Nautilus

I’d lost almost $200 million in October. November wasn’t looking any better. It was 2008, after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. Markets were in turmoil. Banks were failing left and right. I worked at a major investment bank, and while I didn’t think

Poker players like to brag they win with skill not luck. So do investment bankers. Scientists. And writers. Skill, we insist, is our ticket to success. Who can blame us? It’s a useful delusion to bank our identity on skill, says Maria Konnikova. We c

World War II bomber planes returned from their missions riddled with bullet holes. The first response was, not surprisingly, to add armor to those areas most heavily damaged. However, the statistician Abraham Wald made what seemed like the counterint

The COVID-19 pandemic was some epidemiologist’s nightmare when Adam Kucharski was writing Rules of Contagion. Released this week, the book, which includes brief mentions of the encroaching COVID-19 storm, draws on ideas from “outbreak science” to ill

In the summer of 1977, on a field trip in northern Patagonia, the American archaeologist Tom Dillehay made a stunning discovery. Digging by a creek in a nondescript scrubland called Monte Verde, in southern Chile, he came upon the remains of an ancie

These days, when I’ve listened in on strangers’ conversations—all properly socially distanced and discretely of course—I’ve heard several fatigued souls talk about how they’d like to get off this planet, or wish the timeline would correct itself. It’

People running through the streets in terror, stores being looted for supplies, and, of course, people eating other people. In World War Z, the film adaptation of Max Brooks’ successful zombie apocalyptic horror novel, things start off calm but quick