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LADY FIONA HERBERT, the eighth Countess of Carnarvon, turns the folio pages of a leatherbound guest book, pointing out the signatures of illustrious visitors who frequented her famous home a century ago. We are high in Highclere Castle, the grand country estate some 50 miles west of London that in recent years became the setting for the popular period drama Downton Abbey. Now every table, chair, and much of the floor in Lady Carnarvon’s small study is stacked with books and original documents from the 1920s: letters, diaries, and yellowed photographs mounted in albums or rolled up like ancient papyrus scrolls. The guest register contains the cast of characters for a book Lady Carnarvon is writing about her husband’s forebear, George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, the fifth Earl of Carnarvon.…

Lingustic Life 1790 Champollion is born in southern France during the French Revolution. 1807 Age 17, Champollion moves to Paris to study Coptic and research hieroglyphs. 1822 After years of research, he discovers the key to the hieroglyphic system. 1832 After years of illness, Champollion dies in Paris at age 41. The paper presented before the Académie de Grenoble in eastern France in 1806 was noteworthy for two reasons: First, the author was only 16 years old, and second the astonishingly erudite teenager made a very bold claim. He believed the ancient language of Egypt lived on in the form of the African language Coptic. Although his assertion would not turn out to be quite correct (Coptic is not identical to ancient Egyptian, but derived from it), the young scholar’s insights would later contribute to the solution of one…

What does it mean to create a grand New York City apartment— something equal in ambition and quality to the finest homes of the Gilded Age—in the 21st century? How do you express the ideas of connoisseurship and luxury in a way that feels modern, elegant, unpretentious, and, above all, relevant for a young family? In short, how do you invent the future? AD100 designer Steven Volpe had the rare opportunity to explore those questions in the design of a 10,000-square-foot, full-floor apartment, with 13-foot ceilings, located in a slender, skyline-defining tower in midtown Manhattan. But before Volpe and his team could bring in a single Giacometti lamp or Picasso painting, they faced a massive engineering challenge: essentially creating a building within a building to mitigate the eerie sounds of wind…

Couched below a picture of the Himalayan blue poppy, the national flower, the inscription on a pamphlet by the Tourism Council of Bhutan reads, “Happiness is a place.” Often dubbed “the last Shangri-La”—after the fictional place described in James Hilton’s 1933 novel Lost Hori zon—Bhutan markets itself as a “high-end” and “exclusive” tourism destination. The country’s tourism policy is guided by Gross National Happiness, a multidimensional strategy of development pioneered by Bhutan’s fourth king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, that propagates the idea that human development goes beyond economic growth and involves social, environmental, cultural, and governance dimensions. In just under half a century since Bhutan opened its doors to international tourists, in 1974, the industry has emerged as one of the most important sectors for GNH-driven growth. The country’s unique “high value,…

In 1885 the Pittsburgh Dispatch published an article entitled “What Girls Are Good For,” which claimed a working woman was “a monstrosity.” The feature provoked a fiery rebuke from a 21-year-old reader, Elizabeth Jane Cochran, whose argument so impressed the editor that he published an advertisement asking the author to come forward so he could meet her. She did, and he hired her on the spot, her first article appearing under the name “Orphan Girl.” Soon after, she changed her pen name to the title of a popular song by Pittsburgh songwriter Stephen Foster, and so “Nellie Bly” was born—a name forever associated with her pioneering role in investigative journalism. In the course of her life, she spotlighted social ills and corruption, often at great personal risk, resulting in important reforms. Distinguishing…

WHY, OH WHY, IS it so difficult to get rope bucking, struggling men to see their doctors? Wives, daughters and sisters wish to know! It is an age-old quandary, confirmed all over again by recent research from the Cleveland Clinic in the United States, which reports that 65 per cent of men “tend to wait as long as possible to see their doctor if they have any health symptoms or an injury.” In my house, the scenario generally plays out like this: “Ambrose, your head is falling off.” “Oh, is it?” Cursory glance in the mirror. “Yeah, I guess so.” “Well, don’t you think you should go to the doctor?” “I should, for sure.” Two days later: “Ambrose, your head remains connected to your neck by one sinew. Did you phone the doctor yet?” “Oh, uh, no.…

Known by awed gemologists simply as “the Blue,” the world’s biggest blue diamond first vanished in a jewel heist during the turmoil of revolutionary Paris in 1792. Since then, it has resurfaced and disappeared several times around Europe and across the Atlantic. Historians and jewelers have finally ended this treasure hunt that lasted more than two centuries. Most diamonds are prized for colorlessness, but this remarkable gem stood out for its distinctive deep blue hue. Discovered in India and brought to France in the 17th century, the stone measured a whopping 115 carats—a rare heavyweight in gemological terms. The diamond came to the attention of France’s Louis XIV, who bought it in 1668. To craft a fitting symbol for the Sun King, Louis had it cut, reducing it to 69 carats but…

