Aeon is a digital magazine and website which publishes essays, op-eds and videos daily on all things science, politics, art and culture. Also included are “conversations” (usually linked to an essay) wherein one of the magazine’s contributing writers foments a discussion among its lively reader-base using a single-sentence prompt, such as: “does the need for dark matter indicate a fundamental flaw in our current theories of the universe?“; or, “is the physical book now an obsolete technology?“.
In the half year that I have been a reader of Aeon (pronounced /ˈiːɒn/), it has become not only one of my favourite websites, but favourite publications outright. The site has been operative in its current state since the fall of 2012, which will or will not mark it internet Young Blood depending on which of its contemporaries you compare it with, but make no mistake: its back catalogue of essays alone represents a nearly endless supply of dazzling ideas carried by exceptional prose and minds.
Memorable pieces of late (across all categories) include: Physics’s Pangolin, by Margaret Wertheim; The Ministry of Truth, by Elijah Millgram; We Regret to Inform You that the Frontier is Now Closed, by Susan Schorn; Psychedelics Can’t Be Tested Using Conventional Clinical Trials, by Nicolas Langlitz; In Residence: Kulapat Yantrasast, by Emile Rafael; I Feel Therefore I Am, by Margaret Wertheim; Why We Need to Stop Thinking So Much About Climate Change, by Brandon Keim; Paradigms Lost, by David P. Barash; ISIS is a Revolution, by Scott Atran; Is It OK to Have Kids?, by Richard Chappell; Sky Readers, by Gene Tracy; Hiking for Emails, by Clemens Purner; Biohackers Should Produce a Microbial Uberfood for the World, by Dawn Field; Can Talking About Music Add to Our Understanding of It?, by Lawrence Kramer; Slaves or Wage Slaves, by Jerry Toner; Work Imitates Life, by Benjamin Naddaff-Hafrey; Dispatches from the Ruins, by Frank Bures—and many more.
Aeon‘s slogan is “read deeper”, and, serendipitously, its fathoms never seem to end.
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