Nautilus

Are you a tyrant or a servant?

Explore the bizarre counterintuitive causes of the phenomenon.

A philosophical dialogue with a student at the edge of reason.

We are the architects of our social world.

A reflection on an astrobiologist’s favourite sci-fi.

Medication can take away the building of crucial mental resilience for young adults.

Can we cope with existentialism beyond religion?

Are we willing to speed our lives up indefinitely?

Have we been defining it incorrectly all this time?

Could your work really be a survival kit?

How one small farmer is creating a buzz with organic pot.

Synesthesia can make ordinary life remarkable.

Could a new type of society be on the cards?

Our digital technologies can, in fact, be cognitive aids.

What we can learn from the great astronomer.

Does the data we produce serve us, or vice versa?

Hallucinatory drugs may allow our brains to let go of prior beliefs.

It’s time to forget the image of a chimpanzee turning into a human.

How basic science research helped fast-track the COVID vaccine.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

How can we realise objective ethical values?

The evolutionary biologist on Individualism.

Space: a newly defined frontier.

Getting to the core of today’s social acrimony.

Science and thought can change everything.

Why science will always prevail in the face of ignorance.

There could be more viruses than there are stars in the universe.

Research is breathing new life into an age-old argument.

What if the first woman scientist was simply the first woman?

Have we been looking for consciousness in the wrong place?

The potential to hack our dreams opens a new frontier of mental research.

Two esteemed astrophysicists peer into the future of space exploration.

A counterintuitive approach to improving our psychological state.

To better understand our past, we need to set our focus underground.

Behind the first climate change discovery in the US.

It’s not easy to overcome the masculine conception of fatherhood.

Analysing the key role of vitalism in the age of modern science.

You hold control over what will terrify you, and it feels good.

A short but fascinating personal account on how to get comfortable being uncomfortable.

Acclaimed film editor Walter Murch on oxygen, evolution, and our planet’s fate.

Here is how to age successfully, according to neuroscientist Daniel Levitin.

Whether you’re a sea turtle or a ship’s captain, you’ll need two tools — a map and a compass.

Get a whiff of a new sensory experience in history.

Is memorising a string of words a key to what makes the human brain unique?

Playthings shouldn’t confine kids but allow them to ask: What if?

The pandemic exposed racial injustice in healthcare — a view on why vaccine distribution must not.

One of the most remarkable stories you will hear about the physicist's quest to prove Ernst Mach's theories.

How do our legs adapt from walking on a paved road to scrambling up rocks?

Science and ancient Greeks agree — Stoicism increases well-being.

Exposing the damned lies of three science figures: Francis Galton, Karl Pearson and Ronald Fisher.

The rise of fascism disturbed the scientists' friendship — and shaped Schrödinger’s cat fable.

A fascinating interview exploring how our brains are wired for new sensations.

The neurology of flow states.

To stop destroying nature, developers are mimicking it.

How the demotion of Homo Sapiens led to environmental destruction.

Tantalizing evidence suggests that brain activity shifts to increase wisdom as we age.

How a steady diet of fertilizers has turned crops into couch potatoes.

Palm oil is an environmental scourge — could plant biology have the solution?

Every time the Earth moves, your GPS coordinates are at risk.

Evolution has a dark side too.

One astronomer went to U.S. National Parks to rekindle an old romance.

The unusual union of a renowned artist and the discoverer of the Polio vaccine.

Is our light-saturated existence perhaps a little unusual?

Why birds of a feather don’t flock together for long.

Exploring the origin of an interstellar species.

The world isn’t just a stable thing — how we perceive it is based on our own bodies.

What are Homo sapiens' chances of evolutionary success?

Is anything objectively disgusting?

For many, COVID-19 has shown it isn't useful yet.

Life on the red planet will never be the same as in Earth — many existential threats abound.

The world is experiencing the first complexity crisis in history — and these scientists may have some solutions.

A new theory emerges to explain the enigmatic Tunguska Event.

“What are they thinking?” — the Harvard professor answers just that.

Life on other planets may rely on plate tectonics.

Technology has fed our addiction to light, and might help us end it.

