Brian Gallagher
Nautilus
New York, NY, United States
Contact Brian
Discover and connect with journalists and influencers around the world, save time on email research, monitor the news, and more.
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Past articles by Brian:
Life Is Hard. And That’s Good
When the going gets tough, the tough get philosophical. → Read More
The Math That Says Egalitarianism Is Possible
Last month, having returned to Earth aboard his Blue Origin spacecraft, Jeffrey Bezos, the chairman of Amazon and, as of this month,… → Read More
Reports of a Baleful Internet Are Greatly Exaggerated
It’s now fashionable, when something has you mildly obsessed, to say that it is “living rent-free in your head.” Well, in my… → Read More
Should We Terraform Mars? Let’s Recap
It seemed inevitable that Elon Musk would eventually get into a Twitter war over whether Mars can be terraformed. When you’re on… → Read More
Larry David and the Game Theory of Anonymous Donations
What’s intriguing about anonymous giving, and other behaviors apparently designed to obscure good traits and acts, like modesty,… → Read More
Summer Won’t Save Us from COVID-19
Life right now, for someone who studies respiratory virus infections, can be hectic and alarming. Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunology… → Read More
The Cultural Distances Between Us
If you ask Siri to show you the weirdest people in the world, what images might you see? In fact, none. Siri showed me different links… → Read More
Does English Fulfill the Dream of a Universal Language?
English adapts to the needs of people speaking it more than it shapes those people’s ideas or ideals.Photograph by kimberrywood… → Read More
Can Neuroscience Understand Free Will?
Perhaps free will won’t forever be an issue philosophers mull over for a lifetime. Whatever the result, there’s always the ironic… → Read More
She Rewrote the Moon’s Origin Story
Fifty years ago, in the Oval Office, Richard Nixon made what he called the “most historic phone call ever.” Houston had put him… → Read More
Think You Know the Definition of a Black Hole? Think Again
What might be more puzzling than the innards of a black hole is the trouble of defining one in the first place.WikicommonsWhen I was… → Read More
Why Our Postwar “Long Peace” Is Fragile
Have mechanisms like democratization really fostered an enduring trend of peaceful co-existence, or is this just a statistical fluke—a… → Read More
Playing Video Games Makes Us Fully Human
I have an agonizing decision to make. Should I save a governing body that has never done a thing for me? It doesn’t even contain… → Read More
The Problem with Mindfulness
The mindfulness movement’s heavy focus on positive, health-related perks, like stress or anxiety reduction, turns meditation into… → Read More
Taking Another Person’s Perspective Doesn’t Help You Understand Them
To understand someone, we should not imagine their point of view but make the effort to “get” their perspective.Pixabay / Public… → Read More
Fear Is Good for the Forest
The reintroduction of predators alone can spark an ecosystem’s revival.Photograph by Thomas Shahan / FlickrIn 2011, the renowned… → Read More
Wikipedia and the Wisdom of Polarized Crowds
In 2013, James Evans, a University of Chicago sociologist and computational scientist, launched a study to see if science forged a… → Read More
The Well-Meaning Bad Ideas Spoiling a Generation
In 2011, a friend of mine in college asked me if I’d read The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, by Jonathan… → Read More
Why Misinformation Is About Who You Trust, Not What You Think
I can’t see them. Therefore they’re not real.” From which century was this quote drawn? Not a medieval one. The utterance emerged… → Read More
The Case for Professors of Stupidity
Bertrand Russell’s quip prefigured the scientific discovery of a cognitive bias—the Dunning–Kruger effect—that has been so… → Read More