Aeon Ideas

Idea/Death

Humans are the only animals who crave oblivion through suicide

Nicholas Humphrey

Idea/Stories & Literature

Black stories matter: on the whiteness of children’s books

Andrea Adomako

Idea/Illness & Disease

Fatal nurture: what a rare disorder says about ‘bad mothers’

Chris Millard

Idea/Beauty & Aesthetics

The revolutionary figure of the beautiful, self-improved soul

Justine Kolata

Idea/Sports & Games

Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism

Kate Raworth

Idea/Astronomy

What high-speed astronomy can tell us about the galactic zoo

Christopher Kochanek

Idea/Mental Health

Psychopaths have feelings: can they learn how to use them?

Arielle Baskin-Sommers

Idea/Politics & Government

Moderation may be the most challenging and rewarding virtue

Aurelian Craiutu

Idea/History

Concentration camps reveal the nature of the modern state

Dan Stone

Idea/Cognition & Intelligence

How we learn to read another’s mind by looking into their eyes

Tobias Grossmann

Idea/History of Ideas

Before you can be with others, first learn to be alone

Jennifer Stitt

Idea/Anthropology

Ancient ruins keep being ‘discovered’: were they ever lost?

Christopher Begley

Idea/Ethics

Should a rapist get Viagra or a robber get a cataracts op?

Tom Douglas

Idea/History

The American housewives who sought freedom in Soviet Russia

Julia Mickenberg

Idea/Wellbeing

Fear of radiation is more dangerous than radiation itself

David Ropeik

Idea/Film & Television

Philosophy has a lot to learn from film

Costica Bradatan

Idea/Anthropology

It’s not that your teeth are too big: your jaw is too small

Peter Ungar

Idea/Pharmaceuticals

Solving the heroin overdose mystery: how small doses can kill

Shepard Siegel

Idea/Stories & Literature

This is the Muslim tradition of sci-fi and speculative fiction

Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad

Idea/Politics & Government

Even the ancient Greeks thought their best days were history

Johanna Hanink

Idea/Knowledge

The tree of knowledge is not an apple or an oak but a banyan

Jonardon Ganeri

Idea/Cognition & Intelligence

Cognitive dissonance helps old dogs with their new tricks

Suzanne Cope

Idea/Stories & Literature

So I exaggerate a little – am I wrong to jazz up my stories?

Andrea Askowitz

Idea/Art

Why does contemporary art make for wildly popular blockbusters?

Judith H Dobrzynski

Idea/Ethics

Is it moral to respect the wishes of the dead, above the living?

Barry Lam

Idea/Physics

The idea of creating a new universe in the lab is no joke

Zeeya Merali

Idea/Medical Ethics

White coats and mild manners: how to style a good doctor

Jessica Baron

Idea/History

The strange story of inventing the ‘bastard’ in medieval Europe

Sara McDougall

Idea/History

The Nazis as occult masters? It’s a good story but not history

Peter Staudenmaier

Idea/Economics

Conspicuous consumption is over. It’s all about intangibles now

Elizabeth Currid-Halkett