SOME 60 MILLION light-years from Earth — by the estimate of one team of researchers, anyway — a pair of strange galaxies is causing a cosmic stir. The bizarre galaxies, named NGC 1052-DF2 and NGC 1052-DF4 (or DF2 and DF4, for short), are the first known galaxies born without any significant amount of dark matter. If confirmed, their existence would throw a wrench into our understanding of how galaxies form and evolve. But, as Carl Sagan liked to say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And, according to some researchers, the evidence for these dark-matter-deficient galaxies doesn’t hold up. THE CLAIM: NOTHING TO SEE HERE Astrophysicist Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University was certainly surprised when he first spotted DF2. After data from the Dragonfly Telephoto Array, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the Hubble…

Everything that Carlos Mota does is touched by his unfettered love for colour. The stylist, taste-maker, and globe-trotting aesthete is known for injecting a certain joie de vivre in every space he imagines, a trait that he now seamlessly extends to his debut range of fabrics. While his love for dazzling hues can be traced right back to his childhood spent in Venezuela—“We were constantly surrounded by jungles, beaches, mountains, birds, and orchids; it was impossible to not let colour become a part of my DNA,” he once told AD—his love for textiles was fanned by his travels. “Fabrics—especially vintage, found textiles—became a big part of my life when I began travelling, especially to countries like Morocco, India, Spain, and Portugal. Whenever I’m in a new place, I try to…

India’s sacred literature points to the impermanence of all things, and to renewal and change as part of the natural order, but the very same texts reinforce the idea that renewal and renovation should be attempted before discarding or rebuilding. The Agni Purāṇa clearly states that old and broken idols should be repaired rather than discarded, and only replaced when repair is no longer possible. When studying India’s ancient texts, scholars have focussed on ma-hakumbhabhishekham, or consecration ceremonies, including prāṇa-pratiṣṭhā and cakṣu-dāna—that is, instilling life, and opening the eyes of newly made idols. But both these ceremonies are described in the very same texts alongside jīrṇoddhāra—an irrefutably Indian approach to conservation and re-use. “Jīrṇoddhāra literally means digesting the past, an act of sacralised renovation,” writes the art historian Annapurna Garimella, who…

High above a cobblestone block in lower Manhattan looms a Herzog & de Meuron residential building with a twisting cast-aluminum gate and a facade of mirror-polished stainless steel, glass, and pre-patinated copper in brilliant green. The grandeur (and shine) of this material palette gives the 11-story 40 Bond the feel of an urban fairy-tale palace. That would make Gabriel Hendifar, artistic director and CEO of the New York–based lighting and furniture design studio Apparatus, a rather buff, burly (and bald!) Rapunzel, peering down from a floor-to-ceiling window in his apartment. Hendifar, who has claimed an elevated perch not only in this building but also, increasingly, on the international design scene, moved into the apartment in 2019 with his former partner in life and work, Jeremy Anderson. After the couple split at…

Visible to the naked eye Visible with binoculars Visible with a telescope DECEMBER 2021 Venus shines bright December’s early-evening sky offers a slew of planetary views, beginning with Venus, Saturn, and Jupiter — all on show soon after sunset. Capture the top features of the solar system in one evening by spotting the changing phase of Venus; the spectacular rings of Saturn; and the remarkably dynamic jovian atmosphere, its Great Red Spot, and Jupiter’s four bright moons. The first planet to appear after sunset is Venus, hanging low in the southwest. It reaches greatest brilliancy Dec. 4, when it shines at magnitude –4.9, easily piercing the bright twilight. This unmistakable brilliant jewel lies in eastern Sagittarius, featuring in all evening photographic compositions of the broad Milky Way. A waxing crescent Moon, complete with earthshine, joins Venus Dec.…

“Machhli humare rag-rag mein hain, isiliye mere gaane mein samundar hamesha rehta hai”—Fish run in our veins, so the sea is always present in my songs—Chintamani Shivdikar told us as we sipped sweet chai from porcelain cups in his home in Worli Koliwada, a fishing village in Mumbai. Even at home, he was dressed in white clothes and gold accessories; chains with fish pendants hung from his neck, and bright rings branded each of his fingers. A folk singer and YouTube star, Shivdikar is a local legend. He seems like a quintessential pop star, but his story reveals the journey of the Kolis and their unique connection with the sea, in a city obsessed with land reclamation. Worli Koliwada is shaped like a camel’s back. Shivdikar lives near the local Golfa…

A RIVER USED TO MEANDER through my Left Bank neighborhood in Paris. From the southern city limit that’s now Parc Kellermann in the 13th arrondissement, the Bièvre fed mills and tanneries before its confluence with the Seine in the 5th arrondissement. But by the early 20th century, the Bièvre had become so odoriferous and polluted that it had been buried underground, its water diverted into the sewers. Although the Seine evokes romance, the Bièvre is largely unknown to the millions of travelers who visit the French capital every year. But many Parisians have harbored a long-standing dream of resurrecting a river that, to them, has taken on mythic status. This dream is now close to becoming a reality. In recent years, sections of the river have been reopened in upstream suburbs,…

THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE in this fire-scarred forest is the color. Not long ago this square of land south of Yellowstone National Park was a monochrome of ash and burned pines. But last summer, shin-high seedlings and aspen shoots painted the ground an electric green. Purple fireweed and blood-red buffalo berries sprouted around blackened logs. Yellow arnicas danced in the breeze. Five years after 2016’s Berry fire chewed through 33 square miles of Wyoming, this slice of scorched earth was responding to fire as Rocky Mountain forests have for millennia: It had entered a season of rebirth. Monica Turner was cataloging that recovery. On a sweltering July day, Turner, a professor of ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, shuffled along a line of tape she’d stretched 50 meters across the…

