If aliens are out there, what kind of language would they use? This question is posed by philosopher Nikhil Mahant in his Aeon Essay ‘Extraterrestrial Tongues’, as highlighted in this video by Senior Editor Richard Fisher buff.ly/dDqPg3A

London! Join us on 16 June as we explore the unique connection between humanness and language with archaeologist Steven Mithen. Click the link for ticket and event details sophiaclub.co/event/did-la...

What is the life of a child influencer like when the cameras are off? As outlined here by Video Assistant Pia Rios, the short documentary ‘Christmas, Every Day’ juxtaposes more conventional images of childhood with the hyperreal world of content creation aeon.co/videos/the-c...

Mozart’s genius lay in writing music of such power that he could draw his audience into morally wrenching predicaments. An Essay by Dorian Bandy

The UN’s special rapporteurs are experts charged with a singular mandate: to monitor the world’s worst human rights abuses. An Essay by @alvinahoffmann.bsky.social

We are told the natural world is ‘breaking down’. But forests don’t work like airplanes or human hearts. An Essay by John Drake

Why was Mozart a genius? In today’s Essay, Dorian Bandy posits the distinct ways that Mozart’s work broke with operatic convention, opening space for contradiction and ethical ambiguity

The idea of building a new community, off the grid and away from the world, is often associated with radical utopianism or libertarianism. However, ‘This Is My Island’, a 1972 episode of the BBC documentary series Look, Stranger, captures a more conservative take on the impulse to start anew

The artificial splicing of genes has transformed modern medicine and opened up paths to countless new treatments. However, as this short documentary from @scicomlab.bsky.social chronicles, it was a revolution born in controversy

In this Essay, Eliane Glaser compellingly argues that if we don’t engage with the Enlightenment’s complexities, it will continue to be weaponised by both sides for extremist polemical ends. The question is: which of the Enlightenment’s values are worth saving?

In this powerful short film, Selinna Ajamikoko shares the story of her harrowing, years-long migration from her home country of Nigeria to Italy, which she began aged just 15

Very excited to have this essay out in @aeon.co

In today’s Essay, @alvinahoffmann.bsky.social presents a brief history of the peculiar position of UN special rapporteurs, appointed by the UN but acting in their personal capacity to investigate human rights violations

We may think that forests exist to produce oxygen, wetlands to filter water, and bees to pollinate our crops. But, as the ecologist John Drake expertly argues in this Essay, ecosystems don’t exist to perform human-centred goals

Far from turning its back on the sea, the fate of Qing China was tied as much to tides and storms as to cavalry and walls. An Essay by Ron Po

Sergiu Klainerman spent years proving that black holes won’t fly apart; and arguing that maths is not a human invention. An Essay by Steve Nadis

This 1971 short animation adapts an Indian folktale of a ‘she-Sun’ and a ‘he-Moon’ whose ill-fated love first brought death to humans who had endured ‘unbearable’ immortal existences. Rewarding in its own right, the film evokes countless myths developed around the world to make sense of mortality

We all start our lives small, and no one can ever truly recover from this. Which is to say that as children, our smallness renders us vulnerable to the ‘big people’ in our lives – an experience that shapes who we become, as the psychoanalyst Tom Wooldridge explains in his lyrical Essay

This moving portrait of the Indigenous Hawaiian poet, artist and scholar Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio captures the core of her philosophy: the concept of ‘aloha ʻāina’, which teaches that the connections between people are inseparable from the land they share. @emergencemagazine.bsky.social

In this short, sharp Essay, the professor of economics Alan Manning argues that to take the heat out of the immigration debate, we need to acknowledge the boring nature of creating migration policies that work – shifting from moralistic arguing to fastidious research and number-crunching

The wait is finally over! We’re thrilled to announce Tom Ralston as the winner of the inaugural Aeon Philosophy Prize. Keep a close eye out for his winning essay – coming to aeon.co soon. Follow us and sign up to our newsletter to be the first to read new essays and announcements: aeon.co/newsletter

After two firefighters in rural Venezuela posted a video comparing a local donkey to then-president Nicolás Maduro, they were swiftly arrested. Filmed six years after the incident, the short Looking for a Donkey documents the local fallout while searching for the animal at the centre of it all

Recently, for *obvious reasons*, I've been thinking about what it means when anxiety and sadness are caused not by individual predispositions, but by the state of the world itself. This led me to early 19th-c. France and the notion of "mal du siècle" (sickness of the century) aeon.co/essays/young...

The Qing dynasty that ruled China from 1644 to 1912 is often portrayed as a land power obsessed with continental growth. But empires do not simply turn away from seas that lap at thousands of miles of coastline. The question is not whether the Qing cared about the ocean. It’s how they lived with it

This absorbing Essay by Steve Nadis explores Sergiu Klainerman landmark proofs about black holes, and his career-long fascination with a deep, unresolved mystery: Why does mathematics keep rearing its head, time and again, in the unlikeliest of places?

