Brian Gallagher

We’re not as bad as the headlines make us out to be.

English adapts to the needs of people speaking it more than it shapes those people’s ideas or ideals.Photograph by kimberrywood / Shutterstock Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Hideo Kojima is the Japanese creator of the 2015 video game, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. He evidently chose […]

Perhaps free will won’t forever be an issue philosophers mull over for a lifetime. Whatever the result, there’s always the ironic answer to the question of whether we have free will: “Of course we do. We have no choice.”Screengrab via The Good Place / YouTube Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join […]

The Apollo missions were a giant leap for science.

When I was 12, I made the mistake of watching the Paul W. S. Anderson horror film, Event Horizon. It gave me nightmares for weeks: The movie’s title refers to an experimental spaceship that could create artificial black holes through which to travel, making interstellar trips trivial. But the crew, upon activating the ship’s gravity […]

Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration, became one of the most preeminent physician-scientists alive, founding American psychiatry.

You could be forgiven for balking at the idea that our post-World War II reality represents a “Long Peace.” The phrase, given the prevalence of violent conflict worldwide, sounds more like how Obi-wan Kenobi might describe the period “before the dark times, before the Empire.” Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join […]

No other media meets our emotional and social needs like electronic games.

Why do we hate narratives that go wrong?

How supernatural beliefs allowed societies to bond and spread.