THE DEVELOPMENT of the mRNA vaccine — a break-through in its field, instructing cells to produce their own protection without the risk of giving someone the virus — was fast and furious, made possible through rapid genome sequencing. But its origins go back to the late 1980s, when Kati Kariko, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, began experimenting with placing mRNA (m stands for “messenger”) into cells to instruct them to produce new proteins, even if those cells had been previously unable to do so. Eventually, Kariko also discovered that pseudouridine, a molecule of human tRNA (t stands for “transfer”), could help a vaccine evade an immune response when added to the mRNA. It laid the groundwork for a first-of-its-kind antidote that helped save hundreds of thousands of lives, becoming…

Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired a virtual summit of the BRICS grouping on 9 September, with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in attendance. India, like much of the world, was still reeling from the Taliban’s meteoric takeover of Afghanistan, and the question of the country’s future was dominant on the global diplomatic agenda. Yet the summit’s outcome, the Delhi Declaration, dealt with Afghanistan in only one of its 74 paragraphs, and even that did not mention the Taliban—a tacit let-off for the group amid loud concerns in other quarters over its intentions and beliefs. There was no surprise in this. Outside of Pakistan and Qatar, China and Russia are now the most powerful foreign actors in Afghanistan, among a handful of countries with diplomatic ties…

WE’D SIT AT THE water’s edge, on the seawall in front of Gena’s family home, and listen. Soon we’d hear them: gusts of breath when the manatees came up for air before sinking back below the surface of the spring-fed Florida bay. I began calling them “the sounds of the ancients,” as these docile marine mammals’ lineage leads back to grass-eating land mammals from about 50 million years ago. Yet in the places that manatees inhabit today, many populations are seriously threatened. WRITER-photographer Gena Steffens and I were paired at a National Geographic mentorship program in 2019 and had discussed working on a project together. I had moved to South Florida only a few years before, and Gena was living in Colombia. Gena had spent many childhood days in Crystal River, Florida—known…

«Spazio, luce e ordine. Queste sono le cose di cui gli uomini hanno bisogno, così come hanno bisogno di pane o di un posto per dormire». Le Corbusier avrebbe potuto dirlo anche a proposito di Johannesdal, la casa che l’architetto Henri Comrie ha progettato nella zona vinicola del Capo in Sudafrica per Dané Erwee, maestro fiorista e paesaggista, e il suo compagno nella vita e nel lavoro Chris Willemse. «Li ho preparati, assicurandomi che conoscessero il lavoro di Louis Barragán e Carlo Scarpa», ride Henri. «Li ho persino convinti a includere in un viaggio in Italia una visita al Museo Castelvecchio di Verona ristrutturato da Scarpa». Affascinati dalla posizione ai piedi delle montagne Simonsberg a Stellenbosch, Chris e Dané dieci anni fa hanno comprato il terreno di 2,5 ettari per dare…

Visible to the naked eye Visible with binoculars Visible with a telescope Six major planets are in view before midnight during September, offering a full range of binocular and telescopic sights. Mercury and Venus hug the western horizon soon after sunset, while Jupiter and Saturn provide a dazzling spectacle in the southeast. Both planets are well placed all evening. Uranus and Neptune are best viewed in binoculars or a telescope. Elusive Mercury tries to hide from us, but dedicated observers should successfully find it in evening twilight. Mercury is not particularly well placed for Northern Hemisphere observers as it reaches its greatest elongation east of the Sun (27°) Sept. 13. This is because the ecliptic forms a very shallow angle to the horizon. The planet shines at magnitude 0.2 on the 13th and then…

I NEVER IMAGINED I would appear in a Mount Everest photo—but here I am (at left) wrapped in a down suit and oxygen mask, 400 feet below the summit. This may sound like an unlikely admission for a professional climber who’s spent the past two decades pursuing summits all over the world. Many consider a selfie from the highest point on the planet to be the ultimate trophy. To get it, more than a few people have risked everything—including life savings and relationships—and, tragically, many have died on the descent, with their precious images still locked in their cameras. But over the years, the idea of an expedition to Everest repelled me. The mountain came to represent the opposite of everything that I loved and respected about climbing. The first mountain I attempted…

Located next to a multiplex in the posh coastal suburb of Bandra, the 356-year-old Navpada Kokni Kabrastan in Mumbai wears a sullen look. Railway tracks run parallel to its eastern wall, just beyond the section reserved for COVID-19 burials. The cemetery used to be reserved for members of the Konkani Muslim community but, during the pandemic, it opened its doors to all Muslims. In May 2020, as the cemetery prepared to bury its first COVID-19 victim, it faced unlikely opposition. Sanjay Naik, the secretary of the Mumbai Cricket Association, and some residents of the neighbourhood put up huge locks on the cemetery gates. The cemetery workers filed a police case, and the Bombay High Court eventually ordered that the locks be removed and the cemetery be opened for COVID-19 burials. “He doesn’t…

