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Society

Essays and videos on social issues, history, political life and the future
Lydia Maria Child, abolitionist | Aeon
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Human rights and justice

Lydia Maria Child, abolitionist

Taking up arms against slavery, the famous novelist foreshadowed the vexed role of the white woman activist today

Lydia Moland

Medieval babycare | Aeon
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History

Medieval babycare

From mansplaining about breastfeeding to debates on developmental toys, medieval parenting was full of familiar dilemmas

Katherine Harvey

What the tablets say | Aeon
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Archaeology

What the tablets say

Some 3,700 years ago, an enslaved girl, a barber, and a king crossed paths in a city by the Euphrates. This is their story

Amanda H Podany

Women at the barricades | Aeon
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History

Women at the barricades

The transgressions of working-class women formed the revolutionary heart of the 1871 Paris Commune

Carolyn Eichner

The politics of pain | Aeon
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History

The politics of pain

Medical science can only tell us so much. To understand pain, we need the cultural tools of history, philosophy and art

Rob Boddice

Geopolitics is for losers | Aeon
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Global history

Geopolitics is for losers

The concept of geopolitics comes from German and Russian attempts to explain defeat and reverse loss of influence

Harold James

The honesty of pornography | Aeon
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Stories and literature

The honesty of pornography

Often vilified as a weapon of male supremacy, pornography in fact has much to tell us about ourselves and our culture

Kathleen Lubey

The doxxing of Rose Mainville | Aeon
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History

The doxxing of Rose Mainville

When a young street vendor found her name in a guidebook to the sex workers of Paris, she couldn’t live with the shame

Amanda E Herbert & David N Woodworth

Life as a Victorian teenager | Aeon
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History

From manners to mud – two women recall coming of age in Victorian London

10 minutes

Freedom from liquor | Aeon
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History

Freedom from liquor

Ken Burns’s account of prohibition tells a popular story of booze in America. The historical record is far more sobering

Mark Lawrence Schrad

History by numbers | Aeon
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History

History by numbers

Is history a matter of individual agency and action, or of finding and quantifying underpinning structures and patterns?

Claire Lemercier & Claire Zalc

If you love this planet | Aeon
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video

War and peace

A peace activist’s harrowing account of nuclear war is a visceral case for disarmament

26 minutes

The discontent of Russia | Aeon
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Nations and empires

The discontent of Russia

Lenin envisioned Soviet unity. Stalin called Russia ‘first among equals’. Yet Russian nationalism never went away

Joy Neumeyer

The smile: a history | Aeon
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History

The smile: a history

How our toothy modern smile was invented by a confluence of French dentistry and Parisian portrait-painting in the 1780s

Colin Jones

The AI historian | Aeon
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Computing and artificial intelligence

How machine learning can help historians decode ancient inscriptions

7 minutes

Cowboy progressives | Aeon
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History

Cowboy progressives

You likely think of the American West as deeply conservative and rural. Yet history shows this politics is very new indeed

Daniel J Herman

Virtual ancient Rome: walking from the Colosseum to the Forum | Aeon
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video

The ancient world

Walk like a Roman in this digital reconstruction of the ancient city

9 minutes

Souvenir souvenir | Aeon
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video

War and peace

When his grandfather won’t talk about the war, Bastien is left to his imagination

15 minutes

Fringe theories stack | Aeon
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History of science

Fringe theories stack

Believe in the Loch Ness monster and you’re more likely to believe the Apollo missions were fake. How do weird beliefs work?

Michael D Gordin

Tattoos and trousers | Aeon
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History

Tattoos and trousers

Let your imagination take flight to the hunting, riding, adventurous lives of Scythia’s warrior women, the real Amazons

Christine Lehnen

Those born later | Aeon
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History

Those born later

How does a nation begin to take responsibility for its past wrongs? The German case suggests courage comes locally

Helmut Walser Smith

The Battle of San Romano | Aeon
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Art

An artistic collaboration across centuries brings a 1432 battle scene to arresting life

2 minutes

Uncovering Sparta | Aeon
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The ancient world

Uncovering Sparta

Mythological home of Helen, war-making polis of Leonidas and now a modest municipality: the city is a palimpsest

Daphne D. Martin

In pursuit of the hole | Aeon
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Art

In pursuit of the hole

Dig into the voids, pin-pricks and cut-outs of art and history, and those absences speak volumes about what’s been missed

Kim Beil