Shows / Aeon Magazine
Aeon Magazine
Aeon audio explores the most profound and relevant ideas, told through essays that help us make sense of ourselves and the world. We ask the big, existentially significant questions and find the freshest, most original answers, provided by leading thinkers on philosophy, science, psychology, society and culture. Each episode features a narrated Aeon essay, a journey into expert concepts and stories that provoke, enrich and expand our horizons. Aeon is a nonprofit digital magazine publishing…
Episodes
Aeon MagazineMethodical/mercurial
I need order and routine – just as much as I crave excitement and variety. What’s life like with both autism and ADHD?. Aeon audio explores the most profound…
Aeon MagazineBelieving and thinking
The separation of church and state has an unspoken psychological basis: we choose what we believe, but not what we think. Aeon audio explores the most profound…
Aeon MagazineThe self-making world
Long mocked and misunderstood, Lamarck’s radical idea that organisms shape themselves and their world is making a comeback. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineIn praise of the dilettante
A wayfaring cosmopolitan who never gets stuck, the dilettante is the right anti-hero for our hyper-specialised age. Aeon audio explores the most profound and…
Aeon MagazineThe physics of getting fired
Physics offered me a sense of order and purpose. But when life got messy I realised it had a much deeper insight to give. Aeon audio explores the most profound…
Aeon MagazineLove with nowhere to go
Grief is not only for the dead. When we are unable to honour other profound losses, we become strangers to ourselves. Aeon audio explores the most profound and…
Aeon MagazineHow to build real peace
From Colombia to Syria, I’ve seen that capitalist logic can’t help to rebuild postwar countries but cooperatives can. Aeon audio explores the most profound and…
Aeon MagazineTraction!
Tribologists study friction: what happens when things rub together. It’s indispensable, from the wheel to the paths of stars. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineOther people
Disconnection is at the heart of today’s crises. So my husband and I chose a radical and revealing remedy: living communally. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineHow intuitions work
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. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineHorrible, unmanly, indispensable
Renaissance Italians saw the gun as the Devil’s work. But soon they embraced this unchivalrous – and necessary – weapon. Aeon audio explores the most profound…
Aeon MagazineHow to be a (Roman) man
Cicero’s ideal of manly virtue stressed the performance of self-control and bravery, not boastful egotism and domination. Aeon audio explores the most profound…
Aeon MagazineThe ladder of knowledge
What we claim as ‘true’ is not a ceiling we are forever failing to reach but something that changes as we climb toward it. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineDeskilling the body
We are, moment by moment, doing less sensing, navigating, remembering, walking, choosing, and attending. Aeon audio explores the most profound and relevant…
Aeon MagazineIs everything conscious?
If the question makes no sense to you, try spending some time with the principle of sufficient reason. Aeon audio explores the most profound and relevant…
Aeon MagazineThe ghetto on the lagoon
Sixteenth-century Venice wanted to expel its Jews but couldn’t do without them. Its compromise was the world’s first ghetto. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineHow to assemble science
Humanity produces a staggering amount of new knowledge every day. The question is how to make sense of it all. Aeon audio explores the most profound and…
Aeon MagazineA life in episodes
For a decade, I’ve posted episodes of my memoir to Facebook. My readers correct my understanding of my past. Aeon audio explores the most profound and relevant…
Aeon MagazineLife on a hair trigger
A world of violence sustains itself through guns, poverty and other social ills, but also through the minds it creates. Aeon audio explores the most profound…
Aeon MagazineReason is more than a tool
If intelligence is merely optimisation then machines will outrun us. Kant tells us why human reason is so much more. Aeon audio explores the most profound and…
Aeon MagazineDon’t use the ‘C-word’
A cancer diagnosis carries with it fear and upheaval. For many patients the cellular changes do not warrant the label. Aeon audio explores the most profound…
Aeon MagazinePaternity is poetical
The notion that fatherhood and creativity are at odds is plain wrong, as both poetry and neuroscience are showing us. Aeon audio explores the most profound and…
Aeon MagazineChasing la dolce vita
Homecomings, fantasies, food and ghosts – how the myth of eternal return keeps the Italian diaspora in a state of longing. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineReasoning together
Jürgen Habermas, the great defender of deliberative democracy, lived up to its demands: he never feared changing his mind. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineWhere a land ethic blooms
Caring for this planet entails decisions that are intimate, about our farms, our homes, our human and our wild neighbours. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineToadstools and toxins
When I found the mushroom Amanita muscaria being sold in candy wrappers, I uncovered legal loopholes, dangerous dosages and more. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineHe was probably right
Cicero’s life and thought are a testament to the idea of probabilia: we should be confident in our beliefs, but never certain. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineCosmic amnesia
A black hole rings like a struck bell, then settles into silence, forgetting almost everything about its history. Why?. Aeon audio explores the most profound…
Aeon MagazineWho will taste the cherries?
