Viral Days
Movement and Stillness
Quarantine and sculpture in the First Cemetery of Athens
By A. E. Stallings | Monday, June 8, 2020
The Founder and the Epidemic
Dr. Benjamin Rush, who signed the Declaration of Independence, could not save Philadelphia from yellow fever
By Bruce Kilstein | Thursday, June 4, 2020
A Masterpiece Born of the Black Death
Boccaccio’s Decameron reminds us to live with gratitude
By Joseph Luzzi | Thursday, June 4, 2020
Sweating the Small Stuff
Designing more effective protection for firefighters and healthcare workers
By Rebecca McCarthy | Wednesday, June 3, 2020
Looking Back From the End of the World
What Thoreau can teach us about living life during—and after—the pandemic
By David Gessner | Tuesday, June 2, 2020
Inside the Burns Unit
How Scotland’s national poet brought solace at a time of pain and isolation
By Thomas Fox Averill | Thursday, March 31, 2022
Reading Thucydides in a Time of Pandemic
What the Athenian historian’s insights predict about the future of our own democracy
By W. Robert Connor | Saturday, February 5, 2022
Wave to Me
There’s one thing I won’t relinquish to a pandemic that’s claimed so much
By Megan Craig | Thursday, February 3, 2022
The Plague Year
The more things change, the more they stay the same
By David Guterson | Thursday, January 27, 2022
On Hugging
What we lose when we can’t get close to the ones we love
By Chloe Shaw | Saturday, January 15, 2022
The Pandemic Mood
Who created it and how it is maintained
By Philip Alcabes | Saturday, January 8, 2022
Mad Dogs and Transcendentalists
How the individualism of Emerson and Thoreau differs from today’s libertarianism
By Robert A. Gross | Saturday, November 20, 2021
Back to School
A return to reading as a private and a public act
By Seth Lerer | Saturday, October 23, 2021
Facing Death at the Ends of the Earth
The discovery of the world’s oldest rock offers a hefty dose of perspective