Is a third-act twist to nuclear energy at hand?

Our brains can't help but believe.

This privateer is developing a way to power the world with water and borax.

Constitutive panpsychism opens the way to believe they have some type of extremely rudimentary mind.

To get a legal hallucinogen to market, rodents need to take the first trip.

China's QR codes mean life can go back to normal, but at what cost to data privacy?

The pandemic has highlighted why it's time to reconsider how we urbanize and develop cities.

The editor of the Godfather trilogy on a triumphant story between two of the most famous astronomers.

Joe Jones invented Roomba and wants to tell you, they won’t take over the world.

In turbulent times, cognitive science has shown people go from “me” thinking to “we” thinking.

Scale confounds our perceptions, for the human brain to understand science, we need stories.

Three stories reflecting on our lives and our devices.

What's a better predictor of health? Friendship or cholesterol levels?

Here's how the 2009 swine flu raced around the world - and what it tells us about today.

Superdeterminism, a long-abandoned idea, may help us overcome the current crisis in physics.

COVID-19: A remarkable interview with Dennis Carroll, one of the world's leading virologist.

Thinking about your future job? Time to look at your online behaviours.

Couch potatoes beware — characters in distress are hazardous to your health.

New York Times bestselling author on why consciousness is, fundamentally, everywhere.

Do we live in a world where technology and nature have become one?

Why our relationship with astrology is an important part of science itself.

Hit the trail with the Mars rovers, on the hunt for water and life.

Do we have the intelligence to understand how the brain works?

Without the stories we tell ourselves, inner-chaos might be all that is left.

The second and final part of this fictional piece on who will survive when it's time to evacuate Earth.

The first part of this fictional piece on who will survive when it's time to evacuate Earth.

"Instructional videos can teach us anything—especially if you watch them this way."

Unlike artists, scientists gain relevance and impact with age and experience.

Reconsidering views: Math won’t solve quantum gravity. Experimentation will.

Will recording every spoken word help or hurt us?

Climate change: Earth’s great storehouses of carbon are looking ominous.

Why are scientists searching the brain for chaos?

Two scientists debunk new research papers over-exaggerating the abilities of AI and deep learning.

A controversial disease revives the debate about the immune system and mental illness.

Your favourites: the person we won't be forgetting in 2019.

Santiago Ramón y Cajal recorded his dreams to prove Freud wrong. Listen to this exclusive translation.

How is language just so learnable?

Author Cormac McCarthy examines our unconscious' avoidance of language.

What is natural selection’s deal with men?

We can experience nothingness, but does it actually exist?

Infinite patterns that never repeat have moved from fantasy to reality.

Our minds are compelled by the unusual.

A story-like daydream may be like looking at one’s reflection in rippling water.

What does the way whales communicate have to teach us about extra terrestrial life?

What pushes us towards our first language even after getting out of touch with it?

Listen to this parrot, who has some questions for us.

Fact or Fiction? Maybe we just like a compelling myth.

With a chunk of his brain removed, picking up the guitar helped him get his groove back.

Are headphones making us lonely when we listen to music?

A look at the model which finally explained the strange asymmetry of the moon.

The skills and shortcomings that defined one of America's founding fathers.

A pioneering scientist who showed that organisms evolved by symbiosis and cooperation.

You're not the creative type? Think again.

Whether it’s our country or our football team, we need to belong.

An alternative path for parenting around technology.

How can we cope with anxiety in an uncertain world?

Statistically speaking to have a 50% chance of winning the lottery you need to buy a ticket 86 million times. With odds so small, how can it be that more than half of the US population have bought a ticket? Writing in Nautilus magazine, Adam Piore explores the psychology behind the lottery, suggesting that the improbable odds might well be what we are drawn to.

A researcher who works through painting tells her story.

The story of a father trying to keep up with his 4-year-old.

As a teenager, it seems like the emotional highs are higher, and the lows are even lower. Robert Sapolsky writing in Nautilus magazine, looks at how this is related to the development of the frontal cortex and how this can explain some of that teen-angst.

