National Geographic Magazine - UK May 2020

One of the greatest singers of her time and a crusader for civil rights, Aretha Franklin is the focus of the third season of National Geographic’s biographical series Genius. This first authorized scripted series about Franklin, with Tony Award winner Cynthia Erivo (above) in the title role, will trace Franklin’s life from her childhood singing gospel music to her coronation as a music legend. Check local listings for Genius: Aretha airtimes on National Geographic. BOOKS Savor experts’ picks for the best of Italy More than 350 National Geographic photos bring Frances Mayes’s travel hints to life in the lush guide Always Italy. Available wherever books are sold. TELEVISION More meals with Gordon Ramsay The second season of Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted follows the renowned chef as he journeys off the beaten…

“AS GUS AGES into adulthood, the list of his challenges that worry me grows longer,” Judith Newman writes of her autistic 18-year-old son. “But the two questions that keep me up at night are: Will he find love, and will he find work that means something to him and allows him to at least partially support himself?” Love and work. Sigmund Freud considered them the cornerstones of our humanity, and they’re the ways most of us come to define our adult lives. Yet as Newman writes in this issue, finding love and work are huge challenges for people with autism spectrum disorder. Some eight in 10 are thought to be under- or unemployed—and about the same number indicate that they’d like a romantic partner. Many don’t have one. Because the…

It’s easy to take the quality coffee we’ve become accustomed to for granted. The truth is, the intricacies of getting a refined, single origin grind to cup sustainably is a complex process. It’s one that goes beyond simply paying a fair price for coffee, to finding ways of overcoming cultural, political, or economic complications within the regions that grow it. Since the formation of its AAA Sustainable Quality ProgramTM in 2003, Nespresso has worked with farmers who grow some of the world’s most unique coffee, but may struggle to maintain quality, keep up with demand, or even continue growing long term. Since 2017, Reviving Origins—a sub-program of AAA—has been deployed in regions where coffee production was declining, such as Caquetá in Colombia, Zimbabwe, and Uganda. Working with forestry experts, governments,…

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC LOOKING AT LIFE FROM EVERY POSSIBLE ANGLE VOL. 237 NO. 5…

IN 1990 NASA and the European Space Agency launched a telescope designed to peer deep into the universe. Above Earth’s atmosphere, the satellite would see without distortions from air, light, and pollution. Scientists said it would last, at best, for a decade. Thirty years later, Hubble continues to fascinate. Its famous images have helped astronomers answer some of space’s biggest questions, from How old is the universe? (13.8 billion years old) to Do black holes actually exist? (yes, with frightening ferocity). In 1995 astronomer Bob Williams had a zany idea: What if NASA pointed Hubble at a seeming dark spot in the sky? That yielded the magical discovery that even where the human eye sees nothing, thousands of galaxies exist. “One of Hubble’s lasting achievements will be how it showed…

ILLUMINATING THE MYSTERIES—AND WONDERS—ALL AROUND US EVERY DAY NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC VOL. 237 NO. 5 AT THIS MOMENT, hundreds or thousands of tiny eight-legged animals are nestled deep in the pores of our faces—my face, your face, your best friend’s face, and pretty much every other face you know or love. In some sense, they’re our closest companions. These animals are mites—tiny arachnids, related to spiders and ticks. They’re too small to see with the naked eye, and too small to feel as they move about. Not that they move much: Face mites are the ultimate hermits, likely living most of their lives head down inside a single pore. In fact, their bodies are shaped like the inside of a pore, evolution having long ago reduced them to narrow plugs topped…