The computist has one dream: to debug the subjectivity out of all of human knowledge, creating a pure, frictionless world. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineThe bombarding of childhood
It’s not just screen time: the problem with children’s media is that it has become relentlessly hectic, loud and bright. Aeon audio explores the most profound…
Aeon MagazinePenchants of the polymaths
The fathers of Islamic science hold lessons for students: breadth over specialisation, and never let constraints get in the way. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineMedieval mental health
Saffron and ostrich liver were prescribed but so were exercise, gardens, animals, socialising, and music. Aeon audio explores the most profound and relevant…
Aeon MagazineOur eloquent hands
Physicians reject palmistry as nonsense. But reading the creases of our palms for hidden meaning is what doctors have always done. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineContinental divide
A century ago, the Pan-American road promised a new era of fraternity between the two continents. Did it succeed?. Aeon audio explores the most profound and…
Aeon MagazineUpend the trickle-down
Neoliberal policies have hollowed out democracies and spawned unchecked oligarchs. Grasping their structure points to a fix. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineNeuroqueering on the lawn
Hans Christian Andersen’s tantrum in Charles Dickens’s garden was a case of ‘too muchness’, emotions bursting past respectability. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineMore nothing now
We are most human when we play freely, imaginatively, pointlessly. Gamification risks atrophying that most precious capacity. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineThe Singapore strategies
The nation’s water is secure, but its food is another matter: lessons from the city-state in efficiency versus self-sufficiency. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineBeyond food and people
Nietzsche shows us how to embrace our connection with nature – without denying its essential conflict, strife and suffering. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineEmpire of flight
They have big brains, long childhoods and sociable, curious minds. So why haven’t birds developed complex culture?. Aeon audio explores the most profound and…
Aeon MagazineThe planetary fix
Despite decades of inaction we can avert the climate Hellocene and restore the atmosphere to keep our world habitable. Aeon audio explores the most profound…
Aeon MagazineThe fog of hunger
From childhood, women are trained to restrict their appetite. And there’s a huge, hidden, cognitive price to pay for it. Aeon audio explores the most profound…
Aeon MagazineDolphins and other lovers
The Andoque of the Amazon know what we have forgotten: the forest’s most beautiful creatures are also its most dangerous. Aeon audio explores the most profound…
Aeon MagazineIn praise of zealotry
Early feminists like Mary Astell and Catharine Macaulay refused their male peers’ advice to remain polite in debate. Why?. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineWorm munch matters
The lives that slither and scurry beneath the soil’s surface are vital for ecological health: now we can listen in to them. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineWhere did the grandeur go?
Superlative things were done in the past century by marshalling thousands of people in the service of a vision of the future. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineNatural-born existentialists
Ethics cannot be based on human nature because, as evolutionary biology tells us, there is no such thing. Aeon audio explores the most profound and relevant…
Aeon MagazineThe neverending house
The self-built homes of Santiago are precarious and ever changing. They are, always and at once, being and becoming. Aeon audio explores the most profound and…
Aeon MagazineMecca and the mall
In a bid for spiritual renewal, I made a pilgrimage to Islam’s holy city. Almost everything I expected to see was gone. Aeon audio explores the most profound…
Aeon MagazineA second sexual revolution
Until Shere Hite’s Report, even the most daring sexologists refused to listen to what women desired and hated in sex. Aeon audio explores the most profound and…
Aeon MagazineHow we meet the future
If we couldn’t make generalisations, we would be paralysed by the world’s complexity. Does that ever excuse stereotyping?. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineSasquatch science
The hunt for Bigfoot sounds like the opposite of good science, but those pursuing the creature are often serious empiricists. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineCulture clash
C P Snow’s ‘Two Cultures’ lecture provoked a savage response from fellow critic F R Leavis. What was at the heart of it all?. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineTowards an AI for Africa
Western-developed AI rides roughshod over Ubuntu values of connection and community that animate African ethical life. Aeon audio explores the most profound…
Aeon MagazineThucydides the perspicacious
Far from thinking that ‘might makes right’, the great historian’s analysis of war identifies a vice common to all states. Aeon audio explores the most profound…
Aeon MagazineResist the technocrats
Through international organisations, they wield power under the pretence of simply following the experts. Don’t believe them. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineHow art invented humanity
When early humans first painted cave walls, they began to find out who they really were: our minds emerged from our images. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineThe light narrows
My father’s death sent me to the jiu-jitsu mat. Then came defeat, low testosterone and the lure of a chemical cheat code. Aeon audio explores the most profound…
Aeon MagazineThe taming of Black thought
Black philosophers now feature on Western curricula, but the European tradition diminishes their radicalism into reassurance. Aeon audio explores the most…
Aeon MagazineSignal then storm
Allan Basbaum has spent 50 years searching the nervous system for the places where pain begins – and where it can be stopped. Aeon audio explores the most…