Aeon

In 2017, the US medical device company Medtronic announced that it had implanted deep brain stimulation (DBS) equipment in 150,000 patients worldwide to reduce debilitating tremors. This is a powerful therapy, but have the risks proved to outweigh the benefits?

Love, in the world of Walt Disney films, has changed. Happy endings are no longer sealed with a kiss and the goal of heterosexual romance has been replaced by a new ideal: family love. Sophus Helle explores this twist in the Disney tale.

Human beings have savored listening to music for centuries, but the mechanisms behind that pleasurable experience still elude comprehension.

“Artificial intelligence promises ever more control over the highs and lows of our emotions. Uneasy? Perhaps you should be.”

Pet dogs often have a peaceful death that forestalls protracted suffering and pain. Why can’t we do the same for humans?

The daughter of a plastics manufacturer assesses the toxins that get passed from one generation to another, in her family and yours. First published in 2015, this story, like petrochemistry, stays with you.

In 1864, United States soldiers murdered 200 Cheyenne and Arapaho families in a small village, and they pilfered their remains as trophies. Museums and private collectors finally returned what material they had to the tribes. The questions now are: does repatriation help First Nations heal? And what else can be done?

From Iain Sinclair to Lauren Elkin and W. G. Sebald, the meditative stroll, based on the dérive or ‘drift,’ is a popular literary form in England. When one young writer considers his own stroll, he maneuvers through the form’s past, present and future.

For mountaineers, it’s not enough to get to the top – it must be done a certain way. But why is the harder way better?

Cash might be grungy, unfashionable and corruptible, but it is still a great public good, important for rich and poor alike.