The archive
Writing
Features and blogs and interviews from more than a decade at Nautilus.
68 stories
Mind · Nautilus
Why Is That Funny?
How evolution made us laugh
October 19, 2022
Interview · Nautilus
We Are a Part of Infinity
A neuroscientist uncovers Albert Einstein’s little known spiritual journey
With Kieran Fox
Mind · Nautilus
The Holiness in Reality
When science is a source of spirituality in people’s lives, they feel happy and engaged
September 1, 2023
- 2026Can Bioengineered Bacteria Help Terraform Mars?The nonprofit start-up Pioneer Labs claims to have made the first-ever “microbe for Mars.” Other experts aren’t so sureSpace
- 2025Why Our Brains Crave IdeologyA neuroscientist reveals how to nurture authentic and flexible thinkingMind
- 2024Giant Clams Are Marvels of Solar EnergyWhat we can learn from the critically endangered speciesNature
- 2024The Case for Scientific TransculturalismLife will stand a better chance against climate change if we mix big- and small-picture thinkingNature
- 2024The Enlightening Beauty of an Einstein RingWhat a trippy gravitational phenomenon can tell us about the universeSpace
- 2023A Little Bit of Science Knowledge Is a Dangerous ThingYou might not know as much about science as you thinkCulture
- 2023What Separates Highly Creative PeopleBrain scans reveal what fuels novel thinkingMind
- 2023Yes, There Is a Cure for BullshitThe patron saint of calling BS, Harry Frankfurt, died watching his philosophy become more urgent than everCulture
- 2023The Race to Colonize Mars Perpetuates a Dangerous ReligionWe can learn about the universe without conquering itSpace
- 2022Life Is Hard. And That’s GoodWhen the going gets tough, the tough get philosophicalMind
- 2020Are You Yoda or Darth Vader?How to recognize your light and dark sidesCulture
- 2019Playing Video Games Makes Us Fully HumanNo other media meets our emotional and social needs like electronic gamesCulture
- 2019The Worth of an Angry GodHow supernatural beliefs allowed societies to bond and spreadCulture
- 2020The Cultural Distances Between UsMapping the world’s psychological traitsCulture
- 2015How to Solve the Hardest Logic Puzzle EverA step-by-step guide to True, False, and RandomMind
- 2015The Simple Logical Puzzle That Shows How Illogical People AreMore than 90 percent of people err on this test. Will you?Mind
- 2015The Hidden Warning of Fall ColorsDid autumn reds and yellows evolve to repel insects?Nature
- 2015Why a Post-Nuclear World Would Look Nothing Like “Mad Max”Mad Max: Fury Road envisions an embarrassing, nightmarish futureNature
- 2014Brain Damage Saved His MusicAfter a chunk of his brain was removed, guitarist Pat Martino got his groove backMind
- 2014Your Brain Can’t Handle the MoonHow the moon stirs tension between your conscious and subconscious mindsMind
- 2018The Self Is Other PeopleOur very sense of who we are is intertwined with what we see when we see other people look at usMind
- 2018The Psychological Challenges of Just Getting to MarsLife outside Earth has its own Hobbesian description: isolated, confined, and extreme—or I.C.E.Space
- 2018So Can We Terraform Mars or Not?Elon Musk wants to engineer Mars’ atmosphere. Can he?Space
- 2019Think You Know the Definition of a Black Hole? Think AgainWhen I was 12, I made the mistake of watching the Paul W. S. Anderson horror film, Event HorizonSpace
- 2016There May Be Two Trillion Other GalaxiesEvery point in the sky contains part of a galaxySpace
- 2018How Einstein Reconciled Religion to ScienceHe believed the lawful harmony of the universe suggested the existence of Spinoza‘s GodMind
- 2016Why Christopher Hitchens Was a Hero to ScientistsThe writer had a reverence for science and philosophy, and a conviction that both should be the basis of personal belief and ethics in societyCulture
- 2021The Dangerous Evolution of the CoronavirusThese scientists have a new model for identifying variants before they killNature
- 2020Why America Is Ripe for Election Conspiracy TheorizingOne day in 1787, Benjamin Franklin emerged from the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, where the founders were debating the shape of a new governmentCulture
- 2020Scientists Analyzed 24,000 Chess Matches to Understand CognitionChess could perhaps be the ultimate window through which we might see how our mental powers shift during our livesMind
- 2019Game of Thrones and the Evolutionary Significance of StorytellingWhy do we hate narratives that go wrong?Culture
- 2018Larry David and the Game Theory of Anonymous DonationsWhat your generosity signals about youCulture
- 2019The Case for Professors of StupidityThe greatest problem facing the world today is a rule systemCulture
- 2017The Case for More Intellectual HumilityI can remember, almost a decade ago, when I was convinced out of my “Young-Earth” CreationismMind
- 2017How to Weed Creationism Out of SchoolsThe problem with high school biology teachersCulture
