Alexei Vangengheim fell victim to a Stalinist purge in 1934 and was sent to a gulag on the Solovetsky Islands. This powerful short illustrates the letters that he sent his daughter Elya during that time, in which he protected her from the truth by by telling imaginative tales

Interest in green deaths has surged in the recent years as a way to participate more fully in the flourishing of future life on our planet. However, closer examination of contemporary eco-death technologies reveals that this dream is not so easily realised

If you missed this before Christmas, this @aeon.co piece by @karenlloyd.bsky.social is terrific. I really enjoyed working on it. (+ thanks to my colleague Sam Dresser for the inspired headline: 'Long live the aeonophiles!') aeon.co/essays/the-d...

For millennia, philosophers and scientists have interrogated the nature of the human self and how we understand it. Today's Essay by @tonyjprescott.bsky.social explores a new approach – the attempt to create or synthesise a sense of self in robots

Marine scientists face an unexpected roadblock: laws designed to protect reefs are preventing them from saving corals during heatwaves. To resolve this, we must build new legal frameworks, argues Irus Braverman in this urgent Essay

Not all documentaries are heavy or emotionally demanding. The short films across the Aeon and Psyche archives inspire wonder and open windows onto lives and places far beyond our own. Here, Aeon Media’s video curator, Tamur Qutab, shares a selection of his favourite uplifting films buff.ly/vtQn524

Could the US stance against annexation-by-conquest be softening? And, if so, what would be the consequences for global order? Revisit this revealing and timely Essay from the Aeon archive

Providing a glimpse into the microscopic worlds within us, this animation illustrates a fascinating process in which specialised proteins repair damaged DNA by using an intact copy as a template

It took five ill-fated conversations with Jean-Paul Sartre before the Vietnamese philosopher Trần Đức Thảo finally broke with French philosophy. This essay traces Thảo’s life and work, and how he came to be one of the first theorists of the divide between colonised and coloniser

For the Iranian Australian musician Hamed Sadeghi, one strum of the tar is all it takes to echo millennia of Persian history. In this short film, Sadeghi gives a soulful performance of the guitar-like instrument and explains why, for him, playing it is an act of anchoring

The exceptional editorial nous of the Aeon people has produced a another insightful collection of essays. Read and give a little to the cause. They’re unlike anyone else in this dark world. I’m always illuminated.

Two researchers have taken a deep dive into online communities of chronic disease sufferers, finding what they call a ‘spiral of suffering’, in which initially helpful validation can turn sour and compound into a sense of hopelessness

This intimate short documentary follows Desmond Grant, a Jamaican immigrant in Munich, Germany, as he navigates the liberating yet isolating transition to a new country

In 1894, the tomb of an ancient female poet by the name of Bilitis was discovered in Cyprus, containing poems revealing she was a contemporary to Sappho. But who was Bilitis? Did she ever even exist? Find out more in @catlamb.bsky.social’s wonderfully illuminating Essay

To understand how the brain functions, we need to shift away from thinking in terms of individual brain regions and instead consider how they might work together as neuronal ensembles

By our director Inanna Hamati-Ataya @berytia.bsky.social

Who should decide the role of AI in the future of medicine? –Check out my latest essay in @aeon.co aeon.co/essays/who-s... edited by @nigelwarburton.bsky.social

A hero or a murderer? Stalin’s legacy is still a contentious issue in his birthplace, Georgia, seven decades after his death. Start your new year with this accomplished portrait of place – a favourite Aeon Exclusive from the archive

‘One of the best Aeon articles I’ve read.’ – Medora, Aeon reader, September 2025 In this compassionately told Essay, Cynda Hylton Rushton draws out her framework of moral resilience, which she built over three decades as a nurse, researcher and professor of clinical ethics

How do large language models really work – and why do they continue to surprise even their creators? In this clear-eyed explainer created for the Computer History Museum, Grant Sanderson @3blue1brown.com traces the evolution of LLMs and opens up their hidden scaffolding

Globalisation didn’t begin in the 1990s, or even in the past millennia. The tale of globalisation is written across human history. So why do we keep getting the story so wrong? This Essay was one of our most read by you in 2025. Revisit it here:

Take a trip to a former hunting lodge, now part living museum, part work of art. One of our most-viewed archive videos, this playful and quietly profound film invites us to reflect on the character of our own lived-in spaces, as the year draws to a close

This Essay, arguing that philosophy must reckon with the meaning of thermodynamics, was one of our readers’ favourites of 2025. Today we’re re sharing it along with a new quote from the author

The work of the writer and critic Susan Sontag remains endlessly relevant and urgent. She died on this day, twenty-one years ago, and to mark her life we’re sharing a favourite archive essay in memory of her hunger for knowledge and the remarkable body of work she left behind

Protecting the names and identities of its interviewees, this animated short documentary by @artefr.bsky.social gives Russians a rare chance to speak with unguarded honesty about how the war has changed their lives, as well as how they view their homeland in its wake

We are just one branch of a diverse human family tree. Aside from Neanderthals, who were they – and why did we replace them? This excellent essay on human evolution is an editor’s favourite, and the perfect companion to a quiet Boxing Day

Blending live action, animation, and a soulful, hip-hop-infused beat, director Tajana Tokyo offers a rich snapshot of how relationships are understood in Sierra Leone, and how those views diverge from Western ideas – from divorce and cheating to why you should never ‘marry a man you like too much.’

