely capable of controlling the world: our ability to...
Curious singles and tech sceptics – what ‘computer dating’ looked like in 1966 | Aeon Videos
Join a ‘computer dating’ meetup in 1966 in this short video to see what has –...
Would you eat a cockroach? What if it was sterilised? Why not? | Aeon Essays
The future of food is nutritious and sustainable – if we can overcome our instinctual revulsion...
A father forgets his child’s name for the first time in this poetic reflection on memory | Aeon Videos
‘My dad will be gone by the time I reach him’ – a filmmaker captures the...
Why physics today stands on the wings of angels and demons | Aeon Essays
When medieval scholars sought to understand the nature of angels, they unwittingly laid the foundations of...
Join seabirds as they migrate, encountering human communities along the way | Aeon Videos
How three communities on North America’s west coast find meaning by interacting with the flight paths...
Can the unregulated extract kratom help fight the opioid crisis? | Aeon Essays
Millions are turning to an unregulated herbal extract to curb their opioid addiction. But do the...
When psychical research and analytic philosophy shared Cambridge | Aeon Essays
Cambridge, home of analytic philosophy, was also a hotbed of psychical research. How did this spooky...
Two variants of a Hindu myth come alive in an animated ode to Indian storytelling | Aeon Videos
Two Indian storytellers give intersecting and conflicting accounts of the same Hindu myth in this dazzling...
How it became wrong for nations to conquer others | Aeon Essays
It’s only a century since US diplomats first persuaded the world that it’s wrong for countries...
The commodified childhood – scenes from two sisters’ lives in the creator economy | Aeon Videos
A glimpse at the lives of preteen influencers Peyton and Lyla in rural Alabama as they...
There’s a dirty side to clean energy in the metal-rich mountains of South Africa | Aeon Videos
In the mountains of South Africa, the dispossessed locals bear the burden of the green economy...
Why zero could unlock how the brain perceives absence | Aeon Essays
It took centuries for people to embrace the zero. Now it’s helping neuroscientists understand how the...
Why reading Martha C Nussbaum’s philosophy is pure pleasure | Aeon Essays
Martha Nussbaum’s philosophy is dynamic and challenging, but also elegant and lucidly written: she is the...
The passage of time is a peculiar thing in a 24-hour diner | Aeon Videos
Snippets from a full day in a 24-hour diner make up this 13-minute short, offering a...
What does it mean to be a highly sensitive person? | Aeon Essays
Those with this little-known trait think more deeply and feel more empathy. But they also deal...
Background music was the radical invention of a trailblazing composer | Aeon Videos
‘Designed to be ignored’ – uncover the surprisingly fascinating origins of background music in this video...
For an Amazonian female shaman, ayahuasca ceremonies are a rite and a business | Aeon Videos
Glimpse into the daily life of a female shaman who hosts ayahuasca ceremonies for tourists in...
For an anaesthesiologist, intuition stands between life and death | Aeon Essays
For years, I practised medicine with cool certainty, comfortable with life-and-death decisions. Then, one day, I...
Thought-tinkering – the Korean German philosopher Byung-Chul Han | Aeon Essays
Byung-Chul Han’s relentless critiques of digital capitalism reveal how this suffocating system creates hollowed-out lives -...
‘Save the parasites’ may not be a popular rallying cry – but it could be a vital one | Aeon Videos
One in three parasitic species is in danger. Here’s why humans may need to power through...
The problem with parenting interventions in the Global South | Aeon Essays
Early childhood development interventions in the Global South is a huge industry built on highly questionable...
What do past, present and future mean to a philosopher of time? | Aeon Videos
What is the meaning of ‘now’? An Italian physicist takes us on a journey to the...
What’s the meaning of the objects an analyst puts on display? | Aeon Essays
The consulting office reflects the personality of the therapist, while also subtly shaping the experience of...
A filmmaker responds to Lars von Trier’s call for a new muse with a unique application | Aeon Videos
When Lars von Trier seeks applications for a ‘female girlfriend/muse’, a filmmaker puts forward her 72-year-old...
What exactly does it mean to say a state has a right to exist? | Aeon Essays
Since states are founded on violence and expulsion, their existence is always bound up in thorny...
Are chatbots of the dead a brilliant idea or a terrible one? | Aeon Essays
We can now create compelling experiences of talking with our dead. Is this ghoulish, therapeutic or...
Why large language models are mysterious – even to their creators | Aeon Videos
River bank or bank account? How chatbots learned to make the quantum leap to context by...
Commitment and cooperation: a coevolutionary relationship | Aeon Essays
Though natural selection favours self-interest, humans are extraordinarily good at cooperating with one another. Why? -...
Havana’s streets become racetracks in this exhilarating portrait of children at play | Aeon Videos
In this immersive portrait of play, children transform the streets of Havana into a racetrack with...
How did rape become a feature of Indian society, like caste? | Aeon Essays
When I moved to India for work, I found that rape was a cultural feature of...
Through rituals of prayer, a monk cultivates a quietly radical concept of freedom | Aeon Videos
‘I think that freedom everywhere, anywhere is love.’ Father Giles, a monk for 47 years, shares...
How humanity moved from ‘eternal’ to ‘bookended’ time | Aeon Essays
Nothing lasts forever: not humanity, not Earth, not the Universe. But finitude confers an indelible meaning...
To better understand the world, follow the paths of mathematics | Aeon Essays
In order to bridge the yawning gulf between the humanities and the sciences we must turn...
The many ways a lizard tongue sticks, grasps, pinches and plops – in slo-mo | Aeon Videos
Striking slow-motion footage captures the awesome evolutionary diversity – and handy usefulness – of a lizard’s...
How the scientists of the 1960s turned the Moon into a place | Aeon Essays
For most of history, the Moon was regarded as a mysterious and powerful object. Then scientists...
‘To my old master’ – a freed slave answers the request to return to his old plantation | Aeon Videos
‘Will you send us our wages for the time that we served you?’ A freed slave...
For Mary Midgley, philosophy must be entangled in daily life | Aeon Essays
For Mary Midgley, the Western philosophical tradition is shaped by the fact that its greatest practitioners...
A ceramicist puts her own bawdy spin on the folk language of pottery | Aeon Videos
A ceramicist puts a playful twist on Italian Renaissance pottery with dirty jokes, emojis and colourful...
What makes a person poor and what should we do about it? | Aeon Essays
By understanding the pernicious myths surrounding poverty, we can make progress towards a lofty goal: dignity...
Villagers struggle to keep their beloved, endangered ape population afloat | Aeon Videos
Humans are both the gravest threat and the greatest hope for the survival of the rare...
