Aeon | a world of ideas https://aeon.co Aeon is a magazine of ideas and culture. We publish in-depth essays from the world's most incisive and ambitious thinkers, and a mix of original and curated videos — free to all. https://aeon.co/images/logo.svg https://aeon.co/images/logo.svg 9D1D20 en All rights reserved Sun, 16 Feb 2025 07:35:53 GMT <![CDATA[Beyond causality]]> https://aeon.co/essays/to-better-understand-the-world-follow-the-paths-of-mathematics?utm_source=rss-feed urn:id:7735 Fri, 14 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT Photo of a modern bathroom with circular tiled walls and surfaces, two sinks, mirrors and red hand dryers reflected in the mirrors.

In order to bridge the yawning gulf between the humanities and the sciences we must turn to an unexpected field: mathematics

- by Gordon Gillespie

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]]> <![CDATA[Slow-motion tongues]]> https://aeon.co/videos/the-many-ways-a-lizard-tongue-sticks-grasps-pinches-and-plops-in-slo-mo?utm_source=rss-feed urn:id:7487 Thu, 13 Feb 2025 11:01:00 GMT Black and white close-up photo of a lizard with its tongue extended, about to catch a worm. The background is dark and blurred.

Striking slow-motion footage captures the awesome evolutionary diversity – and handy usefulness – of a lizard’s tongue

- by Aeon Video

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]]> <![CDATA[How the Moon became a place]]> https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-scientists-of-the-1960s-turned-the-moon-into-a-place?utm_source=rss-feed urn:id:7783 Thu, 13 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT Black-and-white photo of the Moon’s surface with craters, with a distant Earth visible on the horizon in space.

For most of history, the Moon was regarded as a mysterious and powerful object. Then scientists made it into a destination

- by Danny Robb

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]]> <![CDATA[A former slave’s letter to his old master]]> https://aeon.co/videos/to-my-old-master-a-freed-slave-answers-the-request-to-return-to-his-old-plantation?utm_source=rss-feed urn:id:7668 Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:01:00 GMT Photo of a man speaking at a podium marked ‘Letters Live’, gesturing with one hand against a dark background.

‘Will you send us our wages for the time that we served you?’ A freed slave answers his old master’s request to come back

- by Aeon Video

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]]> <![CDATA[So many unmarried men]]> https://aeon.co/essays/for-mary-midgley-philosophy-must-be-entangled-in-daily-life?utm_source=rss-feed urn:id:7770 Tue, 11 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT Black-and-white photo of two women preening a toddler who is sitting on a wall and sucking dummy, with a brick house and a washing line in the background.

For Mary Midgley, the Western philosophical tradition is shaped by the fact that its greatest practitioners were bachelors

- by Ellie Robson

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]]> <![CDATA[The cheekiest potter]]> https://aeon.co/videos/a-ceramicist-puts-her-own-bawdy-spin-on-the-folk-language-of-pottery?utm_source=rss-feed urn:id:7722 Mon, 10 Feb 2025 11:01:00 GMT Ceramic vase with yellow snake handles blue clouds and text detail in a workshop setting.

A ceramicist puts a playful twist on Italian Renaissance pottery with dirty jokes, emojis and colourful commentary on menopause

- by Aeon Video

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]]> <![CDATA[Poverty is not permanent]]> https://aeon.co/essays/what-makes-a-person-poor-and-what-should-we-do-about-it?utm_source=rss-feed urn:id:7778 Mon, 10 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT Six children with troubled faces sitting and lying on colourful blankets inside a dimly lit room with an earthen wall.

By understanding the pernicious myths surrounding poverty, we can make progress towards a lofty goal: dignity for all

- by Anirudh Krishna & Dirk Philipsen

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]]> <![CDATA[Guardians of the gibbons]]> https://aeon.co/videos/villagers-struggle-to-keep-their-beloved-endangered-ape-population-afloat?utm_source=rss-feed urn:id:7672 Thu, 06 Feb 2025 11:01:00 GMT Photo of a gibbon mother holding her baby in a lush green forest setting.

Humans are both the gravest threat and the greatest hope for the survival of the rare hoolock gibbons in northeast India

- by Aeon Video

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]]> <![CDATA[A very American fear]]> https://aeon.co/essays/when-it-comes-to-pornography-whats-the-harm-in-looking?utm_source=rss-feed urn:id:7777 Thu, 06 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT Vintage film poster with illustrated women underwater surrounded by bubbles text reads “Primitive and Exciting”.

Moral panics about erotica have coursed through the country’s history. Why do so many Americans think of porn as harm?

- by Rebecca L Davis

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]]> <![CDATA[How to see an exquisite corpse]]> https://aeon.co/videos/radical-doodles-how-exquisite-corpse-games-embodied-the-surrealist-movement?utm_source=rss-feed urn:id:7670 Wed, 05 Feb 2025 11:01:00 GMT Surreal abstract painting with eyes, lips and leaf shapes in soft colours on paper.

