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Pam Weintraub

Senior Editor, Aeon+Psyche

Pam is an editor and writer specialising in psychology, neuroscience and the sciences. She has previously worked as executive and features editor at Discover, where her acquisitions were widely anthologised and received numerous national awards; a consulting editor at Psychology Today; and in a range of roles at Omni magazine, from senior editor and editor-at-large to founding editor of Omni online. She is author of 16 books on medicine, psychology and lifestyle, including Cure Unknown: Inside the Lyme Epidemic, which won the American Medical Writers Association book award in 2009. She can be found on Twitter @pam3001.

Written by Pam Weintraub

Edited by Pam Weintraub

Dried ground leaves being poured from a scoop into a container indoors.

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Addiction

The kratom question

Millions are turning to an unregulated herbal extract to curb their opioid addiction. But do the risks outweigh the benefits?

Xi Chen

Photo of a crowd with a focused young woman looking to the side, surrounded by blurred faces in the foreground.

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Personality

The highly sensitive person

Those with this little-known trait think more deeply and feel more empathy. But they also deal with significant challenges

Elaine Aron

Photo of two surgeons in blue scrubs and masks focused on a procedure, with one surgeon’s glasses reflecting the surgery.

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Medicine

When I lost my intuition

For years, I practised medicine with cool certainty, comfortable with life-and-death decisions. Then, one day, I couldn’t

Ronald W Dworkin

Photo of children playing in the desert in windy conditions, with sand swirling around them and smiles on their faces.

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Childhood and adolescence

Hegemony and childcare

Early childhood development interventions in the Global South is a huge industry built on highly questionable assumptions

Francesca Mezzenzana & Gabriel Scheidecker

Black-and-white photo of the Moon’s surface with craters, with a distant Earth visible on the horizon in space.

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Space exploration

How the Moon became a place

For most of history, the Moon was regarded as a mysterious and powerful object. Then scientists made it into a destination

Danny Robb

Aerial photo of a winding river through lush green rainforest with dramatic cloud formations in the sky above.

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Public health

Hearts and brains

Humans always end up with clogged arteries, right? That’s not what the lives of the Tsimane in the Amazon basin tell us

Ben Daitz

Abstract painting of two distorted faces with geometric shapes in orange, purple and brown tones.

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Psychiatry and psychotherapy

Psychodynamic nonsense

After decades of practising psychotherapy, I believe it has little foundation in science and often causes harm

Niklas Serning

Heron standing on a small patch of greenery surrounded by calm water with a lush forest in the background.

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Earth science and climate

The planetary fix

Despite decades of inaction we can avert the climate Hellocene and restore the atmosphere to keep our world habitable

Rob Jackson

A masked nurse in scrubs sitting in a hospital waiting area.

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Bioethics

Moral resilience

Nurses experience deep suffering when they can’t act according to their moral compass. Our research shows a way forward

Cynda Hylton Rushton

A solitary figure walking up misty stairs toward an unclear building, creating a mysterious atmosphere.

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Philosophy of science

The nature of natural laws

Physicists and philosophers today have formulated three opposing models that explain how laws work. Which is the best?

Mario Hubert

A man floating in the sea beneath a dramatic, stormy sky with large, dark clouds.

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Technology and the self

We need raw awe

In this tech-vexed age, our life on screens prevents us from experiencing the mysteries and transformative wonder of life

Kirk Schneider

Illustration of a person reading a book with glowing hot air balloons and mountains emerging from the pages.

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Physics

The city of wisdom

Don’t be intimidated by physics: it is made of stories and metaphors. Learn these and the field will open up to you

Jamie Zvirzdin