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.
Written by Marina Benjamin
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Cognition 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
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Childhood 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
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Stories 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
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Information 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
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Gender 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
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Thinkers 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
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Human 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
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Stories and literature
The listening gift
It is the dark matter of conversation, the white space around a poem. For Rilke, listening is receiving the divine
Faith Lawrence
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Home
How to lose your home
In a changing climate, the instinct is to save everything you can. But maybe letting go is braver – and better for the future?
Dan Hancox
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Philosophy of religion
Compassionate time
On his final journey through Asia, Thomas Merton found some peace in the dialectic between refusing the world and loving it
Drew Calvert
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Sex and sexuality
Sex and death
Our culture works hard to keep sex and death separate but recharging the libido might provide the release that grief needs
Cody Delistraty
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Design and fashion
When luxury is good
The waste and exploitation of fast fashion shouldn’t blind us to the joys of making beautiful clothing with care
Roger Tredre
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Rituals and celebrations
Tender, yet creepy
Dolls help children create wonderfully vivid and imaginative worlds, while also serving as unsettling reminders of the abyss
Tishani Doshi
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Film and visual culture
The risk of beauty
W Eugene Smith’s photos of the Minamata disaster are both exquisite and horrifying. How might we now look at them?
Joanna Pocock