National Geographic Magazine April 2019

NAT GEO TV Listening to The Story of God as Told in Many Lands In his series’ third season, Morgan Freeman explores how different faiths regard their central figures, both deities and demons. His journey includes visits to Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral to see what’s said to be the crown of thorns worn by Jesus and to Vietnam’s Tay Ninh Province for a prayer service at a Cao Dai temple (above). Watch new episodes of The Story of God at 9/8c Tuesdays through April 9 and past episodes on the Nat Geo TV app and on demand. TELEVISION How Species Fare on Our Hostile Planet As Earth’s climate becomes more volatile, animals must adapt. See their struggles to survive in a six-part documentary hosted by adventurer Bear Grylls. Hostile Planet airs Mondays at 9/8c starting…

IN 1925 LE CORBUSIER, the Swiss-French architect and pioneer of modernism, suggested razing the homes, statues, and streets of much of Paris’s Right Bank. In their place, he proposed erecting 18 identical glass towers some 650 feet high, a quarter of a mile apart, divided by lawns for pedestrians and elevated highways for cars. Le Corbusier contended that “lovers of antiques” and progressive thinkers were at war about how humans should live. A quote attributed to him leaves no doubt as to which side he was on: “Progress is achieved through experimentation; the decision will be awarded on the field of battle of the ‘new.’” This battle has long raged in and about cities, which are thought to have first formed some 6,000 years ago in what is now Iraq. We question…

PHOTOGRAPHER Nicolas Ruel usually takes eight seconds to make his long-exposure images. Why not less time—or more? “Eight is the number of infinity,” he says, referring to what he hopes is the endless wonder of looking and looking again at his double-take images of cityscapes around the world. He starts with an urban place filled with people, energy, and motion. Train stations work well, as do churches, libraries, and stadiums—anywhere that people gather. He sets his tripod and takes a four-second exposure in one direction (most photo exposures are about 1/60 of a second or less). Then, with the shutter still open, he’ll swivel the camera to a different view for another four-second exposure—creating, ultimately, an eight-second one-frame documentary. Long exposures typically show motion blur. Double exposures often mesh two images. But…

THE DISCOVERIES OF TODAY THAT WILL DEFINE THE WORLD OF TOMORROW NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC VOL. 235 NO.4 FOR MOST OF THE SIX MILLION YEARS of human evolution, all humans and protohumans lived like somewhat glorified chimpanzees, at low population densities, scattered over the landscape as families or small bands. Only within the past 6,000 years, a small fraction of human history, did some of our ancestors come together in cities. But today more than half the world’s people live in these new settings, some of which have tens of millions of inhabitants. Urban life involves trade-offs. We may gain big benefits in return for suffering big disadvantages. Let’s consider two of them: the trade-off between individual freedom and community interests, and the trade-off between social ties and anonymity. To understand the issue of freedom, take first…

During your morning jog, sensors in your wearable detect a medical anomaly. The data is sent to your electronic health records where algorithms flag it up as a potential problem, alerting your doctor. Equipped with up-to-date details of your lifestyle, medical history, and your fully mapped genome, AI analysis offers a diagnosis. Your doctor videocalls you and suggests precautionary tests. In our hightech healthcare future, computers could know what’s wrong with us before we even know we’re sick. At the start of the 20th century many illnesses went unidentified, the human body was largely unmapped, nutrition was widely misunderstood, and medical treatments remained limited. Progress has been rapid. The mapping of our genomes and the development of CT and MRI scans have given us unparalleled medical insight. Antibiotics have revolutionized the…

FROM MEGA-REGIONS TO MICRO-SIZE HOMES THE PRINCIPLES OF CITY DESIGN By 2050 the world’s population is expected to reach 9.8 billion. Nearly 70 percent—6.7 billion people—are projected to live in urban areas. We asked the architectural and urban planning firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) a question: How would it design a city of the future? The plan allows EC O LOGY to guide development. WATER sources are protected and systems are designed to capture, treat, and reuse it. ENERGY is renewable, and the city becomes more LIVABLE even as it becomes more densely populated. All WASTE becomes a resource. FOOD is grown locally and sustainably. High-speed rail improves MOBILITY . The CULTURE AND HERITAGE of the increasingly diverse population are publicly supported. The INFRASTRUCTURE is carbon-neutral, and the ECONOMY is largely automated and online.…