- 2017What Trump’s Simplified Language MeansOn the last weekend in April, I was surprised that a panel called “The Press and President Trump,” held at the Columbia Journalism School, didn’t broach the subject of mental illnessCulture
- 2017The Pernicious Myth of WillpowerIt turns out “willpower” is not a valid psychological constructMind
- 2018The Problem with MindfulnessShould we be mindful of how popular “mindfulness” now is?Mind
- 2018Forget Everything You Think You Know About TimeA theoretical physicist challenges our common notions about the fourth dimensionMind
- 2018Why Water Is WeirdOne day, frustrated after many hours of meditation and practice, Bruce Lee, still a teenager, went sailingNature
- 2020Australia’s Secret Rescue of Ancient Trees Offers an Insight Into EvolutionWhen I read that more than a billion animals had lost their lives to bushfires still raging in Australia, I froze, staring at the incomprehensible figure on my screenNature
- 2019Doc Holliday Is Dead But Tuberculosis Is Still Killing UsIn 2002, David M. Morens, now Senior Scientific Advisor at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, wrote an essay called “At the Deathbed of Consumptive Art”Nature
- 2019The Strange Physics of How Babies TalkLike all new parents, I must sound like a kook when I babble along with my 9-month-old daughterMind
- 2016This Simple Philosophical Puzzle Shows How Difficult It Is to Know SomethingIf knowledge isn’t justified true belief, what is it?Mind
- 2016Yes, Your Brain Does Process InformationDo you know what information is?Mind
- 2016The Secret of Our Evolutionary Success Is FaithThe staunch atheist and essayist Christopher Hitchens once said that “the most overrated of the virtues is faith”Culture
- 2017Science Is Not Constantly Being Proved RightIt’s a subtle point, but the British comedian Ricky Gervais was not quite right when he told Stephen Colbert on The Late Show yesterday, “Science is constantly being proved all the time”Culture
- 2018Taking Another Person’s Perspective Doesn’t Help You Understand ThemTo understand someone, we should not imagine their point of view but make the effort to “get” their perspectiveMind
- 2018The Heart of Musical Experience Is ExpectationIn “Half-Wit,” an episode of House, Gregory House, a brilliant Sherlock Holmes-like doctor (and a decent musician) wheels a piano into a patient’s roomMind
- 2018Bo Burnham and the Illusion of MeritocracyIn a WTF with Marc Maron podcast episode from 2012, musical comedian Bo Burnham said his fortune felt unreal, as if his life were a futuristic VR gameCulture
- 2017Make Concrete Roman Again!The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder can be charmingly self-deprecatingCulture
- 2018Can PTSD Be Good for You?There’s no way to be sure what will traumatize someone, and not everyone exposed to “trauma” develops PTSDMind
- 2018This Famous Aging Researcher Doesn’t Want Us to Live ForeverIn the Netflix anime series Knights of Sidonia, humankind is marooned in a spaceship 500,000-strong, refugees constantly on the run from shapeshifting aliens who destroyed Earth over 1,000 years agoNature
- 2018The Case Against LecturesDepending on the speaker, lectures can be a joy, but, the efficacy of the lecture, as a teaching method, is in doubtCulture
- 2017How Should Society Judge a Defendant with a Brain Tumor?After a visit from one of his patients in March, 1966, the psychiatrist Maurice Heatly noted, “This massive, muscular youth seemed to be oozing with hostility as he initiated the hour with the statement that something was happening to him and he didn’t seem to be himself”Mind
- 2019A Precursor Piece to DNA Was Found in Star MaterialApril—National Poetry Month—prompted me to reread some of the work of English-American poet W.H. AudenSpace
- 2019When the Link Between Space and Time Will Be IntuitiveThe celebrated English writer Ian McEwan has, in his stories and essays, shown a fondness for scienceSpace
- 2019The Dr. Strange of the American RevolutionBenjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration, became one of the most preeminent physician-scientists alive, founding American psychiatryCulture
- 2021Steven Pinker Has His ReasonsThe psychologist unpacks rationality and denies being a guru to the capitalist eliteCulture
- 2020A Neuroscientist’s Theory of EverythingKarl Friston takes us on a safari of his free-energy principleMind
- 2022Love Is Biological BriberyEvolution uses all its tricks to make sure we procreate. But love in humans is a many-splendored thingMind
- 2021NASA Is on the Cusp of a New EraA planetary scientist explains why SpaceX’s Starship will transform her fieldSpace
- 2022Thinking Like a Scientist Will Make You HappierPhysicist Jim Al-Khalili explains how to get out from under the cloud of misinformationCulture
- 2020The Brave New World of Chemical RomanceHow love drugs will shape the future of our relationshipsMind
- 2022Are We Ready for the Next Massive Volcano?It’s time to get prepared, argues a professor of volcanologyNature
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