One afternoon in early November 2019, Mega Trisnawatii posed for a photograph on the waterfront of Ancol, a seaside zone in the far north of Jakarta, which fills up with locals and tourists over the weekend. The photographer, her husband, Febry, had a digital camera around his neck and held a sleeping one-year-old boy in a baby carrier. After taking the shot, along with their other three-year-old son in tow, the family headed to their car. Mega is a 27-year-old Instagram celebrity with over fifty-four thousand followers. In the photos on her account, her head is covered by coloured hi-jabs and her body wrapped in floating dresses that reach her ankles. She was the brand ambassador of Amily, an Indonesian clothing brand, in 2019, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, she took…

FOR DECADES, THE spreadsheet has been the least sexy form of consumer software. Necessary? Sure. Critical to the drudgery of running a business, doing your banking, or figuring out a financial plan? 100 percent. But exciting, innovative tech? Oh, God no. If you were a hotshot young developer, you flocked to Silicon Valley’s hyper-oxygenated fields, such as AI or crypto or the various legless metaversii. Spreadsheets were gray-flannel-suit territory. This meant that very little effort went into improving this dependable piece of officeware. Yeah, Google put spreadsheets online in 2006 (by buying up a firm that had already done so), and Airtable launched a clever sort of database-and-spreadsheet turducken in 2012. But those were the exceptions. Mostly, startups were content to let Excel and Google Sheets dominate a user base of about…

ONE AFTERNOON in September 2018, six years after the work accident that destroyed his left forearm and hand in an industrial conveyor belt, a North Carolina man named Brandon Prestwood stood in front of his wife with an expression on his face that was so complicated, so suffused with nervous anticipation, that he looked torn between laughter and tears. In the little group gathered around the Prestwoods, someone held up a cell phone to record the curious tableau: the pretty woman with long hair and glasses, the bearded guy with a white elbow-to-fingertips prosthetic, and the wiring running from a tabletop electrical device up under the guy’s shirt and into his shoulder. Right through the skin, that is, so that Prestwood—his body, not his prosthetic—was, for the moment, literally plugged in.…

MIX AND MATCH THE EGYPTIAN PANTHEON comprised numerous fantastical hybrids. Most deities had an animal head on a human body, especially when depicted for display in a temple. Depictions of humans—such as the ba, a manifestation of the soul—take the form of a human head on an animal body. Monsters such as Ammit could be composed of up to four animals. WINGS AND FEATHERS BIRDS had a privileged position in the Egyptian pantheon. At the top of the food chain, the falcon was especially prominent. Embodying the very ancient god Horus, it came to stand as the holy bond between the pharaoh and the realm of the gods. A carrion-eater, such as the vulture, was a protector, and the ibis was associated with knowledge. CATS AND DOGS THERE IS A WEALTH of feline representation in…

The meeting of G20 foreign ministers in Delhi, on 1 and 2 March, was deemed a success for “Brand India.” But it all depends on how we define success. The first three G20 summits, held in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, saw concrete outcomes: policy and institutional initiatives that stabilised the global banking system. This was no longer the case in 2022, with the escalation of the Russia–Ukraine war. At its Bali summit, the G20 merely issued a joint communique, stating that the participating leaders had agreed to disagree on Ukraine—this was seen as an achievement. This year, with India holding the rotating presidency, the countries could not even agree on a joint statement. Instead, India issued a “Chair’s Summary and Outcome Document,” with a footnote stating that…

Glenn has been an avid observer since a friend showed him Saturn through a small backyard scope in 1963. This month, we’re going to step away from our usual observing content and instead take a look at the psychology of skygazing. In short, we’ll ruminate on what makes us backyard astronomers tick. Why do we prefer reading Astronomy to, say, Field & Stream, Better Homes and Gardens, or Popular Mechanics? What compels us go outside on a clear starlit evening and gaze heavenward while our neighbors are indoors watching TV or playing games? I used to think a proclivity for backyard astronomy had to do with a love of the outdoors. That might be because my three favorite activities are stargazing, fishing, and recreational running. All involve being out in open air,…

Timbers from the wreck of a 17th-century Spanish galleon were discovered in a sea cave on Oregon’s northern coast. In June 2022 remains of the hull were removed from sea caves near Manzanita in a risky emergency recovery mission involving archaeologists, law enforcement, and search-and-rescue teams. “I’m impressed and relieved,” says Scott Williams, an archaeologist with the Washington State Department of Transportation and president of the Maritime Archaeology Society (MAS), an all-volunteer group that spearheaded a 15-year search for the shipwreck. The dozen timbers are believed to be pieces of the Santo Cristo de Burgos, a Spanish trading vessel known as a Manila galleon, which was sailing from the Philippines to Mexico in 1693 when it vanished, most likely wrecking on what is now Oregon’s coast. Its cargo included Chinese silk,…

If you’ve ever learned a new language — or tried to — you know how difficult it can be. Native languages seem almost built-in. We soak them up naturally when we’re very young. But learning a new language, especially after early childhood, can be a huge task, burdened by long vocabulary lists and genders to memorize, complex cases and troublesome tenses to master. Of course, it’s worth the effort. In today’s interconnected world, learning a new language can change your life. It will certainly change your brain. ALTERNATE ROUTES Learning anything changes your brain, at least a little bit. But learning a language does it in high gear. John Grundy, a neuroscientist at Iowa State University who specializes in bilingualism and the brain, explains that learning a new language causes extensive neuroplasticity in…

