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Aeon Magazine

@aeon.co

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Aeon is a magazine of ideas and culture. Visit aeon.co for more.

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Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 12h

‘Let this be clear: carte blanche to all the dreamers!’

In this short documentary ‘IntranQu’îllités’ exploring Haiti and its arts scene, the UK filmmaker Ed Owles captures not only the character and contradictions of Haiti, but also how national stories shape art – and vice versa

Finding the spirit of Haiti through a tour of its contemporary art | Aeon Videos

Take a tour of Haiti’s contemporary arts scene in this short documentary, led by some of its most celebrated artists

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 1d

In our era of globalisation, foreign investment is heralded as a lifeline for developing economies. Yet, as this Essay by @gkleinmartins.bsky.social explores, history tells a more complicated story

How foreign capital can hinder, or help, economic development | Aeon Essays

How do some countries manage to channel foreign capital into economic development while others are just exploited by it?

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 1d

Warren met his cancer diagnosis with tenacious optimism. But can positive thinking really affect the course of the disease?
aeon.co/essays/what-... @knautiyal.bsky.social

What can positive thinking do for a cancer patient? | Aeon Essays

Warren met his cancer diagnosis with tenacious optimism. But can positive thinking really affect the course of the disease?

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 1d

How can you have a picture of the world when your brain is locked up in your skull? Neuroscientist Dale Purves has clues aeon.co/essays/dale-...

Dale Purves, the neuroscientist who makes sense of the brain | Aeon Essays

How can you have a picture of the world when your brain is locked up in your skull? Neuroscientist Dale Purves has clues

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 2d

October is #ADHDAwarenessMonth, a time to reflect on what we know about ADHD, especially in adults. This Essay encourages us to expand how we recognise the many faces of this condition

Adult ADHD is becoming more inclusive, but not overdiagnosed | Aeon Essays

The diagnostic category of adult ADHD is becoming more inclusive. That’s not the same as it being overdiagnosed

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 2d

How can you have a picture of the world when your brain is locked up in your skull? Neuroscientist Dale Purves has clues buff.ly/YUoCePx

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 4d

To celebrate World Space Week, we’re revisiting this Essay which raises an important question: Is space habitat for humanity or backdrop to fading fantasies? #WorldSpaceWeek

Space: habitat for humanity or backdrop to fading fantasies? | Aeon Essays

Living in space was meant to be our next evolutionary step. What happened to the dream of the final frontier?

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 4d

Tattoos are often more than just ink on skin – they’re a declaration of identity and values. But what happens when the person changes, yet the ink remains? This question is at the centre of the US director Grace Noteboom’s short documentary ‘All These Marks’

Inside a tattoo parlour where hateful images are covered for free | Aeon Videos

As their hateful tattoos are covered up with colourful flowers and birds, three men reflect on catharsis and redemption

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 5d

‘To speak of nothing raises questions about everything.’ Artists and philosophers have long grappled with the idea of ‘nothing’ as it pushes at the limits of thought and demands new modes of expression

How ‘nothing’ has inspired art and science for millennia | Aeon Essays

The idea of nothing pushes at the limits of thought, spawning paradoxes that have long nourished art, philosophy, and science

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 6d

Today we’re revisiting essays and videos on the human-animal relationship in tribute to Jane Goodall, a tremendous influence on the world. Her life’s work continues to inspire what we do: highlighting our kinship with animals and our responsibility and interdependence with the natural world

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 6d

Directed by Ethiopian-American filmmaker Sosena Solomon, this short film explores the medieval stone ruins of Great Zimbabwe and their insights into an advanced African society’s legacy. It is part of the series Africa’s Cultural Landmarks, produced by @metmuseum.org and the World Monuments Fund

The dry-stacked stones of Zimbabwe are a medieval engineering wonder | Aeon Videos

What the medieval stone ruins of Great Zimbabwe tell us about an advanced African society and its legacy today

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 6d

This first-person story, published pseudonymously, is told through a series of vignettes that highlight the difficulty for women who experienced freedom after the first Taliban regime, only to have it taken away again @untold-narratives.bsky.social

One woman’s eye-witness account of life under Taliban rule | Aeon Essays

When the Taliban captured my city, thousands fled and the rest were severely repressed. But I’ve stayed – and survived

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 7d

One of the most fascinating and mysterious turning points in the history of life on Earth is its leap from single-celled organisms to multicellularity. How and why, after so many aeons, did cells begin to cooperate and specialise to ultimately form animal life? Watch this video from @nature.com

For 3 billion years, life was unicellular. Why did it start to collaborate? | Aeon Videos

A billion years ago, life made a big leap towards complexity – but what made single-celled organisms stick together?

Reposted by Aeon Magazine

Michael Fuerstein @michaelfuerstein.bsky.social · 14d

Democracy does occasionally work! My take on how and why, via the fascinating case of same sex marriage: aeon.co/essays/same-...

