By Yuval Noah Harari This article is part of our Summer reads series. Visit the full collection for book lists, guest essays and more seasonal distractions. AT THE HEART of the Ukraine crisis lies a f

A common criticism of pop music today is that it is too dominated by technology. Vocals are smoothed into perfect pitch and drums or synths come from presets, the end result being that too many songs

Mitski has been having nightmares. The 31-year-old musician has always suffered from performance-anxiety dreams, but lately they’ve gotten more terrifying, more elaborate. During one in particular, he

Latest Stories Subscribe for full access to read stories from National Geographic. Today's Picks Take a wellness road trip along Australia’s new hot springs trailTravel Take a wellness road trip along

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Illustration of the outer coating of Epstein-Barr virus Uncredited/AP/Shutterstock It has long been suspected that the common Epstein-Barr virus can trigger multiple sclerosis (MS). Now, a study of 10

Guest Essay The Most Valuable Thing I Can Teach My Kid Is How to Be Lazy Jan. 20, 2022 Credit...Cari Vander Yacht By Elliot Kukla is a rabbi who provides spiritual care to those who are grieving, dyin

Tony Luong Tyson Bottenus in his home in Providence, Rhode Island “I honestly can’t believe you’re alive,” one of my doctors told me a few months ago. “It really makes no sense.” I was sitting with my

As our planet continues to cook, it can be hard to find positive stories about the climate crisis. Floods in Canada are so bad, farmers on jetskis need to rescue cows. People are reporting dead birds

Studies Suggest Why Omicron Is Less Severe: It Spares the Lungs Compared with earlier variants, Omicron may cause less damage to the lungs, new animal research suggests. Many research groups studying

Matter Omicron’s Radical Evolution Thirteen of Omicron’s mutations should have hurt the variant’s chances of survival. Instead, they worked together to make it thrive. A colorized scanning electron mi

How many people have died because of the covid-19 pandemic? The answer depends both on the data available, and on how you define “because”. Many people who die while infected with SARS-CoV-2 are never

Herald Square circa 1907, when Ida Wood first moved into the Herald Square Hotel. From Wikipedia Ida Wood never had any intention of renewing contact with the outside world, but on March 5, 1931, deat

When 93-year-old Ida Wood opened the door of her suite at the Herald Square hotel in New York in June 1931 crying for help for her dying sister, it was the first time she’d left her room in nearly a q

As summer turned to fall in 2020, Interpol‘s Paul Banks was laying low in Edinburgh, sitting by a window in “a comfy chair,” watching the leaves change outside. He sang quietly, trying not to disturb

Tasmanian Tigers Are Extinct. Why Do People Keep Seeing Them? Quirks of the human mind and how we process information might explain the uncanny appearances of thylacines. The Tasmanian tiger, or thyla