LET’S IMAGINE PLANET EARTH WITHOUT VIRUSES. We wave a wand, and they all disappear. The rabies virus is suddenly gone. The polio virus is gone. The gruesomely lethal Ebola virus is gone. The measles virus, the mumps virus, and the various influenzas are gone. Vast reductions of human misery and death. HIV is gone, and so the AIDS catastrophe never happened. Nipah and Hendra and Machupo and Sin Nombre are gone—never mind their records of ugly mayhem. Dengue, gone. All the rotaviruses, gone, a great mercy to children in developing countries who die by the hundreds of thousands each year. Zika virus, gone. Yellow fever virus, gone. Herpes B, carried by some monkeys, often fatal when passed to humans, gone. Nobody suffers anymore from chicken pox, hepatitis, shingles, or even the…

Welcome to the Luberon—la France profonde, the mythic France of the imagination. This is the heart of the particular section of Provence that unfolds over rolling hills and into fields of lavender, dotted with ancient stone villages that time has forgotten. Think red poppies, olive trees, and purple skies at dusk. The Luberon is not a fancy place in the way of the Côte d’Azur to the south, but it is a luxurious one: tranquility being the most elusive luxury of all. For precisely that reason, the interior designer Patrick Frey and his wife, Lorraine, have made the Luberon their country home. Patrick runs the firm founded by his father, Pierre Frey, which designs traditional fabrics, carpets, and furniture. In a centuries-old stone house that previously belonged to Lorraine’s parents, the…

Avoiding major pest damage starts with creating a resilient garden. Give your plants fertile soil full of organic matter; avoid drought stress with careful watering; and create a diverse environment that’s friendly to birds and bees. Your garden will be healthier and more vigorous so better able to fend off pests and disease. It’s also worth remembering that not every bug you spot is one to worry about. Some insects may be beneficial, consuming the pests preying on our plants. Others may be pollinating or drinking nectar. Wait and keep an eye out for major damage before reacting, and be willing to tolerate a few troublemakers. If pest insects do appear in destructive numbers, consider holding off on pesticides. They can be toxic to wildlife and pets, and even pesticides labeled natural…

After leaving Venus in relative neglect for almost three decades, the U.S. and Europe are gearing up to mount a set of robotic expeditions that will give us our most comprehensive view yet of Earth’s acidic sister. On June 2, NASA administrator Bill Nelson announced the agency would send two new missions to Earth’s inner neighbor by 2030. One of them, DAVINCI+, is a probe that will fall through Venus’ atmosphere, sampling its caustic clouds and snapping closeups of its terrain. The other, VERITAS, will study the planet from orbit with state-of-the-art radar and imagers. Eight days after NASA’s statement, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced it had greenlit EnVision, another orbiter that will arrive at Venus in the early 2030s to study both its surface and its oppressive atmosphere. The news thrilled…

IT’S BEEN MORE THAN A DECADE SINCE THE FIRST MODERN mass-market electric vehicle went on sale. EVs have come a long way, but they make up less than 2 percent of the U.S. vehicle market. That could change with the F-150 Lightning, the EV version of Ford’s half-ton pickup. If even 1 percent of F-150 buyers went electric, sales would surpass 2020 numbers for the Audi e-tron, Kia Niro EV, and Porsche Taycan, among others. In the United States, F-series models have topped the bestselling-vehicle list for 39 consecutive years, raking in mountains of cash for Ford and filling parking lots with blue ovals. If Ford were to spin off the F-series, the resulting brand would pull in $42 billion annually—more revenue than Nike, Coca-Cola, and Netflix. This is the third time…

SO I’M IN A PARK in Cleveland, where I happen to be visiting a friend, and I’m just … looking for human touch. Pure. Simple. And here is this young couple lying in a hammock, facing each other, legs intertwined. You can see them touching, but also you can feel it, her response to it, the quiet in her dreamy eyes. I have to get up the courage, always, doesn’t matter how long I’ve been doing this: Hi. My name’s Lynn, I’m about to start a project about touch for National Geographic; I saw you here, I thought maybe you’d have something to share about that. Do you mind if I take a photograph? Because I’m going to have to move into their personal space, if they say no, I understand. But so often…

Good health, vibrant energy, clear thinking: That’s what I strive for every day. And I always have. My parents taught me and my siblings positive habits early on, encouraging daily exercise (we walked and rode our bikes, instead of being driven), nutritious eating (no fast food), and proper hygiene for hair and skin. I passed these practices on to my daughter, who now does the same with my grandchildren. I love that Jude and Truman eat a vegetable-forward diet (with very little sugar) and are so active, with sports, swimming, and dance. What’s more, they love it. To feel my best no matter how busy I am, I exercise each morning. Before the pandemic, I worked with a yoga teacher and a trainer, but now I do it alone—and I admit…

