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Pam Weintraub

Senior Editor, Aeon+Psyche

Pam is an editor and writer specialising in psychology, neuroscience and the sciences. She has previously worked as executive and features editor at Discover, where her acquisitions were widely anthologised and received numerous national awards; a consulting editor at Psychology Today; and in a range of roles at Omni magazine, from senior editor and editor-at-large to founding editor of Omni online. She is author of 16 books on medicine, psychology and lifestyle, including Cure Unknown: Inside the Lyme Epidemic, which won the American Medical Writers Association book award in 2009. She can be found on Twitter @pam3001.

Written by Pam Weintraub

Edited by Pam Weintraub

Photo of a galaxy with a bright centre emitting a blue jet of energy against a background of numerous stars in space.

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Cosmology

Stars behaving absurdly

For centuries, the only way in which to illuminate the mysteries of black holes was through the power of mathematics

Steve Nadis & Shing-Tung Yau

Photo of a white temple with modern design features, a golden statue on top and a bright double rainbow in the cloudy sky.

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Human rights and justice

Utah is so gay!

The Mormon state is seen as deeply homophobic. Yet, from polygamy to pride, Mormons themselves are a distinctly queer lot

Kristi Rhead

Close-up photo of a wooden mask with fur eyebrows, hollow eyes, a rounded mouth opening and long black hair against a dark background.

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Anthropology

Witches around the world

The belief in witches is an almost universal feature of human societies. What does it reveal about our deepest fears?

Gregory Forth

Photo of a person wearing large sunglasses with outdoor scenery reflected, resting their fingers on their chin in a thoughtful pose.

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Ethics

Main character syndrome

Why romanticising your own life is philosophically dubious, setting up toxic narratives and an inability to truly love

Anna Gotlib

A digital painting of abstract shapes and lines featuring colourful spheres with light trails against a wavy background.

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Physics

Chasing ghost particles

Without the neutrino, the Universe might be an empty void. But this inscrutable particle isn’t giving up its secrets easily

Corey S Powell

A silhouetted figure walking with a dog through a dimly lit tunnel, contrasting with bright concrete walls in the foreground.

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Psychiatry and psychotherapy

Targeted

For those who hear voices, the ‘broken brain’ explanation is harmful. Psychiatry must embrace new meaning-making frameworks

Justin Garson

Silhouette of a person walking through a spray of water at sunset with cars and buildings in the background.

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Neuroscience

The melting brain

It’s not just the planet and not just our health – the impact of a warming climate extends deep into our cortical fissures

Clayton Page Aldern

Close-up of a person’s hand using a smartphone in a dimly lit room with blurred lights in the background. The phone screen shows the text ‘How can I help you today?’ and a text input field.

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Computing and artificial intelligence

Mere imitation

Generative AI has lately set off public euphoria: the machines have learned to think! But just how intelligent is AI?

Deepak P

Person in a wheelchair with a laptop, wearing a monitoring cap, and a doctor in a lab coat standing nearby in a clinical setting.

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Illness and disease

Empowering patient research

For far too long, medicine has ignored the valuable insights that patients have into their own diseases. It is time to listen

Charlotte Blease & Joanne Hunt

Close-up of a hand gracefully resting on a naked woman’s torso, soft lighting accentuating the skin’s smooth texture against a dark background.

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Sex and sexuality

Sexual sensation

What makes touch on some parts of the body erotic but not others? Cutting-edge biologists are arriving at new answers

David J Linden

A black-and-white photo of soldiers in uniform checking documents of several men standing outdoors, with laundry hanging in the background.

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Psychiatry and psychotherapy

Decolonising psychology

At times complicit in racism and oppression, psychology has also been a fertile ground for radical and liberatory thought

Rami Gabriel

Painting of a riverside scene with a large windmill, boats on the water, and three women standing on the bank next to a dock, under cloudy sky.

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History of technology

Learning to love monsters

Windmills were once just machines on the land but now seem delightfully bucolic. Could wind turbines win us over too?

Stephen Case