Cameron Allan McKean
Editor, Aeon+Psyche
Cameron is a writer, editor and underwater anthropologist in Melbourne, Australia. After a decade in Tokyo working as an arts journalist, he began doctoral studies at Deakin University involving fieldwork with scientists and divers at coral reefs in the Pacific Ocean. Cameron is a former books and culture editor for The Japan Times, and a past contributor to CNN, ArtAsiaPacific, Dwell, Apartamento, and art-agenda.
Edited by Cameron Allan McKean
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Anthropology
A glimpse of the world’s heart
I wanted to visit Colombia’s sacred mountains. But there are some places we cannot go – and some things we cannot know
Nick Hunt
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Cities
The haunting of modern China
In Nanjing, Hong Kong and other Chinese cities, rapid urbanisation is multiplying a fear of death and belief in ghosts
Andrew Kipnis
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Art
Negative capability
When it comes to our complicated, undecipherable feelings, art prompts a self-understanding far beyond the wellness industry
Aparna Chivukula
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Human rights and justice
Do not forget them
Thousands of Indigenous children suffered and died in residential ‘schools’ around the world. Their stories must be heard
Steve Minton
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Genetics
Evolution without accidents
Despite advances in molecular genetics, too many biologists think that natural selection is driven by random mutations
James A Shapiro
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Psychiatry and psychotherapy
Tōjisha-kenkyū
This radical movement makes space for people with mental health and other challenges to study (and celebrate) themselves
Satsuki Ayaya & Junko Kitanaka
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Earth science and climate
Deep warming
Even if we ‘solve’ global warming, we face an older, slower problem. Waste heat could radically alter Earth’s future
Mark Buchanan
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Anthropology
How to mourn a forest
The Marind people of West Papua deploy mourning not only to grieve their animal and plant kin but as political resistance
Sophie Chao
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Physics
Time is an object
Not a backdrop, an illusion or an emergent phenomenon, time has a physical size that can be measured in laboratories
Sara Walker & Lee Cronin
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History of ideas
Disorient yourself
Now associated with childhood fun, the swing has a near-universal history of ritual transgression and transformation
Javier Moscoso
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Biology
Octopus time
We humans are forward-facing, gravity-bound plodders. Can the liquid motion of the octopus radicalise our ideas about time?
David Borkenhagen
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Anthropology
Memories within myth
The stories of oral societies, passed from generation to generation, are more than they seem. They are scientific records
Patrick Nunn