Become a Friend of Aeon to save articles and enjoy other exclusive benefits

Make a donation
×
Newsletter Privacy Policy

Aeon email newsletters are issued by the not-for-profit, registered charity Aeon Media Group Ltd (Australian Business Number 80 612 076 614). This Email Newsletter Privacy Statement pertains to the personally identifying information you voluntarily submit in the form of your email address to receive our email newsletters

More generally, when visiting the Aeon site you should refer to our site Privacy Policy here.

This Email Newsletter Privacy Statement may change from time to time and was last revised 18 May, 2020.

By clicking ‘subscribe’ you agree to the following:

  • We will use the email address you provide to send you daily and/or weekly emails (depending on your selection). We also send occasional donation requests and, no more than once a year, reader surveys.
  • The email address/es you provide will be transferred to our external marketing automation service ‘MailChimp’ for processing in accordance with their Privacy Policy and Terms. We use MailChimp to issue our newsletters, donation requests and reader surveys. We have no control over, and assume no responsibility for, the conduct, practices or privacy policies of MailChimp.

Unsubscribing

You can change your mind at any time by clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ link in the footer of emails you receive from us, or by contacting us at support@aeon.co 

If you want to review and correct the personal information we have about you, you can click on ‘update preferences’ in the footer of emails you receive from us, or by contacting us at support@aeon.co

Security of your personal information

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. We have taken reasonable measures to protect information about you from loss, theft, misuse or unauthorised access, disclosure, alteration and destruction. No physical or electronic security system is impenetrable however and you should take your own precautions to protect the security of any personally identifiable information you transmit. We cannot guarantee that the personal information you supply will not be intercepted while transmitted to us or our marketing automation service Mailchimp.

Sharing your personal information 

We will not disclose your personal information except: (1) as described by this Privacy Policy (2) after obtaining your permission for a specific use or disclosure or (3) if we are required to do so by a valid legal process or government request (such as a court order, a search warrant, a subpoena, a civil discovery request, or a statutory requirement). We will retain your information for as long as needed in light of the purposes for which is was obtained or to comply with our legal obligations and enforce our agreements.

Access to your personal information

You may request a copy of the personal information we hold about you by submitting a written request to support@aeon.co We may only implement requests with respect to the personal information associated with the particular email address you use to send us the request. We will try and respond to your request as soon as reasonably practical. When you receive the information, if you think any of it is wrong or out of date, you can ask us to change or delete it for you.

The whale warehouse

7 minutes

It’s rocket science

5 minutes

A brief history of the devil

5 minutes

HAGS (have a good summer)

9 minutes

The rifleman

10 minutes

The sprawling, stinking marvels of a natural history museum’s specimens

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County’s so-called ‘whale warehouse’ is easy to miss: from the outside, it’s a nondescript industrial building down the street from a meatpacking plant. But the collection of large mammal bones within – including enormous whale skulls and skeletons too massive to fit on shelves – is one of the biggest of its kind in the world. Exploring the reasons we hoard things, the specifics of the museum’s collection, and the ways in which the collection is used for research, The Whale Warehouse draws fascinating links between the psychology of collecting and the pursuit of knowledge.

Producers: Mae Ryan, Grant Slater

How sky-high dreams launched one man’s audacious life in homemade rocketry

As the first civilian to successfully launch an amateur rocket into space in 2004, and a holder of a great many rocketry-related world records since the 1960s, Ky Michaelson has truly earned his self-anointed title as ‘The Rocketman’. Following a decorated career as a Hollywood stunt performer and coordinator, Michaelson, now aged 82, is retired from show business and spends most of his time building rockets in his garage. And his audacious spirit hasn’t mellowed with age. These days, he has his sights set on launching the first homemade manned rocket into space. This upbeat documentary portrait by the US-based director Rachel Knoll explores Michaelson’s unconventional path as a high-school dropout turned rocket engineer who wouldn’t let dyslexia stop him from aiming for the sky.

Director: Rachel Knoll

Producer: John Pesavent

The devils you know – how Satan became a versatile stand-in for all manner of evil

From the three-headed man-eater of Dante’s Inferno to the Mephistopheles of German folklore, clad and caped in red in a Goethe-penned stage production, depictions of Satan have mutated into a fearsome multitude of pitchfork-wielding, fire-summoning and otherwise malevolent creatures. But how did a somewhat minor character from the Old Testament evolve into a versatile shorthand for all manner of human evil? Featuring a parade of the many meme-ified devils that have come to permeate the public imagination, this crafty animation from TED-Ed provides a brief history of how some of Satan’s most infamous forms came to be.

Video by TED-Ed

Directors: Reza Riahi, Mehdi Shiri

Writer: Brian A Pavlac

A filmmaker reflects on his adolescence with the help of some long-lost friends

In HAGS (Have a Good Summer), the US filmmaker Sean Wang casts his newest project from the pages of his middle-school yearbook. Calling up five long-lost friends that he hasn’t spoken to in years, Wang zeroes in on the two most willing to chat – Way Chen, who’s working at a restaurant while trying to make it as a dancer, and Fahad Manzur, who worries he just might have peaked in eighth grade – for an exploration of middle school, young adulthood and the wide chasm in between. Overflowing with sound and sight gags, Wang brings an apt sense of carefree humour to the work. But beyond its novel concept and nostalgic charms, the film also offers touching reflections on identity, the second-generation American experience and how expectations of ‘adulthood’ evolve even after you reach it.

Director: Sean Wang

Animator: Deepti Menon

How did the NRA transform from a sporting group to a mighty political force?

Compiling newsreels, articles and television news reports, The Rifleman examines some four decades in the history of the National Rifle Association (NRA). Via these archival materials, the US director Sierra Pettengill frames her portrait of the controversial gun-rights group around Harlon Carter, the former NRA president and a US Border Patrol chief, with an overturned murder conviction to his name, who was central in forging the NRA’s transition from a sporting organisation to one of the most potent and controversial political forces in the United States. Tracing the many overlaps between Carter, the NRA and US Border Patrol, Pettengill finds a group that, since the dawn of Carter’s influence, has been propelled by reactionary racism.

Director: Sierra Pettengill

Producer: Arielle de Saint Phalle

Website: Field of Vision

The sprawling, stinking marvels of a natural history museum’s specimens

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County’s so-called ‘whale warehouse’ is easy to miss: from the outside, it’s a nondescript industrial building down the street from a meatpacking plant. But the collection of large mammal bones within – including enormous whale skulls and skeletons too massive to fit on shelves – is one of the biggest of its kind in the world. Exploring the reasons we hoard things, the specifics of the museum’s collection, and the ways in which the collection is used for research, The Whale Warehouse draws fascinating links between the psychology of collecting and the pursuit of knowledge.

Producers: Mae Ryan, Grant Slater

Aeon is not-for-profit
and free for everyone
Make a donation
Get Aeon straight
to your inbox
Join our newsletter

Dani people preparing for a pig feast. Baliem Valley, West Papua, Indonesia, 1996. Photo by Susan Meiselas/Magnum

Essay/
Anthropology
How equality slipped away

For 97 per cent of human history, all people had about the same power and access to goods. How did inequality ratchet up?

Kim Sterelny

Scientists during the refurbishment of the Super-Kamiokande neutrino observatory, 1,000 metres below Mount Ikeno in Japan. Photo courtesy of Kamioka Observatory, Institute for Cosmic Ray Research, University of Tokyo

Essay/
Physics
The unified Universe

Physics displays an uncanny alignment at its very deepest levels. Is a grand theory of everything finally within reach?

James Wells