We need a new imagination for the whole Earth, linking the power of the deep planet with the vitality of the surface. An Essay by @jamesdinneen.bsky.social

Talk as much as you like about human rights, nothing will change until the architecture of global finance is reformed. An Essay by Attiya Waris

In ‘Classroom 4’, filmmaker Eden Wurmfeld follows a university course held inside a minimum-security prison in Oregon, where incarcerated and non-incarcerated students study the history of crime and punishment together

The emotional and practical skills of adulthood can only be learned from (appropriate) levels of discomfort and stress. An Essay by Niklas Serning & Nina Lyon

Though ironic detachment from hopelessness may feel distinctly of this doom-scrolling moment, it turns out we’ve been here before: the early 19th century saw a whole generation being diagnosed with ‘mal du siècle’ – sickness of the century. We can learn lessons from them, writes Emily Herring

In this immersive short documentary, the US filmmaker and artist Andrew Norman Wilson captures the mesmerising and at times eerie sensory elements of a Swiss New Year’s tradition so old, no one knows why or when it began

The global financial system syphons $88.6 billion from African countries every year – more than double the total development aid the continent receives. In this eye-opening Essay, the Kenyan scholar and UN independent expert Attiya Waris asserts the dire need for reform

Every day, a small battle on the streets of New York City flies just below the radar. A group of cyclists who patrol the streets enforcing the city’s ban on leaving a vehicle idling. This short documentary by Molly Stark-Ragsdale provides a street-level view of these bounty hunts from both sides

Very happy to share this new essay on @aeon.co about the two original sins of digital technology: #surveillance and #prediction. It is a complement to the #book, #Prophecy

I spoke to ABC Australia's Late Night Live about new potential ways to do humanitarian journalism better following my recent @aeon.co story www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

New essay out in @aeon.co in which I consider the deepest ways in which humans have changed the planet in the Anthropocene (hint: it’s not that super deep hole in Russia). 🧪⚒️🌍 aeon.co/essays/how-d...

Astronauts experience the ‘overview effect’ when they see humanity from space. But what do we look like from down below? As the science journalist James Dinneen points out, ‘the great majority of Earth … has no clue humans exists’. Deep Earth, he argues, can change our perspective

In this Essay, Niklas Serning and Nina Lyon explore the mounting evidence that suggests highly conscientious parents have over-corrected in their drive for less stress and more support, leaving children more vulnerable to the rough and tumble of ordinary existence

Particles are nature’s smallest constituents, but that doesn’t mean they’re fundamental. So what is the Universe made of?. An Essay by Felix Flicker

Genetic studies support what historians have argued for decades: ancient India was a place of migration and mixture. An Essay by @kikumbhar.bsky.social

Ancient Athenians often used a lottery system called sortition, believing it to be fairer and less divisive than elections. In this animation, Michael Vazquez explores how lottery-based democracy worked, why it faded, and whether it could help address today’s political polarisation and distrust

Brilliance and kindness shine brightest when far from the comfortable centre. Even nature is more generative there too. An Essay by Charles Foster

We are thrilled to announce the shortlist for the inaugural Aeon Philosophy Prize. Chosen from hundreds of excellent submissions from around the world, these five finalists explore urgent and enduring philosophical questions with originality, clarity and imagination. Stay updated: aeon.co/newsletter

Tech advocates often argue it’s not the technology that’s bad in itself, but how we use it. How awfully convenient for those selling us that tech, says the philosopher and privacy expert Carissa Véliz in this Essay dispelling the illusion of a morally neutral technology

How do you build a house on Mars? First, you need building materials – and then you need to get them there. Like everything with space travel, what seems simple on Earth becomes a lot more complicated, as the US astrobiologist Lynn Rothschild explains in this fascinating lecture @longnow.org

Where did the remarkably diverse Indian population come from? In this expansive Essay, the historian Kiran Kumbhar traces how the narrative about Indian history has emerged and shifted over the past centuries, laying out the current state of knowledge – including genetic evidence

You can help Aeon reach more minds and conversations by: - Signing up for our daily/weekly newsletters at aeon.co/newsletter (and sharing them with someone who’d appreciate it) - Sharing Aeon.co or specific Essays and Videos – Following and sharing our posts on Instagram and Facebook

Set in the windswept hills of rural Iran, this tender coming-of-age documentary by Yaser Talebi follows 18-year-old Sahar whose life is at a crossroads between following her dreams at university or staying at home to care for her father

The illustration subtly echoes the themes of this essay... click/press on it

Why reality is more than the sum of its particles - by quantum matter physicist Felix Flicker for @aeon.co aeon.co/essays/why-r... ⚛️