Why quarantines don’t work (Wired)
by Adam Rogers
How do you quarantine a city of 11 million people? As China may be finding out as it tries to keep the coronavirus from escaping Wuhan, you probably can’t.

Invasion of the earthworms (The Atlantic)
by Julia Rosen
Jumping worms are viscerally disturbing, actually destructive to native plants and ecosystems, and spreading rapidly across North American forests.

Who wrecked Margaret Mead’s reputation? (Aeon)
by Sam Dresser
Anthropologist Margaret Mead’s popular writing on Samoa changed how Americans thought about other cultures, and their own. Then the media helped one scholar trash her work.

Taking our temperatures (Vox)
by Brian Resnick
It turns out 98.6 is not the “normal” temperature for a human body. In fact, there’s no such thing as a normal temperature. Body heat differs among people and changes over time—and, for the past two centuries, the average has been falling.

Why are we so lonely? (NPR)
by Elena Renken
Loneliness is an epidemic in the U.S. And, contrary to many assumptions, it’s young people, not retirees, who often suffer most.

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