We Aren’t Selfish After All - Issue 84: Outbreak

What is this pandemic doing to our minds? Polls repeatedly show it’s having an adverse effect on our mental health. Physical distancing,… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

How COVID-19 Will Pass from Pandemic to Prosaic - Issue 84: Outbreak

On January 5, six days after China officially announced a spate of unusual pneumonia cases, a team of researchers at Shanghai’s… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

Superintelligent, Amoral, and Out of Control

In the summer of 1956, a small group of mathematicians and computer scientists gathered at Dartmouth College to embark on the grand… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

Covid-19 Will Pass from Pandemic to Prosaic

The final outcome of COVID-19 is still unclear. It will ultimately be decided by our patience and the financial bottom line.Castleski… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

Straight Talk About a Covid-19 Vaccine

There are many challenges to developing a vaccine that will be successful against COVID-19.eamesBot / ShutterstockWayne Koff is one… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

How COVID-19 Will Pass from Pandemic to Prosaic - Facts So Romantic

 Castleski / ShutterstockOn January 5, six days after China officially announced a spate of unusual pneumonia cases, a team of researchers… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

Straight Talk About a COVID-19 Vaccine - Facts So Romantic

 There are many challenges to developing a vaccine that will be successful against COVID-19.eamesBot / ShutterstockWayne Koff… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

The Ecological Vision That Will Save Us - Issue 84: Outbreak

The marquee on my closed neighborhood movie theater reads, “See you on the other side.” I like reading it every day as I pass… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

Superintelligent, Amoral, and Out of Control - Issue 84: Outbreak

In the summer of 1956, a small group of mathematicians and computer scientists gathered at Dartmouth College to embark on the grand… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

The Economic Damage Is Barely Conceivable - Issue 84: Outbreak

Like most of us, Adam Tooze is stuck at home. The British-born economic historian and Columbia University professor of history had… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

A Man Who Designed Ghost Armies and Opera Houses (2016)

The most celebrated and maligned living acoustician, Leo Leroy Beranek, now 101 years old, has had a storied career. As director of… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

Machine learning is teaching us the secret to teaching (2013)

When Pyotr Stolyarsky died in 1944, he was considered Russia’ s greatest violin teacher. He counted among his pupils a coterie of… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

Brain on Silence (2016)

One icy night in March 2010, 100 marketing experts piled into the Sea Horse Restaurant in Helsinki, with the modest goal of making… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

The Case Against Thinking Outside of the Box - Facts So Romantic

Social, cultural, economic, spiritual, psychological, emotional, intellectual: Everything is outside the box. And this new sheltered-in-place… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

What Role Will Immunity Play in Conquering COVID-19? - Facts So Romantic

It seems like people who get infected with SARS-CoV-2 retain immunity, but we can’t be sure how long that immunity will last.… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

Friendship Is a Lifesaver

My mother-in-law, Carol, lives alone. It was her 75th birthday the other day. Normally, I send flowers. Normally, she spends some… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

The Meme as Meme - Issue 84: Outbreak

This article from our 2013 issue, “Fame,” offers a look at the way information—whether it’s true or not—spreads across the… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

Why False Claims About COVID-19 Refuse to Die - Issue 84: Outbreak

Early in the morning on April 5, 2020, an article appeared on the website Medium with the title “Covid-19 had us all fooled, but… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

Friendship Is a Lifesaver - Issue 84: Outbreak

My mother-in-law, Carol, lives alone. It was her 75th birthday the other day. Normally, I send flowers. Normally, she spends some… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

How a Nuclear Submarine Officer Learned to Live in Tight Quarters

I’m no stranger to forced isolation. For the better part of my 20s, I served as a nuclear submarine officer running secret missions… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

The Diplomacy of Food

It’s a cold evening in New York City and I’m making Nepalese donuts. Or, I should say, Rachana Rimal, a cheerful woman with a… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

The Pandemic Can’t Lock Down Nature

Needing to clear my head, I went down to the Penobscot River. There they were, swimming with the mergansers, following an early pulse… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

A Holographic Model Solves a Great Cosmological Mystery

One of the great mysteries of modern cosmology is how our universe can be so thermally uniform—the vast cosmos is filled with the… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

The Pandemic Can’t Lock Down Nature - Issue 84: Outbreak

Needing to clear my head, I went down to the Penobscot River. There they were, swimming with the mergansers, following an early pulse… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

