Philosophy Science Psychology Society Culture

Marina Benjamin

Senior Editor, Aeon+Psyche

Marina is a former arts editor of the New Statesman and deputy arts editor of the Evening Standard newspaper in London. Her books include, Living at the End of the World which looked at end-time cults, Rocket Dreams, an off-beat elegy to the Space Age, and Last Days in Babylon, the story of the Jews of Iraq. Marina specialises in the culture of science, developmental psychology and strong personal narratives. Her acclaimed memoirs The Middlepause and Insomnia have been translated into 9 languages. Her latest memoir A Little Give will be published in 2023. She can be found on Twitter @marinab52.

See Marina Benjamin’s profile on Psyche

Written by Marina Benjamin

Neon signs at night in a city, featuring the words “Fremont Hotel,” “Casino,” “Saloon,” “Keno,” and “Craps”.

essayCognition and intelligence

Playing games for real

My father was hopelessly, joyously addicted to gambling and I his moral critic. How did I end up playing pro blackjack?

Marina Benjamin

Period painting of a woman with curly hair in a red dress holding a portrait necklace, with a young girl in white resting her arm on her shoulder.

essayChildhood and adolescence

My daughter, myself

Storms of doubt and change I expected as the parent of an adolescent, I just thought they would be hers, not mine

Marina Benjamin

Edited by Marina Benjamin

Black and white photo of a young boy playing simultaneous chess against three suited men watched by a crowd.

essayNeurodiversity

The puzzle of the ‘idiot savant’

The convergence of singular talent and profound disability confounded scientists eager to place humans into neat categories

Violeta Ruiz

Illustration of a person in a wheelchair drawing at a desk, surrounded by swirling dark and light patterns.

essayBiography and memoir

Kabul in my heart

When the Taliban captured my city, thousands fled and the rest were severely repressed. But I’ve stayed – and survived

Maryam Mahjoba & Asad Nariman

Silhouette of a bird on a branch against a golden sunset sky.

essayAnimals and humans

Life thrums with music

Listen to the boundless sounds of nature, the great animal orchestra, whose songs imbue the world with fresh meaning

Jay Griffiths

Vintage black and white photo of a woman in a garden sitting beside a large urn with a sleeping dog lying nearby.

essayFamily life

Glorious and mundane

I once exalted in the extraordinary. But as I’ve learned from Virginia Woolf, indelible beauty is also found in the everyday

Diana Saverin

Abstract sketch of a cityscape with buildings, cars and patterns in pencil and ink.

essayArt

Witty wotty dashes

Doodles are the emanations of our pixillated minds, freewheeling into dissociation, graphology, and radical openness

James Reath

A large white cathedral with golden domes near a river, surrounded by trees with autumn colours.

essayArchitecture

The replica and the original

Architectural copies of lost structures require reckoning with history and heritage. At what cost is the past rebuilt?

Elizabeth Kostina

Cropped illustration of a person in a pink robe with orange patterns walking beside a horse, surrounded by grass and flowers.

essayGender

Taliban bride

Women in Afghanistan are prisoners in their own homes. This is the story of Marjan, married at 12 to a Taliban fighter

Zala & Asad Nariman

Abstract digital collage with classical statue overlayed by red lines, geometric shapes and layered images on a textured background.

essayStories and literature

Our narrative prison

The three-act ‘hero’s journey’ has long been the most prominent kind of story. What other tales are there to tell?

Eliane Glaser

A satirical painting of a giant man being fed with spoons by tiny attendants.

essayInformation and communication

Methodical banality

Like today’s large language models, 16th-century humanists had techniques to automate writing – to the detriment of novelty

Hannah Katznelson

Sepia-toned photo of a person in formal Victorian attire, standing with a slightly tilted head, against an ornate backdrop.

essayGender and identity

Requeering Wilde

Oscar Wilde is an icon of gay liberation from secrecy. But his life and his sexuality were not so simple – nor so binary

Sam Mills

A photo of a person walking on a snowy path beside an icy river with floating ice chunks.

essayThinkers and theories

The winter of civilisation

Byung-Chul Han’s relentless critiques of digital capitalism reveal how this suffocating system creates hollowed-out lives

Josh Cohen

A woman walking on a dimly lit street pavement at night with a parked scooter and two men walking in the background, one appearing to follow her; the woman looks downcast, the man appears to be smiling.

essayHuman rights and justice

Did you think you were safe?

When I moved to India for work, I found that rape was a feature of the country, as deeply embedded as caste

Evelyn Fok