On a dusty morning in Palasani, a village near Jodhpur, 46-year-old Kaburi Mirasi recounted stories her mother told her about the Chhappaniya Akal—the Famine of ’56. The famine occurred in 1899–90, or 2056 in the Bikrami calendar. Kaburi narrated how members of her community of Mirasi Muslims, a historically marginalised caste in Rajasthan, would beg their landlords for spare grain or how water from boiling green pulses was preserved as a source of nourishment. The famine spread through north-western India and, in Rajasthan, brought illness and hunger like never before. “People left their homes forever,” Kaburi told me. “Millions moved away to villages far away in the hope of some work and a meal.” In Rajasthan, famines are classified into four types: a dearth of water, a dearth of grain, a…

Prince William had no shortage of female admirers when he began his studies at the University of St Andrews in 2001, but there was one striking, quietly confident, green-eyed brunette who had a certain magnetism. “When I first met Kate I knew there was something very special about her,” he has said. It was hard not to notice Kate – by the end of her first week, she had been named the prettiest girl at Sally’s, the nickname for St Salvator’s, the hall of residence in which they were both staying. But as Kate and the young Prince exchanged shy smiles when they passed on the stairs in their early days, neither could have known it was the beginning of a love story that would capture the world’s imagination. The Cambridges’ relationship, which started…

I GREW UP in Central Java. My first job was working as a travel guide for visitors, then for student interns from Europe. That’s when I started using a camera, and then I knew I wanted to be a photojournalist. I began to freelance, but I wanted more training. In 2015 I got to go to Bali for the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop, where professional photographers teach students like me at low cost. And that’s the start. In the workshop class taught by [National Geographic contributing photographer] Maggie Steber, it’s like I was a baby, or blind, or starting from zero. But I tried to learn and to hear every single word that Maggie said. At the end, there was a festival and awards for the best students in each class. Maggie called…

On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln arrived at the East Portico of the Capitol to deliver his first Inaugural Address. The nation was collapsing, the Southern slave states seceding. Word of an assassination conspiracy forced Lincoln to travel to the event under military guard. The Capitol building itself, sheathed in scaffolding, provided an easy metaphor for an unfinished republic. The immense bronze sculpture known as the Statue of Freedom had not yet been placed on the dome. It was still being cast on the outskirts of Washington. Lincoln posed a direct question to the riven union. “Before entering upon so grave a matter as the destruction of our national fabric,” he said, “with all its benefits, its memories and its hopes, would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we…

What’s the one item you always take on, or bring back from, an assignment? " My son, Oliver, was born in May of 2021. Since then I’ve kept one of the socks … he wore as a newborn. I have taken it everywhere with me.—SAUL MARTINEZI always bring tobacco to offer the land as a spiritual gesture of respect for nature and to ask for safety when traveling.—PAT KANEThere is a bobcat fetish that lives in my camera bag … [It] comes all over the world with me.—KARINE AIGNERAn FDA-approved device for motion sickness that looks like a watch but shocks like an electric eel … which is very handy when flying in bush planes or rocking around ocean swells on a boat.—KILIII YÜYANI like to get a shave from a…

YEARS AGO when I was starting to explore the world in earnest—making my first trips to Africa and Asia and the Arctic—I made the decision not to take a lot of, or in some cases any, photographs. At the time, I believed that looking at the world through a lens hindered my ability to see what was really in front of me and to notice what mattered. I thought that trying to capture good pictures took me out of the moment and made me conscious of constructing an image rather than absorbing what I was experiencing. I’ve since changed my mind about that. Today I take plenty of photos, not just on my travels but in the everyday—when I notice an interesting mushroom while walking the dog, or watch the cloud formations…

IN THE MIDDLE OF A FIELD in a lesser known part of Ireland is a large mound where sheep wander and graze freely. Had they been in that same location centuries ago, these animals might have been stiff with terror, held aloft by chanting, costumed celebrants while being sacrificed to demonic spirits that were said to inhabit nearby Oweynagat cave. This monumental mound lay at the heart of Rathcroghan, the hub of the ancient Irish kingdom of Connaught. The former Iron Age center is now largely buried beneath the farmland of County Roscommon. Ireland is pushing for its inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage list. Spread across more than two square miles, Rathcroghan encompasses 240 archaeological sites, dating back 5,500 years. They include burial mounds, ring forts (settlement sites), standing stones, linear…

STANDING AT THE BOTTOM of a dusty wadi, I crane my neck to take in the huge structure rising above me: row upon row of precisely cut stone, set seamlessly without mortar some 2,500 years ago, soaring 50 feet into the fading desert sky. To call this ancient engineering marvel a mere dam feels almost derogatory. When the Great Dam of Marib was built in what is now Yemen, its earth-and-stone walls spanned an area nearly twice as wide as Hoover Dam. The still standing colossal sluices were part of a sophisticated system that controlled the flow of seasonal rains from Yemen’s highlands to its parched desert in the east, nurturing agricultural oases across almost 25,000 acres of wasteland. And in the middle of it all, a thriving economic hub: Marib,…