A history of the ‘exquisite corpse’ in art shows how it embodies surrealist ideas of freedom, community and radical creativity

- by Aeon Video

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]]> <![CDATA[The birth of naturalism]]> https://aeon.co/essays/investigating-the-roots-of-the-natural-supernatural-dichotomy?utm_source=rss-feed urn:id:7775 Tue, 04 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT Medieval painting of a man in a cosmic circle with zodiac symbols surrounded by blue and red patterns.

The modern era is often seen as the triumph of science over supernaturalism. But what really happened is far more interesting

- by Peter Harrison

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]]> <![CDATA[Mother tongue]]> https://aeon.co/videos/why-susan-listens-to-recordings-of-herself-speaking-a-language-she-no-longer-remembers?utm_source=rss-feed urn:id:7669 Mon, 03 Feb 2025 11:01:00 GMT Illustration of two people with closed eyes softly singing into a microphone, featuring simple brushstroke style.

In animations that evoke the fog of memory, Susan returns to her childhood in Korea, speaking a language she no longer knows

- by Aeon Video

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]]> <![CDATA[Passion and Palestine]]> https://aeon.co/essays/why-does-the-world-have-such-an-intense-stake-in-israel-palestine?utm_source=rss-feed urn:id:7771 Mon, 03 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT Aerial black-and-white photo of a town surrounded by rolling hills and agricultural terraces.

More than any other conflict, Israel/Palestine has provoked extraordinarily fervent emotion throughout the world. Why?

- by Derek Jonathan Penslar

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]]> <![CDATA[Hearts and brains]]> https://aeon.co/essays/what-amazonian-lives-tell-us-about-heart-health-and-longevity?utm_source=rss-feed urn:id:7758 Fri, 31 Jan 2025 11:00:00 GMT Aerial photo of a winding river through lush green rainforest with dramatic cloud formations in the sky above.

Humans always end up with clogged arteries, right? That’s not what the lives of the Tsimane in the Amazon basin tell us

- by Ben Daitz

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]]> <![CDATA[The ethical dilemma of privacy]]> https://aeon.co/videos/plato-saw-little-value-in-privacy-how-do-his-ideas-hold-up-in-the-information-age?utm_source=rss-feed urn:id:7666 Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:01:00 GMT Illustration of a purple star with an eye and shield with padlock on blue background encircled by laurel and gold rings.

Is privacy inherently valuable, or just one more variable in a society’s blueprint? The philosophers’ view, from Plato on

- by Aeon Video

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]]> <![CDATA[The listening gift]]> https://aeon.co/essays/rilke-and-the-art-of-listening-as-a-way-to-shape-the-cosmos?utm_source=rss-feed urn:id:7734 Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:00:00 GMT Painting of a serene night scene with a full moon reflecting on a dark blue lake surrounded by silhouettes of rocks and trees.

It is the dark matter of conversation, the white space around a poem. For Rilke, listening is receiving the divine

- by Faith Lawrence

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]]> <![CDATA[Murmurations]]> https://aeon.co/videos/starlings-swoosh-like-brushstrokes-across-the-sky-in-this-dazzling-short?utm_source=rss-feed urn:id:7591 Wed, 29 Jan 2025 11:01:00 GMT Black and white photograph of a cloudy sky with swirling lines resembling bird flight patterns.

A filmmaker collaborates with a murmuration of starlings to create spellbinding visuals at the intersection of science and art

- by Aeon Video

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]]> <![CDATA[In praise of subspecies]]> https://aeon.co/essays/the-case-for-subspecies-the-neglected-unit-of-conservation?utm_source=rss-feed urn:id:7732 Tue, 28 Jan 2025 11:00:00 GMT A brown wren standing on a rock with a blurred background.

To lump or to split? Deciding whether an animal is a species or subspecies profoundly influences our conservation priorities

- by Richard Smyth

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]]> <![CDATA[Voices of Victorians]]> https://aeon.co/videos/astonished-and-somewhat-terrified-victorians-reactions-to-the-phonograph?utm_source=rss-feed urn:id:7665 Mon, 27 Jan 2025 11:01:00 GMT Black and white photo of two men using an early voice recording device, seated and holding speaking tubes.

Hear echoes of the Victorian age, captured in some of the world’s first audio recordings, in this video essay on the phonograph

- by Aeon Video

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]]> <![CDATA[The end of neoliberalism?]]> https://aeon.co/essays/pundits-and-historians-declare-neoliberalism-over-mexico-begs-to-differ?utm_source=rss-feed urn:id:7731 Mon, 27 Jan 2025 11:00:00 GMT A man standing on a balcony of a brick apartment building, with tarps and debris in foreground.

The case of Mexico shows that, despite a proliferating discourse that it is over, neoliberalism is as relentless as ever

- by Inés Escobar González

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