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    A Fungus That Turns Spiders Into Zombies Is a Discovery to Haunt Your Nightmares

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    A BBC documentary crew in Northern Ireland stumbled upon a fungus that hijacks spiders in an arachnid version of “The Last of Us.”An abandoned gunpowder storage shed pokes out from a small mound of earth in what’s now a nature preserve in Northern Ireland. It is the perfect place for a spider: semi-subterranean, cool and dark. But in 2021, a crew working on a BBC nature program found more than an average arachnid lurking there. They spotted a dead spider with a lacy white fungus erupting from its body.The fungus, scientists announced in a paper published last month in the journal Fungal Systematics and Evolution, is a newly discovered species that spreads its spore by hijacking a spider and turning the unlucky arachnid into a zombie. This evolutionary strategy has been made famous by the zombie ant fungus Ophiocordyceps, which inspired the video game and HBO show “The Last of Us.” This spider version is only distantly related to that fungus.Volunteers at the Castle Espie Wetland Centre near Belfast were assisting the BBC filmmakers when they noticed the infected spider. Pictures of the specimen made their way to Harry Evans, an emeritus fellow at CAB International, a nonprofit organization focusing on agricultural and environmental research. “I posited that it was an unknown or unusual species and requested the specimen once the filming had finished,” Dr. Evans, an author of the paper, said.When the BBC program aired, Tim Fogg, a cave explorer, reached out to Dr. Evans to say that he had observed a similar fungus in Irish caves. Each of the five infected spiders Mr. Fogg collected was engulfed by a tiny, tangled thicket of fungi.João Araújo, an author of the paper and a curator of mycology at the Denmark Natural History Museum, said he and his colleagues believe that when a spore lands on a spider, the fungus sprouts a root-like structure called a germ tube that drills into the arachnid’s exoskeleton. Once inside, the fungus buds and multiplies, Dr. Araújo said, “taking over basically almost the entire body of the spider.”Gibellula attenboroughii on orb-weaving spiders found in Irish caves, and a microscope view of the fungus. Tim Fogg; Evans et al., FUSE, 2025; Harry EvansWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      Uncovering Gay and Lesbian History in a 1941 ‘Sex Variants’ Study

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      The Civilians theater group has adapted a study of homosexuality into a work that explores the lives of lesbians and gay men in the early 20th century.In the 1930s, Jan Gay, a sex researcher and journalist, made the tough decision to publish material from hundreds of in-depth interviews she had done with fellow lesbians in a medical study written by a straight male psychiatrist.Though she had hoped her work might be used to curb the criminalization of homosexuality, the final study ended up further pathologizing “sexual deviance.” Yet Gay knew that without it, the interviews, which provide an intimate look at gay and lesbian life in the early 20th century, might never have been published at all.That history has inspired the Civilians theater company to create “Sex Variants of 1941: A Study of Homosexual Patterns,” which takes its name from the study. The show seeks to breathe Gay’s sense of humanity back into a problematic text through a blend of songs and scenes, many of them taken verbatim from the report. The piece, directed by Steve Cosson, will be performed at N.Y.U. Skirball through Nov. 24.Cosson conceived the work along with the visual artist Jessica Mitrani, and wrote the book with James La Bella. A cast of six performs the material as a sort of animated lecture, allowing for a kaleidoscopic look at the interviews as conducted, original music inspired by the lives of the subjects, and imagined stories dramatizing the creation of the study itself.“A good part of the contemporary conversation we’re having with this show is saying queer people need a history,” Cosson said in an interview. The study, he added, “became such a useful thing to make theater out of because they approached it as documenting these people’s lives, interviewing them and doing every scientific test that could be done at the time.”Jo Lampert and Robert Johanson in the show.Greg KesslerWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Richard Crawford, Leading Scholar of American Music, Dies at 89

