“We’re trying to preserve it how he would have.” This story appears in the February 2025 issue of National Geographic magazine.

A battle over plastic—a material so prolific the UN calls the 90 percent of it that ends up as trash a pollution crisis—is under way in Florida. Coral Gables, a small city of 51,000 people ...

Extreme heat kills more people each year in the U.S. than any other kind of natural disaster. Globally, its impacts are enormous. During historic heat waves—like 1995 in Chicago, 2003 in Europe ...

Standardized tests. Interviews. Extracurricular activities. In the early 20th century, universities used these tactics to ensure their students were predominantly Protestant. Yale University ...

Scientists suspect many species are in decline—but there are still unanswered questions and a lot of hope. Here's when and where you can still spot them. Experts say a "concerning" number of ...

A frequent contributor to National Geographic in print and online, Elizabeth Royte covers consumption and waste, food, and agriculture. She’s the author of three books.

People have lived in dread of monsters since time immemorial. Who wouldn’t be terrified of flesh-eating beasts? Or bloodsucking night stalkers? Or zombies reanimated from the grave? This is the ...

In 1860, an illegal bet brought the last known captive Africans to U.S. shores aboard Clotilda. Their story is one of tragedy and resilience. Captive Africans are taken by boat to the slave ship ...

From mysterious colossal squid to the ferocious pram bug, these creatures are stranger than fiction. Found in the depths of the Pacific Ocean, the flower hat jellyfish (Olindias formosa) glides ...

Billionaire Elon Musk credited it for his dramatic weight loss. Celebrity sites allege that many more A-listers are using it to stay trim. And TikTok is full of influencers showing off their ...