Why Birds Can Fly Over Mount Everest

A story for my grandchildren about oxygen, evolution, and our planet’s fate. Plus: this week’s Behind the Scenes with Summer Praetorius; the strange persistence of first languages; and more. [View in browser]( | [Become a member]( EDITORS’ CHOICE January 1, 2023   Did a friend forward this? [Subscribe here](. Happy New Year! Here’s some of the most popular stories from Nautilus—and this week’s Behind the Scenes with paleoclimatologist [Summer Praetorius]( below [READ NAUTILUS](   [EVOLUTION]( [Why Birds Can Fly Over Mount Everest]( A story for my grandchildren about oxygen, evolution, and our planet’s fate. BY WALTER MURCH Dear Bella, Chloe, and David I’m going to imitate Rudyard Kipling and tell you a just-so story. [Continue reading →]( Experience the endless possibilities and deep human connections that science offers [SUBSCRIBE TODAY](   Popular This Week [GEOSCIENCE]( [The Great Forgetting]( Earth is losing its memory. BY SUMMER PRAETORIUS [Continue reading →]( [PSYCHOLOGY]( [How Mental Time Travel Can Make Us Better People]( Kindness lives in the future-present. BY KATHERINE HARMON COURAGE [Continue reading →]( [PHILOSOPHY]( [Life Is Hard. And That’s Good]( When the going gets tough, the tough get philosophical. BY BRIAN GALLAGHER [Continue reading →]( [COMMUNICATION]( [The Strange Persistence of First Languages]( After my father died, my journey of rediscovery began with the Czech language. BY JULIE SEDIVY [Continue reading →](   [BEHIND THE SCENES]( [Summer Praetorius Takes Us Behind “The Great Forgetting”]( “I was always interested in the past,” Summer Praetorius [told me recently](, when I asked her how she found her way to studying the climates of bygone eras. The paleoclimatologist grew up, alongside her older brother, on a 60-acre junkyard, a place suffused with history. “It was like an archeological site,” Praetorius said, with “all of these relics” like “early, really old wooden wagon wheel-type cars.” It stoked an innate curiosity. She loved searching for treasures her father would task her with finding—the “stories emerging from decomposing seats, revealing lost glasses and keys,” she wrote in her 2020 Nautilus story, “[Dawn of the Heliocene](.” It’s a passion that hasn’t waned. For Praetorius, it’s a “form of meditation even, to sort and sift through beach debris, clover patches, and now as a paleoclimatologist, the ancient sand under my microscope, taking delight in finding the perfect foraminifera or a glittering quartz gemstone dropped into the sea by a disappearing iceberg thousands of years ago.” In her new story, “[The Great Forgetting](,” Praetorius reflects on the ice and much else disappearing today. Paleoclimate archives show us, among other things, she writes, “the long timescales it takes for ice sheets to grow—accumulating million-year memories—and how fast they can melt, puddling history into storm surges that erode the banks of our futures.” The loss of irreplaceable information hits Praetorius viscerally because it reminds her of her brother Jebsen, who first showed signs of memory loss as a teenager. Praetorius’ mind went to that when she was thinking about writing “The Great Forgetting.” She always remembered, [she said](, “how uneasy I felt when he suddenly showed signs of amnesia, and how strange it was. I remember thinking, ‘That can’t be real. He can’t have just forgotten what happened.’ It felt so strange to think that it could just be erased in just an instant.” The head trauma went unexamined, and the worsening symptoms—weight loss, along with antisocial and bizarre behavior—went untreated. “Honestly,” Praetorius said, “the article took me two years to weave my way through in its first draft, because I didn’t quite know how to link all those things”—her brother’s trajectory, and that of the Earth. But figuring out that she could pair them turned out to be a powerful storytelling device. “There’s a little bit of that parallel between thinking about early signals and then observing, more in my personal domain, the observation of this kind of decline in memory before there was any other indicator of something that was wrong—but would unravel in time,” Praetorius said. [Watch here](. —Brian Gallagher, associate editor   [A Tribute to the Legacy of Mario Ruvio]( Early career ocean professionals are invited to apply to the newly launched [Mario Ruivo Memorial Lecture Series](, a tribute to the legacy of Professor Mario Ruivo, former Executive Secretary of the IOU-UNESCO, and Portgual’s greatest champion of ocean science. [Submit your application]( by January 9, 2023. [Apply Here](   [“]()[How did birds get such great lungs? They inherited them from dinosaurs.](” [The legendary filmmaker Walter Murch explains, in a letter to his grandchildren, why we need to treat Earth like our body.](   More in Evolution [Another Path to Intelligence]( Octopus brains are nothing like ours—yet we have much in common. BY JAMES BRIDLE It turns out there are many ways of “doing” intelligence, and this is evident even in the apes and monkeys who perch close to us on the evolutionary tree. [Continue reading →]( [The Evolutionary Mystery of Menopause]( New studies reinforce the hypothesis that grandmothers fostered our evolutionary success. BY DAVID P. BARASH “Know thyself” is a terrific idea. [Continue reading →](   P.S. David W. Brown, the veteran space writer and author of The Mission, about NASA’s daring trip to Europa, got [a rare inside look]( at SpaceX’s Falcon 9 operations over the course of a few days in October, when the rocket company launched three missions in just 31 hours. Yet Elon Musk, the company’s founder, CEO, and chief engineer, has bigger feats planned for 2023, like sending into orbit the largest and most powerful launch vehicle ever made, Starship. Read about [its profound potential]( in Nautilus.   Today’s newsletter was written by Brian Gallagher   BECOME A SUBSCRIBER [The Most Awe-Inspiring Stories in Science]( [Nautilus]( is a different kind of science magazine. Science is brought to life through narrative storytelling, taking you into the depths of science to highlight today's most vital conversations. Enjoy the wonder and awe of science, distilled into captivating reads. [Subscribe to Nautilus Print + Digital]( today for only $89/year and save 50% annually. [Join Now](   [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( Copyright © 2022 NautilusNext, All rights reserved. You were subscribed to the newsletter from nautil.us. Our mailing address is: NautilusNext 360 W 36th Street, 7S, New York, NY 10018 Don't want to hear from us anymore? Click here to [unsubscribe](.