By Invitation | Russia and Ukraine Humanity’s greatest political achievement has been the decline of war. That is now in jeopardy Image: Dan Williams 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…

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 sound almost the same. They are lacking humanity, those critics say – literally brainless. For Raw…

M itski 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, her cat was stuck in a tree, and she was late to soundcheck. When she finally arrived at the venue,…

Latest Stories Subscribe for full access to read stories from National Geographic. Today's Picks Flying in 2025? Here’s how to find the cheapest flightsTravel Flying in 2025? Here’s how to find the cheapest flights Scientist may finally know why starlings form mesmerizing cloudsPhotographyProof…

HomeEssaysCollectionsExploreShopSupport PDRAboutBlog Search The Public Domain Review Support PDR EssaysCollectionsExploreShopAboutBlog Roger Fenton, Valley of the Shadow of Death (1855) — Source This image, taken by Roger Fenton during the Crimean War in 1855, is one of the earliest photographic…

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 million military personnel in the US has shown that virtually every case of MS is preceded by…

Guest Essay Jan. 20, 2022 Credit...Cari Vander Yacht By Elliot Kukla is a rabbi who provides spiritual care to those who are grieving, dying, ill or disabled. He is working on a book about the power of rest in a time of planetary crisis. Leer en español “Abba, I have an idea,” says my 3-year-old.…

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 fiancé in an exam room in the infectious disease wing of Massachusetts General Hospital, as I have…

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 on the ground after major heatwaves. Polar bears are going extinct. And people are drowning in their…

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 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 micrograph of a cell infected with a coronavirus. SARS-CoV-2’s evolution took an unexpected turn in late 2020, when new variants…

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 tested for it, and do not enter the official totals. Conversely, some people whose deaths have been…

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, death made it necessary. At four o’clock that afternoon, the 93-year-old did something she hadn’t done…

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 quarter of a century. Hotel staff claimed Ms Wood called out, “My sister is sick. Get a doctor. I…

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 the neighbors as he worked on new songs he describes as “very relaxed,” “intimate,”…

Quirks of the human mind and how we process information might explain the uncanny appearances of thylacines. The Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, a large, predatory marsupial that ranged across Tasmania and Australia, was declared extinct in 1936.Credit...The Picture Art Collection/Alamy By March 10,…