Ned Hardy

Get Smarter Everyday

Nick Lee

What It Feels Like to Be Forever Alone

There’s this moment I keep coming back to. I’m on a crowded city bus, wedged into one of those pairs of molded plastic seats next to a girl reading a paperback. Our thighs touch—not in a flirtatious way, just that accidental, human kind of contact that happens in cities. And I don’t say a word. I barely breathe. I’m too busy memorizing the way her breath fogs the window, pretending we’re something we’re not. It’s pathetic. It’s nothing. But it’s also the most intimate physical experience I’ve had in years.

[Read more…] about What It Feels Like to Be Forever Alone

The 5 Big Questions You’ve Always Wondered About—Finally Answered

Why is rabies almost 100% fatal once symptoms appear?

Rabies is, without exaggeration, one of the deadliest diseases known to humankind. It’s not because it kills millions every year (thankfully, modern medicine and vaccination have kept numbers relatively low). It’s terrifying because once symptoms begin, survival is nearly impossible. Fewer than 20 people in recorded medical history have ever survived symptomatic rabies—and even those survivors required extreme, experimental treatment, often with permanent neurological damage. For all practical purposes, rabies is fatal once it declares itself.

[Read more…] about The 5 Big Questions You’ve Always Wondered About—Finally Answered

What Was Life Like Before the Internet?

life before the internet

When I was a little kid, and I asked my parents a non-obvious question about the human body or biology, their answer would be “Ask your uncle Paulo next time we see him. He’s a doctor”. Other questions about various topics would get “Let’s call up grandma and ask her; She’s a teacher”, or “Let’s see if the encyclopedia has anything about this”, or “Ask your teacher if, during recess, you can go ask the librarian at school”.

What movies are playing? Let’s check the newspaper.

[Read more…] about What Was Life Like Before the Internet?

5 Big Questions From History, Answered

Why did soldiers keep fighting in WWI, even when it became clear they were marching into slaughter?

Why did they keep going?

Why, after seeing entire regiments mowed down in minutes, after watching friends disintegrate under artillery, after spending weeks in flooded trenches with rats chewing on corpses—why did they keep fighting?

Because World War I wasn’t just a war. It was a system. A machine. And once you were inside of it, there was no clear way out.

[Read more…] about 5 Big Questions From History, Answered

5 Historic Photos That Speak Volumes

An American evacuee punches a South Vietnamese man for a place on a chopper out of the Nha Trang in 1975.

If you want to understand how wars actually end—not how the treaties are signed or the monuments get built, but how they really end—look at the photograph. A single frozen instant at Nha Trang Air Base in the spring of 1975.

An American official, face taut with fear and frustration, punches a Vietnamese man in the face. The man is clinging to the side of a plane—already packed, engines spinning, ready to go. He won’t let go. He can’t let go. And the American, trying to clear the doorway so the plane can take off, uses his fist.

[Read more…] about 5 Historic Photos That Speak Volumes

5 Iconic Artworks Worth Slowing Down For

The Scream, Edvard Munch – 1893

There are some images that feel like they’ve always existed, as if they emerged not from an artist’s mind but from the collective unconscious. Edvard Munch’s The Scream is one of them. You don’t look at it so much as feel it—like a shiver crawling up your spine. And part of its eerie power is that it feels both distant and utterly, uncomfortably familiar.

[Read more…] about 5 Iconic Artworks Worth Slowing Down For

Skip to content