James Doty, lost $75 million in 6 weeks in a market crash, of the stock he had left, he decided to donate it. All $30 million of it. Why? Because, he says, it felt good. Bonnie Tsui, writing in Nautilus looks at why Doty decided to donate his money and what it can tell us about altruism.

What does the mastering of Russian and calculus have in common? Barbara Oakley, writing in Nautilus magazine explains how the art of practice, repetition –or fluency– is key to becoming a whiz in many disciplines from sports to algebra.

Have you ever wondered what came before toilet paper? Stephen E. Nash, writing in Nautilus, shares what ancient Romans used instead of toilet paper. So the next time you’re enjoying a morning constitutional, you'll be thinking about the fact that urination is more than a biological function; it's a cultural activity that involves artefacts and technologies that change through time.

Have you ever considered whether pigeons could be in love?

What is sex for? David P Barash, writing in Nautilus, looks at why when plants and animals have reproduced without sex for eons - is there really an evolutionary need for sex?

Why is the word yoga from Sanskrit, a distant relative of the word yoke from English? It seems in modern English, well over half of all words are borrowed from other languages. How did this come to be?

Grigori Guitchounts, writing in Nautilus, shares his anguish over experimenting on animals - a daily confrontation he can’t escape in his job, as a neuroscientist.

“We can now fall in love with people online whose hair we have never smelled” writes Robert Sapolsky in Nautilus, as he examines human interactions in the digital age and how the mental disorder, Capgras Syndrome can help us to better understand these times.

"We still don’t know which genes are vital to making us differ from chimpanzees" writes Gary Marcus in Nautilus as he asks the question of what it is, exactly, that makes human so unique.

Matthew Sedacca, looks at the cheap price the tobacco industry puts on human life and how, despite the number of people who are smoking falling, we are yet to escape the effects the tobacco industry has had on us.

Why are we so averse to playing God? Tania Lombrozo, writing in Nautilus magazine, looks at how human exceptionalism is influencing our ability to move forward on topics such as gene editing and IVF as it seems we, humans, are still grappling with recognizing our own place within the natural world.

Why is it impossible to always be happy?

“We want our machines to explain how and why they do what they do” Ryota Kanai, writing in Nautilus, argues for why conscious robots are necessary and how introspection and imagination will make robots better.

Corrine’s husband leaves one day, abandoning her in Berlin, with no explanation - Sara Batkie’s fictional piece in Nautilus delivers the echoes of new-found solitude. The layers unfold as she finds her way out.

Code is often associated with programming, something new and now dominant in modern society. In this excerpt adapted from “The Code Economy: A Forty-Thousand-Year History” written by Philip Auerswald, he looks at the integral role code has played in the development of civilisation.

Theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler revolutionized physics. Amanda Gefter writes in Nautilus magazine about what made his race to explain time so personal.

How do we increase our chances of curing the scourge of human violence? Steve Steward-Williams, writing in Nautilus, urges us to look further than blaming nature for male aggression, and instead take time to examine the causes further.

Yvonne Bang writing in Nautilus, explores one of the world’s most permanent means of information storage, ice. As she discovers love notes and warning messages buried in Earth’s frozen archive.

Nature is often revered as the greatest of all artists. Sabine Hossenfelder takes time to reflect on the wonder of Nature as the first image of a black hole was revealed in April 2019. As she remarks the magnificence is " not so much for its appearance, but for its origin”.

Following the exciting announcement on the 10th of April 2019, astronomers had observed a black hole for the first time, the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University held a competition to “offer a unique environment for thinking about the topic of black holes more creatively and comprehensively,” says BHI director, Avi Loe. Listen to one of the five winning essays.

“Intellectual-yet-idiot”, “klueless”, “butthurt" - the insults have taken a turn for the personal as the feud between Nate Silver, founder of FiveThirtyEight, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb, hedge-fund-manager-turned-mathematical-philosopher and author of The Black Swan rage on. Aubrey Clayton proves who's right and who's math is just plain wrong.

When exile becomes home.

We seem to view willpower as a muscle-like force that can resist cravings, not over-indulge or stop us from spiraling into debt - a notion that has been reinforced since Victorian moralizing. But Carl Erik Fisher, writing in Nautilus, looks into why these ideas are having a pernicious effect by distracting us from accurate ways of understanding our own psychology.

