Aeon Magazine

Can there be grief without death? In today's Essay, Derek van Zoonen argues that grief is not exclusive to death, that it can occur in response to any loss that changes our world. He suggests a language that considers such non-death losses will help us better understand ourselves and each other

Check out this new article in Aeon based on a (modest) extension of my book, The Indispensability of Intuitions (Cambridge 2025).

In today's Essay, Azize Aslan argues that lasting peace requires more than the end of armed conflict. Instead, she proposes cooperatives as a foundation for ‘anticapitalist peace’: democratically organised enterprises that prioritise collective needs over profit. Read: buff.ly/raX5U1H

A defining figure of the Art Deco movement, Tamara de Lempicka’s paintings frequently convey unapologetic female autonomy and desire. In this fascinating video, curator James Payne and art historian Laura Beardsell-Moore explore Lempicka’s revolutionary conception of womanhood buff.ly/zSIhFH4

Horrific violence, enduring terror and ceaseless solidarity: four years of war through the eyes of Ukrainian civilians. A Video by Anders Hammer

Just as seeing a tree gives you reason to believe it’s there, sensing that a stranger is creepy gives you reason to walk away. An Essay by @gnosishead.bsky.social

Since humans first struck a spark from a stone, the force that resists motion has been the very thing that propels us forward. This paradox, as explored by tribologist Jennifer R Vail, offers a lens through which to reread humanity’s entire technological history buff.ly/0iLTyjt

Today's society increasingly champions independence and privacy. But have we forgotten the importance of living together? In today's Essay, Elizabeth Oldfield explores why living in close proximity to others might be one of the most powerful ways to better understand ourselves buff.ly/SjjHbXZ

This film presents a moving account of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine over the course of four years. Through the perspective of Ukrainian civilians, it explores how their everyday lives are defined by horrific violence, enduring terror and ceaseless solidarity buff.ly/eGhe9Zi

In this fascinating Essay, the philosophy professor Marc A Moffett explores what intuitions are and whether we should trust them

In today's Video by the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, the filmmaker Gerard Ortín Castellví explores the philosophy of Bruno Latour and the collasping boundaries between natural and human worlds

In today's Essay, historian Catherine Fletcher traces the rise of firearms across 16th-century Italy, exploring how warfare, the expansion of citizen militias and changing ideas of masculinity transformed attitudes towards guns, even as concerns about their dangers persisted buff.ly/3O736WW

These women once fled ISIS. Now they defuse the landmines the militants left behind in their Yazidi homeland in northern Iraq. A Video by Orlando von Einsiedel

We are, moment by moment, doing less sensing, navigating, remembering, walking, choosing, and attending. An Essay by Melanie Challenger

Catharine Edwards explores what it actually meant to 'be a man' in Ancient Rome. In doing so, the Essay highlights the importance of public speaking, a defining measure of Roman masculinity that cemented Cicero's reputation as the Empire's most eloquent statesman buff.ly/KvIoBCo

In this Video, Nicholas Conard explores how discoveries at the Hohle Fels cave suggest art was essential to our evolutionary success

In today’s Essay, logician Alexander V Gheorghiu traces a path from Kant and Hilbert to Gödel, asking whether mathematical truth is fixed, or something that can change with the rules we use to understand it buff.ly/gA1GqT4

In the short documentary ‘Into the Fire’ the filmmaker Orlando von Einsiedel follows Hana Khider, a Yazidi woman who leads an all-female team doing the perilous work of searching for and deactivating tens of thousands of hidden explosives left behind by ISIS

In this illuminating Essay, Melanie Challenger argues that our reliance on technology is weakening the skills we should be developing by finding our own way in the world

Directed by Sosena Solomon, this new documentary follows the reconstruction of four royal tombs in Kampala, Uganda, built entirely from plant-based materials that require constant care and upkeep buff.ly/GkXfIqu

This Essay takes you on a fascinating journey into the theory of Panpsychism, which offers the ‘perennial hope’ that the world is ultimately intelligible. Sam Kimpton-Nye expertly unpacks Panpsychism’s core arguments and explores what it says about the deep mystery of consciousness buff.ly/9axQAGq

For a decade, I’ve posted episodes of my memoir to Facebook. My readers correct my understanding of my past. An Essay by Thomas Söderqvist

In the wake of tragedy, an elderly couple must make a choice: should they let their son go to save the lives of others? A Video by Yaser Talebi

Barbara Ward imagined a ‘planetary’ politics grounded in ecological interdependence, moral responsibility and global cooperation. In today’s Essay, Or Rosenboim argues that Ward’s distinctive vision still offers insights into some of the most pressing challenges of the 21st century buff.ly/7a1gDaQ

From the homeland of the Lenape people to the global cultural capital it’s become today, the island of Manhattan has undergone extraordinary transformations. Rendered in 3D animation without the use of AI, this video from the YouTube channel City 3D Timelapse chronicles its evolution buff.ly/qkdOWG3

Taking readers deep into the walled-off ‘geto novo’ neighbourhood of 16th-century Venice, the eminent Renaissance scholar Alexander Lee provides a fascinating account of the world's first Jewish Ghetto in this Essay

In Yaser Talebi's short documentary 'I Won't Remain Alone', the filmmaker follows an Iranian couple seeking out the recipient of their late son's heart. Watch the Aeon-exclusive documentary for free: buff.ly/FhyGHqo

I wrote for @aeon.co about how early violence can be a bad teacher, but the past need not define the present. With support, safety, and patience, the capacity of our minds to learn anew is ordinary. aeon.co/essays/early...

