How Does the Coronavirus Behave Inside a Patient?
An analysis of how coronavirus behaves inside patients, and the data points that might help us better understand how it impacts different people.
Snow Science Against the Avalanche
An insight into specialist avalanche mitigation teams and the challenges they face working with a natural material that is “light and fluffy and soft and downy, and it’s everybody’s favorite thing in the world” but also “one of the most destructive forces in nature”.
Survivor’s Guilt in the Mountains
A man seeking to help elite mountaineers deal with a sadly common occurrence in their line of work – the death of their friends and collaborators.
Was Jeanne Calment the Oldest Person Who Ever Lived—or a Fraud?
Jeanne Calment was 122 years of age when she died in France in 1997, and the oldest person in the world. It was only some years after her death that people started to question whether 1875 was in fact the year of her birth, and suggesting that the woman who claimed to be Jeanne Calment was in fact her daughter Yvonne. This is a fascinating story of gerontology (including such alarming nuggets as the the Gompertz law which states that “the mortality rate for adult humans roughly doubles with every additional eight years of age”) and social history.
Yuval Noah Harari’s History of Everyone, Ever
An expansive profile of the author of two of the last decade’s biggest non-fiction hits – Sapiens, and Homo Deus.
A Consciousness of Reality
A 1954 essay by W.H Auden examining Virginia Woolf’s career and legacy through her own diary.
A World Without Pain
A remarkable story about a woman who doesn’t feel either physical pain or negative emotions, and how humans process pain more broadly.
The Histories Hidden in the Periodic Table
The stories behind the discoveries that built the periodic table.
Blood and Soil in Narendra Modi’s India
An arresting and disturbing story about the past, present, and future of Narendra Modi’s politics. The story’s climax is the proposal that, with his reelection 2019, Modi “uncovered a terrible secret at the heart of Indian society: by deploying vicious sectarian rhetoric, the country’s leader could persuade Hindus to give him nearly unchecked power.”