SCIENCE IS SUCH A FORWARD-LOOKINGendeavor that it’s all the more rewarding when long, challenging efforts finally come to fruition. And 2022 was a year with many payoffs, as researchers began unlocking the secrets of our solar system’s asteroids and received rich maps of the stars that populate the Milky Way. Excitement reigned as we moved an asteroid from 6.8 million miles (11 million kilometers) away. New and intriguing phenomena popped onto the scene, proving we still have much to understand about our universe. And two groundbreaking stories stole headlines, as we finally glimpsed the monster black hole at the heart of our galaxy and received the first stunningly sharp images from humanity’s most challenging and risky space telescope effort to date. It was also a year for reflection, as landmark missions drew…

The leading woman of all the nobles, great in the palace, perfect of appearance, beautiful in the double plume, the mistress of joy who is united with favour, whose voice people rejoice to hear, great wife of the king, his beloved, the great mistress of the two lands—Neferneferuaten, Nefertiti, granted life for ever, and for eternity!” Engraved on a stela found at Amarna, Egypt, this glowing passage describes Nefertiti, the great royal wife of Amenhotep IV—better known by the name he adopted later in life—Akhenaten. Her husband radically changed Egypt, transforming its polytheistic state religion to the worship of one deity, the solar disk Aten. He also moved the Egyptian capital to a new city he built named Akhetaten, meaning“horizon of the god Aten.” Akhenaten’s revolution was short-lived: Egypt would return to…

THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS ARE A SMOOTH, GLACIATED LANDSCAPE, scoured by ice and rock over millions of years. Mountains lift their rounded backs. Bowl-shaped hollows known as corries nestle within curving ridgelines. The land has two faces. In late summer the terrain is shrouded in heather, threaded with the royal purple of its tiny blooms, along with delicate leaves of creeping willow and bog myrtle, soft beads of blaeberries, and red-glowing lingonberries. But within a few short weeks these same uplands might be swathed in snow: drifts banked high, gales whipping through the wind-carved ice at a hundred miles an hour. This is the domain of the mountain hare. These little mammals are also found in tundra, alpine, and boreal regions across Eurasia. An estimated 99 percent of mountain hares in the United…

A long with much of the American and British public in the mid-19th century, Charles Francis Hall was riveted by accounts of Sir John Franklin’s tragic 1845 expedition in search of the North-west Passage, the fabled Arctic sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The scale of the loss—two vessels and 129 men—and the mystery surrounding the fates of Franklin and his crew, prompted many expeditions that set out to discover the outcome of their story. “Hall was a deeply eccentric man, perhaps the unlikeliest fellow to ever become an Arctic explorer,” said Russell A. Potter, a professor at Rhode Island College. Hall had no more than a few years of education and lived a quiet life as a family man and modestly successful engraver and publisher in Cincinnati, Ohio.…

On 4 May, a crowd of Tamils gathered in a small tent by the roadside in Vavuniya, a city in Sri Lanka’s Northern Province. Behind them was a wall plastered with the photos of family members who were last seen in the custody of the Sri Lanka Army. Many held up photos of those forcibly disappeared, not only as reminders of their loved ones but in the hopes of being reunited with them. It was a sombre demonstration that garnered minimal international coverage. They had been protesting for almost two thousand days and had received little attention, and much scorn, from the Sri Lankan government. Meanwhile, on Galle Face, an oceanside urban park in Colombo, a very different protest was taking place. The sound of trumpets and drums blared into the…

Near the mouth of the Rhône River, 2,600 years ago, Greek traders founded a colony called Massilia, today the site of the French city of Marseille. Venturing inland along the Rhône Valley, those traders encountered a people who spoke a tongue the Greeks did not recognize. Ruled by wealthy chieftains and hungry for luxury goods, they seemed fierce and warlike. A century later, Greek geographer Hecataeus of Miletus gave them a name—Keltoi, translated into Latin by the Romans as Celtae. Today, the word “Celtic” represents many things: a style of modern jewelry; a typeface; and an epithet of national pride among people of Scottish, Welsh, and Irish descent. In historical terms, however, “Celtic” is harder to define, in part because the Celts lived across such a wide area, inhabiting lands from…

Space Age 2.0 is an era of exponential technological progress, driven by desire for discovery, domination and the continued survival of humanity in light of the environmental crises taking place on Earth. Just as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey aestheticized mysteries of the cosmos during the initial space race in the 1960s, the futuristic affordances of Asian space exploration are now informing new visions of emergent commercial worldbuilding. The liminal nature of interstellar existence is encoded into work, hospitality and retail spaces that behave more like spacecraft than physical destinations. Unassuming concrete exteriors conceal remarkable thresholds, transporting visitors from reality to unreality via steel-clad, fluorescent-lit tunnels and celestial glossy white staircases. Secure from external hostilities, intrepid explorers are admitted into open and transparent internal vistas. Infinity mirrors, parametric formations and…

The only roads open in the besieged state of Tigray in northern Ethiopia lead to endless tales of darkness. Along a path on the outskirts of Abiy Adi, in central Tigray, Araya Gebretekle tells his story, tragic in its simplicity. He had six sons. He sent five of them to harvest millet in the family’s fields. Four never came home. When Ethiopian soldiers arrived in the village in February, “my sons didn’t flee,” says Araya, wiping his eyes with his white headscarf. “They didn’t expect to be killed while harvesting.” But the soldiers aimed their weapons at his sons, and a female soldier gave the order to shoot. “Finish them, finish them,” she said. The brothers pleaded for their lives. “We’re just farmers,” they said. “Spare one of us to harvest and…