Humanity publishes 19,000+ scientific studies every day – not infrequently drawing opposing conclusions. In this Essay, the science journalist Helen Pearson argues that to find clarity, we don’t need more flashy results but to synthesise what's already there @helenpearson.bsky.social

In this experimental short, the Inuk filmmaker Lindsay McIntyre stylishly captures a traditional Inuit game of balance and strength through monochrome, hand-processed film and an ambient, dreamlike score

When the historian Thomas Söderqvist began posting his memoir to Facebook, his readers revealed to him parts of his own life that he never would have seen on his own. In this fascinating Essay, Söderqvist what happens to self-image when it is formed in public buff.ly/CGjrltX

In the mid-1990s, thinkers pushed back against the idea we’re built by language, turning to feeling and the body instead. A Video by Then & Now

A cancer diagnosis carries with it fear and upheaval. For many patients the cellular changes do not warrant the label. An Essay by @dr_coops

For many Americans raised in deprived neighbourhoods, gun violence has fundamentally shaped their inner behavioural scripts to anticipate danger everywhere, perpetuating the cycle – but what can be learned can be unlearned, with programmes designed to help rewrite these scripts buff.ly/ghYgRJZ

This short from the science documentary series Deep Look explores the dominance of green tree ants and the four copycat species who leverage their looks for survival

In this deftly argued Essay, the philosopher Sasha Mudd uses Kant’s notion of reason as freedom as a warning against the emerging tendency to conflate intelligence with optimisation in the age of AI buff.ly/bl01hrT =

This Aeon-exclusive short documentary by Czech filmmaker Maja Penčič sets out to find the half-man, half-mythological figure known simply as 'Zoran', whose (allegedly passportless) globetrotting has inspired dozens of conflicting accounts still circulating long after his departure buff.ly/QZVMBaS

While improvements in cancer screening have had overwhelmingly positive effects, when the word ‘cancer’ is applied too liberally to cell abnormalities, clinicians risk harming patients both mentally and physically, writes the urologist Matthew R Cooperberg

‘Affects are the intensities that move us’. This provocative video examines the ‘affective turn’ in the humanities, exploring the interplay of physicality, emotion and identity buff.ly/hTyVmJ9

The idea that creative genius depends on distance from domestic responsibility has long been upheld in the cultural sphere, especially for men. But in today's Essay, the english professor Daniel Swift suggests that the opposite may be true

As Indonesia builds a new capital city, the race is on to preserve the sounds of the rainforest before they vanish forever. A Video by Leah Varjacques

When I found the mushroom Amanita muscaria being sold in candy wrappers, I uncovered legal loopholes, dangerous dosages and more. An Essay by Eric Leas

‘What stayed with me wasn’t the answer but the manner of it: a philosopher in his 70s [. . .] still willing to test [his] framework’. In this Essay, the philosopher Emilie Prattico traces the evolution of Jürgen Habermas’s thought – shaped by a willingness to have his mind changed buff.ly/5C1hOqn

In today's Video, Bill Hammack, an engineer and professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, explores the remarkable engineering and tragic demise of the airship that would end Britain’s dream to dominate the skies

This Essay by Craig Maier transports you to a late summer’s day on his father-in-law’s farm in southern Wisconsin. Drawing on Aldo Leopold’s ‘The Land Ethic’, Maier ponders how we might encode an ethic of land use that focuses on restoration buff.ly/oT8dXCp

At the Old Tucson theme park in Tucson, Arizona, visitors step out of their normal lives and into the American West. Over the course of a day, the directors Sue Ding and Sarah Garrahan capture visitors stepping into a romanticised past that never quite existed buff.ly/X2h3OAO

In today’s Essay, Eric Leas investigates the potentially dangerous Amanita muscaria mushroom being sold in some misleadingly labelled ‘magic mushroom’ gummies buff.ly/EemErrg

In this short documentary, US director Leah Varjacques traces an effort to record the sounds of a rainforest before they're altered forever, due to the construction of Indonesia's impending new capital city buff.ly/ZvHXVNu

How strongly should we hold onto our own beliefs? When are we being needlessly dogmatic, and when do we need to fight harder? Let the past guide you towards a healthy scepticism with this historically rich Essay on the life and philosophy of Cicero

Until I met astronomer @richardvnd.bsky.social I did not know that colliding black holes 'ring'... nor that they seem to forget all the violence of such an event. He wrote about why that fascinates him in this mind-expanding essay for @aeon.co 🧪⚛️