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      American Music was a marginal subfield in the 1960s when he began his research as a student, and then as a faculty member, at the University of Michigan.Richard Crawford, a longtime professor of musicology at the University of Michigan who helped legitimize and popularize the study of American music, died on July 23 in Ann Arbor, Mich. He was 89.His wife, Penelope (Ball) Crawford, said the cause was congestive heart failure.“He was a pioneer who shaped the scope of American music research,” Mark Clague, a musicologist and professor at Michigan who studied with Mr. Crawford, said in an interview. “It wasn’t about celebrating an unchanging canon, but about opening up the magic of musical experience.”While studying at Michigan in the early 1960s, Mr. Crawford began examining a trove of papers that had been acquired by the school’s library concerning the 18th-century musician Andrew Law, who taught singing and compiled hymnals in Connecticut. The study of American music was a marginal subfield at the time; most scholars considered music history to be about the European classics. (The “American” part of the American Musicological Society, founded in 1934, referred to the nationality of its members, not their subject of inquiry.)Whereas Mr. Crawford’s adviser, H. Wiley Hitchcock — also a major force in American music studies — had traveled to Europe for his doctoral research on Baroque opera, Mr. Crawford preferred not to uproot his young family.So despite the potential career risk, he wrote his dissertation — and then a 1968 book — on Law, becoming one of the first scholars to dedicate his life’s work to music of the United States.His timing was fortuitous: Preparations for the 1976 U.S. bicentennial celebration spurred a new public interest in reviving early American music, and Mr. Crawford helped build its scholarly infrastructure. He was a founding member of the Sonneck Society, later renamed the Society for American Music; wrote the first biography of the Revolutionary-era composer William Billings, with David P. McKay in 1975; and, through painstaking bibliographic work, excavated large swaths of repertory from the beginnings of American sacred music.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      How Accurate Is the Science in ‘Twisters’?

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      Sean Waugh holds a laptop with green, red and yellow weather radar looping as his driver rumbles down an Oklahoma highway in their government-issued truck. The vehicle holds 50 gallons of fuel, so they can chase storms all day. A rectangular cage with metal mesh covers the truck in an attempt to protect the team from hail. Hanging off the front of the hail cage are weather instruments that look like the horn of a rhinoceros charging into a storm.The truck, called Probe One, points in one direction, and a companion, Probe Two, points in another. Tall grass flows like ocean waves, and the stop sign at a crossroads wobbles. The sky is dark gray with a hint of green. Lightning flashes on all sides.The radio cracks. “Probe One, you want us to go?”“Yes, go now,” says Dr. Waugh, a researcher with the National Severe Storms Laboratory.As they disappear into the mist, another storm chaser emerges: Reed Timmer, who has a large social media following, pulls in front in one of his tank-like trucks, called the Dominator.It’s just the scientist, the YouTube star and a lonely farmhouse.Sean Waugh’s job is to get close to storms. He’s lately become a Hollywood movie consultant in his spare time.Reto Sterchi for The New York TimesReto Sterchi for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 63 Shares169 Views

      in Music

      Why Do People Make Music?

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      Music baffled Charles Darwin. Mankind’s ability to produce and enjoy melodies, he wrote in 1874, “must be ranked amongst the most mysterious with which he is endowed.”All human societies made music, and yet, for Darwin, it seemed to offer no advantage to our survival. He speculated that music evolved as a way to win over potential mates. Our “half-human ancestors,” as he called them, “aroused each other’s ardent passions during their courtship and rivalry.”Other Victorian scientists were skeptical. William James brushed off Darwin’s idea, arguing that music is simply a byproduct of how our minds work — a “mere incidental peculiarity of the nervous system.”That debate continues to this day. Some researchers are developing new evolutionary explanations for music. Others maintain that music is a cultural invention, like writing, that did not need natural selection to come into existence.In recent years, scientists have investigated these ideas with big data. They have analyzed the acoustic properties of thousands of songs recorded in dozens of cultures. On Wednesday, a team of 75 researchers published a more personal investigation of music. For the study, all of the researchers sang songs from their own cultures.The team, which comprised musicologists, psychologists, linguists, evolutionary biologists and professional musicians, recorded songs in 55 languages, including Arabic, Balinese, Basque, Cherokee, Maori, Ukrainian and Yoruba. Across cultures, the researchers found, songs share certain features not found in speech, suggesting that Darwin might have been right: Despite its diversity today, music might have evolved in our distant ancestors. More

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      in Music

      Michael Cuscuna, Who Unearthed Hidden Jazz Gems, Dies at 75

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      Possibly the most prolific archival record producer in history, he was a founder of the Mosaic label, which became the gold standard of jazz reissues.Michael Cuscuna, who brought an artist’s level of devotion and a scientist’s attention to detail to the work of exhuming and producing archival jazz recordings — work that vastly expanded access to the buried treasures of American music’s past — died on Saturday at his home in Stamford, Conn. He was 75.The singer and songwriter Billy Vera, a friend of more than 60 years, said the cause was complications of esophageal cancer.Mr. Cuscuna may have been the most prolific archival record producer in history. Starting in an era when midcentury jazz experienced a resurgence of interest, his name showed up in the fine print on over 2,600 albums, most of them reissues, many of which included his painstaking liner notes.The Mosaic label, which he founded with the music-business veteran Charlie Lourie 41 years ago, has become the gold standard of archival jazz releases. Its first issue was an exhaustive boxed set of old material that Mr. Cuscuna had found in the vaults of the famed Blue Note label.Soon after that, he helped to revive Blue Note, which had been dormant for years. Working with Bruce Lundvall, who became Blue Note’s president in 1984, Mr. Cuscuna took charge of the label’s back catalog. He released unissued gold by John Coltrane, Art Blakey and numerous others, ultimately combing through the entire catalog and putting out virtually every lost track that seemed fit to be heard.Mr. Cuscuna in the 1970s with Bruce Lundvall, center, who was the president of CBS Records at the time, and the saxophonist Dexter Gordon. When Mr. Lundvall took over the venerable jazz label Blue Note, Mr. Cuscuna took charge of its back catalog.via Cuscuna familyWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Television