Can a Battery of New COVID Tests Stem the US Debacle? - Issue 84: Outbreak

Can we leap beyond flattening the curve and eliminate COVID-19 as a public health threat—not years from now but weeks? “It’s… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

Summer Won’t Save Us from COVID-19 - Issue 84: Outbreak

Life right now, for someone who studies respiratory virus infections, can be hectic and alarming. Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunology… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

How a Nuclear Submarine Officer Learned to Live in Tight Quarters - Issue 84: Outbreak

I’m no stranger to forced isolation. For the better part of my 20s, I served as a nuclear submarine officer running secret missions… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

Prayer in the Time of COVID-19 - Facts So Romantic

Prayers to God can give people a false sense of reassurance that something has been done. In the worst case, prayers can take the… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

Let’s Talk About Our Health Anxiety over Covid-19

The hint of a headache at your temples, an itch at the back of your throat, a fever so slight you barely feel it. You know that it’s… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

It’s the End of the World and This Physicist Feels Fine

I promise I have no intention to propose a quantum-model for disease spread, but like everyone else I have been wondering if I can… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

Covid victims are betrayed by their bodies

Celebrated playwright Terrence McNally passed away on March 24. As told to The New York Times by his husband Tom Kirdahy, the cause… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

It’s the End of the World and This Physicist Feels Fine - Facts So Romantic

I promise I have no intention to propose a quantum-model for disease spread, but like everyone else I have been wondering if I can… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

Pandemics Are the Dark Side of Global Mobility

This article from our 2013 issue, “In Transit,” offers a timely look at how an animal virus from one place can infect people across… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

Let’s Talk About Our Health Anxiety Over COVID-19 - Issue 84: Outbreak

The hint of a headache at your temples, an itch at the back of your throat, a fever so slight you barely feel it. You know that it’s… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

How COVID-19 Picks on the Weakened - Issue 84: Outbreak

Celebrated playwright Terrence McNally passed away on March 24. As told to The New York Times by his husband Tom Kirdahy, the cause… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

Pandemics Are the Dark Side of Global Mobility - Issue 84: Outbreak

This article from our 2013 issue, “In Transit,” offers a timely look at how an animal virus from one place can infect people across… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

Be Wary of a Model That Shows a Decline in Covid-19 Deaths

 We have no idea what will happen if, for example, New York runs out of ventilators or if people are sent away from hospitals… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

Be Wary of a Model That Shows a Decline in COVID-19 Deaths - Facts So Romantic

 We have no idea what will happen if, for example, New York runs out of ventilators or if people are sent away from hospitals… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

The Superorganism That Created the Pandemic

I’ve spent years adventuring in exotic parts of the world seeking out wildlife—weeks in tents in remote wildernesses, nights uncomfortably… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

The Pandemic Can’t Lock Down Nature

The nonhuman world is free of charge; sunlight is a disinfectant, physical distance easily maintained, and no pandemic can suspend… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

The Pandemic Can’t Lock Down Nature - Facts So Romantic

The nonhuman world is free of charge; sunlight is a disinfectant, physical distance easily maintained, and no pandemic can suspend… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

Genetic Mutations Turned the Coronavirus Deadly

Long before the first reports of a new flu-like illness in China’s Hubei province, a bat—or perhaps a whole colony of them—was… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

The Superorganism That Created the Pandemic - Issue 83: Intelligence

I’ve spent years adventuring in exotic parts of the world seeking out wildlife—weeks in tents in remote wildernesses, nights uncomfortably… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

A Doctor Puts Telemedicine to the Test During COVID-19 - Issue 83: Intelligence

It was the first day after the San Francisco Bay Area declared that residents shelter in place, and I was getting ready to see patients.… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

What if Another Crisis Strikes During This Pandemic? - Issue 83: Intelligence

Parts of the world might have shut down, but nature never does. Even while people stay at home and learn about physical distancing,… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

Only Disconnect! A Pandemic Reading of E.M. Forster - Issue 83: Intelligence

Chances are, you’re hunkered down at home right now, as I am, worried about COVID-19 and coping by means of Instacart deliveries,… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

How Genetic Mutations Turned the Coronavirus Deadly - Issue 83: Intelligence

Long before the first reports of a new flu-like illness in China’s Hubei province, a bat—or perhaps a whole colony of them—was… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago

A Warning from History About Simultaneous Disasters

If an earthquake now hits India or Iran, like in 2001 and 2003, respectively, killing over 20,000 people in each country—or if we… | Continue reading


@nautil.us | 4 years ago