BUILD A BREAKFAST BOWL TOTAL TIME 5 minutes 1 cup yogurt⅓ cup granola or muesli⅓ cup toppings Spoon the yogurt into a bowl. Top with granola. Finish with desired Toppings. Makes 1 serving. One of the things I do to keep myself in check is start my day with a smoothie. The Green Machine is my fave. It has a little bit of everything—fruit, vegetable, fresh citrus, and chia seeds. It’s bright, fresh, and fruity! FUEL YOUR DAY EVEN ON THE MOST HARRIED AND HURRIED MORNINGS, TRY TO EAT OR DRINK SOMETHING FOR BREAKFAST. SELF-CARE MEANS FUELING YOUR DAY FROM THE START. WHIP UP A SMOOTHIE COMBINE EVERYTHING IN A HIGH-POWER BLENDER. COVER AND BLEND FOR 2 TO 3 MINUTES, UNTIL COMPLETELY SMOOTH AND THE CHIA SEEDS ARE FINELY GROUND. MAKES 1 SERVING. THE GREEN MACHINE 2 handfuls fresh spinach1…

Teresita Boljoran, now a widowed mother in her early fifties, has been cleaning houses since 2010 to support her family of six. In 2013, the super typhoon Haiyan—locally known as Yolanda—destroyed her house on the island of Malapascua, in Cebu province in the Philippines. Yolanda was one of the most powerful typhoons ever recorded in the country, affecting more than 14 million people and claiming over six thousand lives. “For a year, we lived in makeshift tents on the beach until we were able to rebuild the house thanks to several [government] aids,” Boljoran told me, in May 2022. Many such typhoons on Malapascua have forced her to rebuild her life from scratch. “Although I always live with the uncertainty of what might happen,” she said, “I don’t intend to…

ON A WARM AND HUMID MORNING in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh last September, Chetan Singh Solanki stepped off a bus he’d been living in for the past 10 months and walked into a high school auditorium in the small town of Raisen, where 200 students, teachers, and officials had gathered to hear him speak. A solar energy professor at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Mumbai, Solanki is a slender man in his mid-40s with a boyish appearance and a quick smile that are assets for the mission he’s on. In late 2020 he took a leave to make an 11-year road trip around India to inspire action to fight climate change. Solanki’s vehicle is a mobile demonstration of the utility of renewable energy: Solar panels generate…

A satisfying push-pull. That’s how interior designer Payton Addison and homeowner Frank Giacobetti describe the process of renovating his Laguna Beach, California, home. “Frank had some out-of-the-box ideas, which included a modern-farmhouse meets urban-industrial vibe with a hint of surf shack, and I’m more of a contemporary designer,” Addison says. “Each time I would push a bit toward modern, he’d pull me back. In the end, we found a nice middle ground between our tastes.” Frank, who loves to surf, wanted the interiors to be ageless. “When you walk into a contemporary house 10 years after it was designed, it looks dated; you step into a farmhouse after 50 years and it feels timeless,” he says. “I like open, clean, and white, but I also wanted coziness.” To achieve this, Addison…

‘Welcome to panther country,’ Brian Kelly says when I meet him at a busy intersection in East Naples, Florida, a stone’s throw from a gas station and an urgent care center. Kelly, a state panther biologist, points east into the sprawling subdivision where he lives. A panther was caught on camera just a quarter mile away, he says, and another one made it across the six-lane road we’re standing beside. Yet another panther, an eight-year-old female named FP224, lives nearby. She’s been hit by a car twice, breaking a leg each time. She was treated by veterinarians and released after both accidents. To look for signs of her, we drive to Kelly’s house, next to a patch of forest where she recently denned and birthed at least three kittens. It’s the wet…

From the earliest days of archaeology in Egypt, the Valley of the Kings has exerted an irresistible allure. The famed cemetery was the burial place of royals during the golden age of the 18th, 19th, and 20th dynasties. Conducted since at least the early 1800s, excavations have revealed that most of the rock-cut tombs in the area were thoroughly looted in antiquity. The one great exception—the four richly appointed chambers of King Tutankhamun Nebkheperure—yielded not only a stunning trove of artifacts but a glimpse of the country’s astounding wealth and culture during the 14th century b.c. Since its discovery in 1922, King Tut’s tomb has provided ample evidence that has allowed both experts and amateurs to puzzle out the young pharaoh’s life and times, including the political intrigues that must have…

IN JANUARY, observers of North Korea’s strange and tightly restricted corner of the internet noticed something strange: The country seemed to be dealing with serious connectivity problems. On several different days, nearly all of its websites—the notoriously isolated nation has only a few dozen—intermittently dropped offline, from the booking site for its Air Koryo airline to Naenara, a page that serves as the official portal for dictator Kim Jong-un’s government. At least one of the central routers that allow access to the country’s networks appeared at one point to be paralyzed, crippling the Hermit Kingdom’s digital connections to the outside world. Some North Korea watchers pointed out that the country had just carried out a series of missile tests, implying that a foreign government might have launched a cyberattack against the…