Aeon Video has a monthly newsletter!
Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
Human to fish, and back again: a brisk walk through our evolutionary history
Via stints as reptiles, rodents and fish with feet, the evolution of humans is as meandering as it is extraordinary. Reminiscent of a similar sequence from Carl Sagan’s iconic TV series Cosmos (1980), this short animation traces human evolutionary history back 550 million years to a small, primitive fish known as Metaspriggina, believed to be an early ancestor of all living vertebrates. The result is an enlightening overview, not only of our own curious lineage, but of the unpredictable turns that evolution can take for all species.
Director: Jurian Möller
Website: EVO
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
Why large language models are mysterious – even to their creators
8 minutes
video
Evolution
The many ways a lizard tongue sticks, grasps, pinches and plops – in slo-mo
6 minutes
video
Biology
Starlings swoosh like brushstrokes across the sky in this dazzling short
3 minutes
video
Engineering
From simple motors to levitating trains – how design shapes innovation
23 minutes
video
Ecology and environmental sciences
The tree frog die-off that sparked a global mystery – and revealed a dark truth
15 minutes
video
Film and visual culture
Our world has very different contours when a millimetre is blown up to a full screen
8 minutes
video
Astronomy
The remarkable innovations inspired by our need to know the night sky
5 minutes
video
Knowledge
Why it takes more than a lifetime to truly understand a single meadow
11 minutes
video
Physics
Groundbreaking visualisations show how the world of the nucleus gives rise to our own
10 minutes