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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.

See Cameron Allan McKean’s profile on Psyche

Edited by Cameron Allan McKean

A black-and-white photo of a person riding a horse in, with a close-up of another horse in the foreground under bright sunlight.

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Anthropology

Your body is an archive

If human knowledge can disappear so easily, why have so many cultural practices survived without written records?

Helena Miton

Silhouette of a man, a child, and a cow with large horns sitting on the ground at sunset.

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Progress and modernity

In praise of magical thinking

Once we all had knowledge of how to heal ourselves using plants and animals. The future would be sweeter for renewing it

Anna Badkhen

A colourful, abstract image featuring a large, black and white bird in flight. The background is a swirling mix of purple, orange, and yellow hues. A small figure of a child walks in the distance, casting a long shadow.

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Ageing and death

Peregrinations of grief

A friend and a falcon went missing. In pain, I turned to ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’ – and found a new vision of sorrow and time

Emily Polk

View from space of Europe at night, showing bright city lights and the Northern Lights in the distance. The image features a clear outline of countries and coastlines illuminated by artificial light, with a dark sky speckled with stars overhead.

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Ecology and environmental sciences

Dominion

To take care of the Earth, humans must recognise that we are both a part of the animal kingdom and its dominant power

Hugh Desmond

Colourful illustration of the Mad Hatter holding a clock showing 13 o’clock. His eyes are spirals. The background is filled with small images of the same character.

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Consciousness and altered states

Acid media

How perforated squares of trippy blotter paper allowed outlaw chemists and wizard-alchemists to dose the world with LSD

Erik Davis

A stunning cityscape at dusk with a vibrant red sky, silhouetted skyscrapers, and a person near a railing taking a photo of the skyline across a river.

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Thinkers and theories

Our tools shape our selves

For Bernard Stiegler, a visionary philosopher of our digital age, technics is the defining feature of human experience

Bryan Norton

A dark, hazy scene of a figure in a top hat walking near a building with large columns. The background features a dimly lit path alongside water, with street lamps illuminating the night. The setting appears lonely and atmospheric, with distant hills visible under an overcast sky.

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Stories and literature

Terrifying vistas of reality

H P Lovecraft, the master of cosmic horror stories, was a philosopher who believed in the total insignificance of humanity

Sam Woodward

A doorway within a metallic-like surface surrounded by hazard tape leads to a low-lit tunnel

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The future

Prehistory in the atomic age

To understand the terrifying futures unleashed by nuclear weapons, we urgently need to return to the deep past

Maria Stavrinaki

Three children in colourful clothing walk through a dense, leafy forest with sunlight filtering through the canopy.

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Anthropology

Societies of perpetual movement

Why do hunter-gatherers refuse to be sedentary? New answers are emerging from the depths of the Congolese rainforest

Cecilia Padilla-Iglesias

Close-up of several reddish-brown ants on soil, with one carrying small white eggs. The background is blurry, focusing attention on the ants.

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Animals and humans

Ant geopolitics

Over the past four centuries quadrillions of ants have created a strange and turbulent global society that shadows our own

John Whitfield

A colour illustration of a pool of water in which many people are swimming, glimpsed through trees, against a city skyline background

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Mental health

The right to bathe

Water is a great healer. Can New York’s public pools and ‘blue spaces’ be engineered for collective hydrotherapy?

Rebecca Hayes Jacobs

A row of traditional British terrace buildings with shops on the ground level, under a clear blue sky with some white clouds.

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Architecture

The new architecture wars

Traditionalist and modernist architecture are both mass-produced, industrial and international. Is there an alternative?

Owen Hatherley