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Culture

Essays and videos on the arts, literature, travel, rituals and celebrations
Everything is a remix: AI and image generation | Aeon
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Future of technology

Artificial ‘creativity’ is unstoppable. Grappling with its ethics is up to us

23 minutes

Making a moon jar | Aeon
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Design and fashion

Refined towards imperfection – a ceramic artist recreates a rare Korean treasure

15 minutes

Jelena’s song | Aeon
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Wellbeing

Through a poetic account of childhood trauma, one woman reclaims her past

28 minutes

Party poster | Aeon
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Politics and government

‘Without a poster, you don’t exist!’ – on the curious political banners of Mumbai

20 minutes

Milk, pity and power | Aeon
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Art

Milk, pity and power

Since antiquity, artists have depicted a perverse scene of a daughter breastfeeding her aged father. What does it mean?

Margie Orford

The problem with English | Aeon
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Language and linguistics

The problem with English

Is Earth’s most-spoken language a living ‘gift’ or a many-headed ‘monster’? Both views distract us from the real dilemma

Mario Saraceni

Namesake | Aeon
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Earth science and climate

A biologist on the sorrows of documenting the Great Salt Lake’s collapse

6 minutes

Grands canons | Aeon
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Design and fashion

Household items are reborn in a ‘visual symphony of everyday objects’

11 minutes

Dan Tepfer: TriadSculpture | Aeon
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Music

As a pianist strikes a chord, visualisations of his notes appear in real time

5 minutes

The panopticon | Aeon
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Thinkers and theories

Jeremy Bentham was consumed by creating a perfect prison. Here’s the result

4 minutes

The Parthenon Marbles | Aeon
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Global history

The strange journey of the Parthenon Marbles to the British Museum

10 minutes

Give the drummer some | Aeon
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Music

Give the drummer some

As AI drum machines embrace humanising imperfections, what does this mean for ‘real’ drummers and the soul of music?

Jack Stilgoe

The fate of the wild | Aeon
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Animals and humans

Laura fights to protect the magnificence of wild horses running free

6 minutes

My theatre | Aeon
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Film and visual culture

The old-time cinema experience endures in a quiet corner of Japan

5 minutes

The impossible architecture of Étienne-Louis Boullée | Aeon
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Architecture

The radically impractical 18th-century architect whose ideas on beauty endure

19 minutes

Making a Go board | Aeon
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Making

From log to Go board – the world’s oldest game, made the old-fashioned way

20 minutes

A brief history of vampires | Aeon
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Stories and literature

The key to a vampire’s immortality? Meeting the anxieties of the moment

15 minutes

Under the mkone tree | Aeon
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Mental health

Under the mkone tree

When I returned to Kenya, where I grew up, I found biomedicine and traditional medicine in conversation about mental health

Priya Basil

Elephant food is for the strongest teeth | Aeon
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Sports and games

The brutality and beauty of the West African martial art of ‘dambe’

15 minutes

The book of leaves | Aeon
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Biology

Flicker through the eclectic beauty and biological diversity of 2,400 leaves

3 minutes

Great art cities explained: New York | Aeon
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Art

The female Abstract Expressionists of New York shook the world of art

15 minutes

The Rift | Aeon
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Deep time

The Rift

Splitting the African continent, it is the only place where our human story can be read continuously from the very start

Tristan McConnell

My blackness | Aeon
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Biography and memoir

My blackness

At times I’ve tried to escape it. Other times I’ve embraced it. But at all times, people have attempted to define me by it

Colin Grant

London mudlark | Aeon
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Archaeology

From Roman pots to glass eyes, the shore of the river Thames teems with surprises

8 minutes