Our eyes have evolved to allow us to interact with the real world around us, but why are we so often tricked into seeing illusions? Psychologist Gustav Kuhn writing in Nautilus magazine, turns to magic - the art that exploits this best - for a deeper understanding of this phenomenon.

John Baez, writing in Nautilus, learnt to stop worrying and love algebraic geometry - the math that takes Newton into the Quantum world.

Genes unable to express themselves

When it looks like everyone around you is able to live the 'perfect' life - how far are you willing to go? Set in an alternate reality, Anna North shares a short story in Nautilus with a clear message relevant for the times in which we are living.

How shrooms can spring people from fears and destructive habits.

War and the weather - there doesn’t seem to be much in common, except perhaps the mathematician, physicist, meteorologist, psychologist and pacifist , Lewis Fry Richardson, who applied his pioneering technique for predicting the weather to predicting wars.

With egg freezing cocktail parties on the rise, Abby Rabinowitz writing in Nautilus discusses why egg freezing is a choice between surrendering to a lottery or the regret of not playing.

The reasons why we are so desperate to create “us” and “them”.

In an age of all-knowing algorithms, how do we choose not to know?

With a legend that predates the name, why is it that Bigfoot cannot be proven to exist? Nautilus takes a look at how the null hypothesis is keeping the hairy hominid alive.

A new theory on how the brain represents thought and concept could shed light for cognitive scientists, neurologists and even for machine-learning researchers.

Death by heartbreak is regularly cited in literature but in reality it is often still approached as a myth. What happens to the mind and body when the bonds of love are breached?

Kevin Berger, writing in Nautilus, shares his conversation with Eric Kandel, doctor in psychiatry and a professor at Columbia University, as they stroll through the halls of New Yorks’ Neue Galerie discussing what exactly neuroscience is doing in art.

Adam Piore, writing in Nautilus, examines the anatomy of charisma and reveals what makes a person magnetic and why we should be wary.

Simon Parkin, writing in Nautilus, explains how designers engineer luck into video games and reveals the responsibilities and challenges of programmed luck.

Christian H. Cooper, writing in Nautilus, debunks the concept of American meritocracy and explains why poverty is a matter of chance rather than merit.

Is iron the new cholesterol? Clayton Dalton, writing in Nautilus magazine, reveals that elevated iron is at the center of a web of disease stretching from cancer to diabetes.

Miranda Hart, writing in Nautilus magazine, warns how the biggest farming practice you’ve never heard of is changing your food.

Josephine Wolff, writing in Nautilus magazine, tells the story of the world’s most- wanted cybercriminal.

"For all the talk of the tongue and palate, our eyes are arguably the most important gustatory organ."

Kevin Berger, writing in Nautilus magazine, explains why bewilderment is the antidote to scientific reductionism.

"The future of the intercontinentally traded banana was once, and is again, precarious."

Daniel M. Davis, writing in Nautilus magazine, explains how Nobel laureate James Patrick Allison saved a whole world through cancer immunotherapy.

Aleksandr Kapitonov & Ivan Berman, writing in Nautilus magazine, predict what finance will look like when it is controlled by robots.

Mathias Clasen, writing in Nautilus magazine, explains how evolution designed our fears.

We're running out of time to make them fair.

Andrew Curry, writing in Nautilus magazine, explains how the sheer stress of living in a Poor Neighborhood can change your biology.

We predicted cell phones, but not women in the workplace. Tom Vanderbilt writes in Nautilus magazine to explain why futurism has a cultural blindspot.

Eric Schwitzgebel, writing in Nautilus magazine, explains how to tell if you’re a jerk.

Mark L. Hineline, writing in Nautilus magazine, considers the possibility that fixing the climate is incompatible with American Ideals.

Britt Peterson, writing in Nautilus magazine, shares how treating her cat for depression caused her to question the state of anxiety in animals and us.

J.B. Mackinnon, writing in Nautilus magazine, takes us on a journey into the strange brain of the world’s greatest solo climber.