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Curiosity and control

What drives us to create zoos and natural history museums – is it a curiosity about the world, or a need to dominate it? - by Aeon Video Watch at...

latest 20

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Aeon Video

Excavating Girsu

Excavating Girsu

A British Museum curator explains why making sense of archeological ruins is like finding a single brick in a huge soil heap - by Aeon Video Watch at...

16.01.2025 30

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Aeon Video

Since you arrived, my heart stopped belonging to me

Since you arrived, my heart stopped belonging to me

‘We share and feel the same pain’: the mothers looking for their children who disappeared in Mexico en route to the US - by Aeon Video Watch at...

15.01.2025 10

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Aeon Video

Why vanity could be a good thing

Why vanity could be a good thing

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith agreed that vanity was all too human. But one saw it as a vice; the other, as a necessity - by Aeon Video Watch...

13.01.2025 10

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Aeon Video

The waiting

The waiting

Returning to the cold case of the disappearing frogs of Costa Rica, a biologist reveals a hard truth about life on Earth - by Aeon Video Watch at...

09.01.2025 20

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Aeon Video

The sublime

The sublime

The sublime describes the distinctive mix of awe, fear and serenity one might feel when confronted with imposing immensity. (Think: standing at the...

08.01.2025 20

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Aeon Video

Muslims and the US Civil War

Muslims and the US Civil War

The short documentary series ‘American Muslims: A History Revealed’ features six films that explore the often overlooked ways in which of Muslims...

06.01.2025 20

Aeon

Aeon Video

Boat people

After the end of the war in Vietnam in 1975, the phrase ‘boat people’ came to describe the Vietnamese refugees who fled the country seeking to...

19.12.2024 9

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Aeon Video

Boca Chica

Much of the world watched on in wonder and excitement when, on 13 October 2024, a rocket from Elon Musk’s commercial space company SpaceX boosted...

18.12.2024 10

Aeon

Aeon Video

Household objects up close

In this entrancing video, the Dutch filmmaker, photographer and artist Michiel de Boer (aka Posy) provides close-ups of a series of...

16.12.2024 10

Aeon

Aeon Video

Peter Capaldi reads a letter from the First World War

‘Somehow this scene became a peaceful one.’ The famed ‘Christmas truce’ of 1914 occurred some five months after the outbreak of the First...

12.12.2024 8

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Aeon Video

Can you transplant a head to another body?

After decades of experimenting on animal brains, the US neurosurgeon Robert J White proposed executing a ‘whole body transplant’ on a rhesus...

11.12.2024 4

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Aeon Video

A series of headaches: Shakespeare’s First Folio meets the London Review of Books

In 1623, seven years after William Shakespeare’s death, a collection of his plays titled Mr William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies...

09.12.2024 5

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Aeon Video

Strange beasts

In Strange Beasts, the Australian director Darcy Prendergast captures his father Ron Prendergast’s story of working at the Bacchus Marsh Lion...

05.12.2024 10

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Aeon Video

Frozen in time

In China, it’s illegal for unmarried women to freeze their eggs. This law, combined with a more independent and career-focused generation of...

04.12.2024 10

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Aeon Video

The sound of colour

‘And so the arts are encroaching one upon another, and from this will rise the art that is truly monumental.’– Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning...

02.12.2024 4

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Aeon Video

The life of an (extra)ordinary Roman soldier

The ancient letters of a Roman soldier reveal the hazards and routines of army life, from signing up all the way to retiring - by Aeon Video Watch...

28.11.2024 3

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Aeon Video

Into the blue

At a week-long police boot camp, a shy girl from Copenhagen learns to handcuff suspects, respond to riots and handle guns - by Aeon Video Watch at...

27.11.2024 5

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Aeon Video

Secrets of the ancient astronomers

A brief, animated history of astronomy shows how a sophisticated understanding of the night sky made us who we are - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon

25.11.2024 5

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Aeon Video

To know a place

The three generations of scientists dedicated to knowing a small sliver of Earth, one flower and one hummingbird at a time - by Aeon Video Watch at...

21.11.2024 2

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Aeon Video

Visualising the atomic nucleus

Take a closer look at the atomic nucleus, from the ancient Greek idea of the atom to its cutting-edge practical applications - by Aeon Video Watch...

20.11.2024 3

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Aeon Video

Otto Frank on the Diary of Anne Frank

In this 1976 interview, Otto Frank reflects on his decision to give his daughter Anne’s words to the world and their legacy - by Aeon Video Watch...

18.11.2024 3

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Aeon Video

Great art explained: Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez

Step into the world of the enigmatic ‘Las Meninas’ – Diego Velázquez’s masterpiece of royal (and self-)portraiture - by Aeon Video Watch at...

14.11.2024 10

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Aeon Video

What happens when the permafrost thaws

As permafrost thaws at unprecedented rates, Arctic villages are beginning to sink. Here is what we need to do - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon

13.11.2024 3

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Aeon Video

Radical love

A stirring portrait of the radical husband-and-wife legal team who defended 1960s revolutionaries against the US government - by Aeon Video Watch...