‘Our mental worlds are lively with experiences of absence, yet it’s a mystery how the mind performs the trick of seeing nothing.’ Revisit one of our most read Essays of 2025:

This video captures a group of teenagers in Portugal playing a game known as pau de sebo – which loosely translates as ‘greasy pole’ – in which participants attempt to climb a grease-coated wooden pole to claim prizes hanging from its peak

What differentiates righteous anger from mere grievance? This sharply argued Essay dissects the ‘constitutively negative’ orientation of grievance politics, which ‘what’s essential is the continuous expression of hostility, rather than the attainment of any particular goal’

If we are to think clearly about the question of AI in medicine, we must confront it from an outsider’s perspective, and consider whether new technologies could be part of a wider reckoning with what medicine is for and who it should serve

This film takes us on a journey from the Linden-Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, to Nairobi, Kenya to uncover the meaning of a Kikuyu artefact taken into the museum in 1903

For Mandeville, humankind has a bottomless need to be liked: it is this perennial craving that forms the foundation of society. An Essay by Andrea Branchi

Aeon Essays are now available to listen to on Apple Podcasts and Spotify! Listen now: buff.ly/IKW4hxJ

Self-centered, validation-seeking, prideful – few of us would want to be described this way. But, the 18th-century philosopher Bernard Mandeville argued, these are the traits that allow our society to function. As debates about narcissism abound, Mandeville is a thinker worth revisiting

As an editor for @aeon.co, commissioning an essay about ultra-long-lived organisms called *aeonophiles* was a no-brainer. I loved working on this. Biologist @karenlloyd.bsky.social's research is deeply fascinating... + check out her brilliant book Intraterrestrials! aeon.co/essays/the-d...

My article on aeonophiles (ultra-long lived organisms) came out in Aeon Magazine today!

The discovery of organisms that have been alive for many thousands of years requires a revolution in how we understand life. An Essay by @karenlloyd.bsky.social

Why the stunning rhinoceros hornbills are the farmers of the rainforest and a powerful avian symbol of regeneration

In this captivating short film by @cornellbirds.bsky.social, a conservation biologist and a wildlife photographer travel across Indonesia in search of hornbills, the birds helping to regenerate one of the world’s largest rainforest regions

Some of the longest-lived organisms on Earth aren’t whales, trees or corals, but microbes buried deep in the earth. This eye-opening essay examines the slowest lives on Earth, asking what such lives mean for how we define life itself @karenlloyd.bsky.social

This celebrated short film presents a gentle portrait of intergenerational friendship, imagining a road trip to the sea that they can’t take in real life

My piece on the radical lineage of the Catholic Church, and how tapping into those roots can help the religion play a critical role in combating climate change, is out today in @aeon.co: aeon.co/essays/the-c...

Today, 250 years since the birth of #JaneAusten, we’re sharing this Essay exploring the relationship between nature and aesthetic beauty in her work. It brings her observations into conversation with Charles Darwin’s, asking the role of beauty in the naturalist’s view and naturalism in the artist’s

Reflecting on her 30-year career as a teacher, lecturer, radio presenter and playwright, an Afghan woman tells a story of joy amidst upheaval. As a new generation of Afghan girls confronts repression with grit and determination, she remains hopeful for the future @untold-narratives.bsky.social

At Aeon, we publish essays on the existentially significant questions, alongside carefully curated short documentaries spanning philosophy, science, psychology, society and culture. Our archive is rich and inexhaustible – a place where every curious mind can find something to enjoy aeon.co

On the 350th anniversary of Johannes Vermeer’s death, we’re re-visiting this Essay which reflects on Stendhal’s vision of art’s enduring purpose. For Stendhal, great works like Vermeer’s transcend visual appeal and technical mastery. The promise of art lies in its power to make you feel

Given Catholicism’s reputation for conservatism, it would appear to be the last place you’d find radical innovation in environmental justice. But looking at the full sweep of the Church’s history uncovers a rich tradition of caring for the whole of God’s creation

This short explores Robert Frost’s ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ (1923), unravelling how the poem masterfully evokes the tension between the meditative moments that draw us away from clock time and the intrusions that pull us back in

In 1927, Martin Heidegger argued that thinking and theorising presupposes a uniquely human mode of being. This excerpt from the documentary ‘Being in the World’ makes Heidegger’s arguments digestible through interviews with philosophers and artists who demonstrate this way of being