Same-sex marriage: propelled by democracy despite public ignorance | Aeon Essays

Same-sex marriage is an astonishing case of progress propelled by democracy, in the face of public spite and misinformation

Reposted by Aeon Magazine

Yannic Kappes @yannickappes.bsky.social · 13d

I wrote something else than the usual metaphysics (discussion appreciated):

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 13d

We already record much of our lives. But our memory and sense of self could be enhanced by recording even more, and creating so-called lifelogs that capture as many experiences as feasible

If memory is precious to you then go ahead and record everything! | Aeon Essays

Our memories are precious to us and constitute our sense of self. Why not enhance them by recording all of your life?

Reposted by Aeon Magazine

Kirtan Nautiyal @knautiyal.bsky.social · 8d

For years Warren's told me that positive thinking was the key to curing his stage IV rectal cancer. Today in @aeon.co I ask - what if he's right?

TY to the editors & staff & (especially) Warren for working with me on this piece for nearly a year!

aeon.co/essays/what-...

@longreads.com

What can positive thinking do for a cancer patient? | Aeon Essays

Warren met his cancer diagnosis with tenacious optimism. But can positive thinking really affect the course of the disease?

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 9d

In an age of ferocious religious bloodletting, Sebastian Castellio argued that everyone seems like a heretic to someone else

Sebastian Castellio and the deep roots of religious tolerance | Aeon Essays

In an age of ferocious religious bloodletting, Sebastian Castellio argued that everyone seems like a heretic to someone else

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 11d

‘How do you get to know a river? How do you get to know anything?’

From Memphis to New Orleans, director Bill Brown retraces Mark Twain’s steps to probe the Mississippi’s past and present, reflecting on the human need to understand and control, and the ultimate impossibility of ever fully doing so

Retracing Mark Twain’s path, a filmmaker sets out to understand the mighty Mississippi | Aeon Videos

Retracing Mark Twain’s path down the Mississippi, a filmmaker finds himself contemplating what it means to know a river

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 12d

It wasn’t our intention that humanity becomes the planet’s greatest evolutionary force; yet the fact that we are confronts us with an urgent and difficult question. Some species can adapt but, for many, the pace of change is too great. Should we try to save them by intervening in their evolution?

Should we intervene in evolution? The ethics of ‘editing’ nature | Aeon Essays

Countless species are dying from human-induced environmental change. Should we use genetic technology to alter and save them?

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 13d

This short from the Metropolitan Museum of Art reconstructs a ceremonial shield made by the Moche people of modern-day Peru, several centuries before the Inca Empire began to dominate the region @metmuseum.org

The extraordinary craft and fascinating symbolism of a pre-Incan ceremonial shield | Aeon Videos

Watch the exquisite digital restoration of a ceremonial pre-Incan shield, in which the owl is a symbol of war, not wisdom

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 13d

We already record much of our lives. But our memory and sense of self could be enhanced by recording even more, and creating so-called lifelogs that capture as many experiences as feasible

If memory is precious to you then go ahead and record everything! | Aeon Essays

Our memories are precious to us and constitute our sense of self. Why not enhance them by recording all of your life?

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 14d

Should you never make promises you don’t intend to keep? This brief animation directed by Sarah Stroud lays out a complex scenario where a dying woman asks for and receives promises and explores what philosophers like John Locke, David Hume and John Rawls say about the ethics of breaking your word

A deathbed scenario raises the question: how much power should a promise hold? | Aeon Videos

Should you never make promises you don’t intend to keep? What philosophers say about the ethics of breaking your word

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 15d

Without peasants, the global economy could not function, and our natural systems would collapse. Life still depends on the peasantry, and we are all affected by the fact that it is today in an acute crisis

The planet, and human social life, depend on peasant farmers | Aeon Essays

Far from being a relic of the past, peasants are vital to feeding the world. They need to be supported, not marginalised

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 16d

The transformation of American public opinion on same-sex marriage is a remarkable and rapid shifts in moral consciousness ever recorded. Since the late 1980s, public approval of the practice climbed from 11 per cent to 70 per cent. What explains this? And how is it in part a puzzle about democracy?

Same-sex marriage: propelled by democracy despite public ignorance | Aeon Essays

Same-sex marriage is an astonishing case of progress propelled by democracy, in the face of public spite and misinformation

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 16d

In this short, filmmakers Boloh Miranda and Elizabeth Swanson Andi capture Nina Gualinga, a Kichwa activist, reflecting on the forms of extractivism and commodification imposed on her people from the world beyond it @theguardian.com

A Kichwa activist on ayahuasca’s rise – and what it really means to her people | Aeon Videos

Ayahuasca forms part of the resistance to extractivism and commodification for the Kichwa of Sarayuku, Ecuadorian Amazon