11.11.2024 4

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Aeon Video

The Moon’s orbit

Switch from the Moon’s orbit of Earth to its trajectory around the Sun, and you shift your entire view of our solar system - by Aeon Video Watch...

07.11.2024 3

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Aeon Video

Buried

On St Helena, the island famed for Napoleon’s tomb, burial sites for the transatlantic slave trade’s victims go unmarked - by Aeon Video Watch at...

06.11.2024 4

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Aeon Video

Can I remember it differently?

In this mediation on ‘après-coup’ in art, Cormac tries to understand why he’s still haunted by a scene from ‘Minority Report’ - by Aeon...

04.11.2024 4

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Aeon Video

Now I’m in the kitchen

The sensations of cooking stir up complicated questions about the relationship between a daughter and her mother - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon

31.10.2024 5

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Aeon Video

Deveaux Bank

What GPS tracking says about why the common whimbrel stops at a small spit of sand in South Carolina on its migratory route - by Aeon Video Watch...

30.10.2024 4

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Aeon Video

USA v Scott

Arrested for supplying water to migrants from Mexico, an aid worker’s trial challenges the boundary between law and morality - by Aeon Video Watch...

28.10.2024 4

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Aeon Video

The conquest of space

Before we ventured into space in 1961, we sent fruit flies, dogs and chimps to pave the way. This is their story - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon

24.10.2024 10

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Aeon Video

Jeu

This rollicking ode to modernity pairs Prokofiev with frenetic abstractions and Post-Impressionist animations of people at play - by Aeon Video...

23.10.2024 4

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Aeon Video

Heirlooms

A Bible, a piece of wood, a song – a poignant portrait of the everyday family keepsakes that can bridge generations - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon

21.10.2024 4

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Aeon Video

The FlyWire connectome

Mapping a fruit fly’s multitudinous neural pathways is a promising step towards a better understanding of the human brain - by Aeon Video Watch...

17.10.2024 3

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Aeon Video

The first views of Tutankhamun’s tomb

Like ‘the property room of an opera house of a vanished civilisation’: the first thrilling glimpse inside Tutankhamun’s tomb - by Aeon Video...

16.10.2024 5

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Aeon Video

Balloon boy

In 2009, the ‘balloon boy’ incident captivated American television audiences – what did it reveal about profit-driven news? - by Aeon Video...

14.10.2024 2

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Aeon Video

Red dress. No straps.

For a young girl living in 1980s Tehran, the small intrigues of everyday life take centre stage against a backdrop of war - by Aeon Video Watch at...

10.10.2024 30

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Aeon Video

The long journey

‘It’s a beautiful world … when you’re free’: two teens grapple with how to live an authentic life in this vintage short - by Aeon Video...

09.10.2024 20

Aeon

Aeon Video

Storing data on DNA

DNA is nature’s highly efficient mechanism for data storage. Now, scientists are taking note to address our storage crisis - by Aeon Video Watch...

07.10.2024 10

Aeon

Aeon Video

The passion and puppetry of Ronnie Burkett

To make sense of a dark and confusing world, the acclaimed puppeteer Ronnie Burkett shrinks it down to a ‘manageable size’ - by Aeon Video Watch...

03.10.2024 3

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Aeon Video

Searching for Romani Gypsy heritage

A walk through the English countryside reveals tangible yet long-overlooked traces of a nomadic culture’s long presence - by Aeon Video Watch at...

02.10.2024 10

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Aeon Video

Biopixels

Blurring science and art, these close-ups of butterfly and moth wings reveal their astonishing diversity and immense beauty - by Aeon Video Watch...

30.09.2024 10

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Aeon Video

White grass

Extreme weather means 10-year-old Mogi must choose between the nomadic life on the Mongolian steppe and moving to the city - by Aeon Video Watch at...

26.09.2024 3

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Aeon Video

The ancient hookup that changed humanity

How did scientists figure out, after a century of study, that we’re all the product of humans interbreeding with Neanderthals? - by Aeon Video...

25.09.2024 20

Aeon

Aeon Video

Baca

Fifty years in the making, the Great Wall of Los Angeles is a half-mile monument to the marginalised histories of California - by Aeon Video Watch...

23.09.2024 10

Aeon

Aeon Video

Dumpster archeology

Follow the ‘dumpster archeologist’ Lew Blink as he pieces together people’s stories from the objects they’ve left behind - by Aeon Video Watch...

19.09.2024 10

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Aeon Video

William Blake’s dark vision of London

‘Marks of weakness, marks of woe.’ William Blake captures the suffering and oppression on the streets of 18th-century London - by Aeon Video Watch...

16.09.2024 4

Aeon

Aeon Video

Can other animals understand death?

When animals seem to grieve for their dead, such as staying with them for days, is it anthropomorphism or something more? - by Aeon Video Watch at...

12.09.2024 4

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Aeon Video

The Babylonian map of the world

Why did it take archeologists a century to decode the small clay tablet that’s also the oldest known map of the world? - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon

11.09.2024 6

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Aeon Video