      Howie Schwab, ESPN Researcher and Trivia Star, Dies at 63

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      He stepped out of his behind-the-scenes role in 2004 when he was cast as the ultimate sports know-it-all on the game show “Stump the Schwab.”Howie Schwab, a sports nerd who parlayed his love of statistics into a long stint at ESPN that was most notable for his starring role as the ultimate trivia expert on the game show “Stump the Schwab,” died on Saturday in Aventura, Fla. He was 63.His death was announced on social media by his wife, Suzie Davie-Schwab. His mother, Dona (Bressner) Schwab, said he was in a hospital being treated for an infection when he died, apparently of a heart attack.Mr. Schwab had been at ESPN for 17 years in behind-the-scenes roles as a researcher and producer when he was tapped in 2004 to star in his own show.On “Stump the Schwab,” three challengers vied to outdo Mr. Schwab in answering questions posed by the host, Stuart Scott, in the opening rounds. In the final round — called the Schwab Showdown — the best of the three went head to head against him for a $25,000 grand prize. Mr. Schwab almost always won.In the episode that decided the 2005 season’s champion, Mr. Schwab entered the studio at the start of the show wearing a red boxing robe, with a woman on each arm; he then doffed the robe, revealing a Derek Jeter jersey, and shadowboxed.“I am ready to rumble,” he told Mr. Scott.Mr. Schwab did not look like a typical television star: He was overweight, wore glasses and sported a goatee.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Study Tracking Women’s Music Credits Has a Surprise: Good News

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      The Annenberg Inclusion Initiative’s latest report finds that women’s involvement in the biggest hits of 2023 was greatly improved over previous years.Each year since 2018, the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative has tracked the number of women credited on the music industry’s biggest hits, and the numbers have usually been dismal — year after year, female artists, songwriters and producers have been crowded out by men, sometimes by extraordinary margins.In their latest report, however, the study’s researchers found some good news. Women’s involvement in the biggest hits of 2023 was greatly improved from previous years, and in some measurements reached higher proportions than the researchers have found in more than a decade of data.For example, of last year’s most popular tracks — as defined by Billboard’s year-end Hot 100 singles chart — 35 percent of the credited performing artists were women. That is a higher number than U.S.C.’s researchers have found for any year going back to 2012, and only the second time (after 2022) that the number has been over 30 percent.And for the first time in the study’s research window, a majority of the year’s 100 most popular songs — 56 percent of them — had at least one female songwriter.Stacy L. Smith, an associate professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and the study’s lead author, was cautiously celebratory of the findings. While the latest numbers are up, she noted, women still represented an average of only about 23 percent of performer credits on all surveyed songs since 2012. (Some years that figure has been as low as 17 percent.)“For the second year in a row, the percentage of women artists on the popular charts has increased,” Dr. Smith said in a statement. “This is a notable milestone and worthy of celebration. However, it is still important to recognize that there is room to grow. Women filled less than one-quarter of artist roles across all 12 years examined, and these figures are still far from representing the 50 percent of women in the population and the music audience.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      in Movies

      Napoleon Didn’t Really Shoot Cannons at Egypt’s Pyramids

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      But scholars say that a trailer for Ridley Scott’s new film draws attention to the French emperor’s complex and lasting legacy on the study of Egypt’s cultural heritage.As Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” opens for Thanksgiving holiday viewing, scenes from the film’s trailers are making waves. That was especially true of a sensational depiction of French troops led by Joaquin Phoenix as the French emperor firing cannons at the pyramids of Giza.“I don’t know if he did that,” Mr. Scott told The Times of London. “But it was a fast way of saying he took Egypt.”There is no evidence that French invaders launched artillery at the pyramids, or that Napoleon’s troops shot the nose off the Sphinx, another piece of popular apocrypha (evidence suggests that the nose was chiseled off centuries before Napoleon’s time).“From what we know, Napoleon held the Sphinx and the pyramids in high esteem and used them as a means of urging his troops to greater glory,” said Salima Ikram, a professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo. “He definitely did not take pot shots at them.”While creative license is expected in Hollywood biopics, Mr. Scott’s cinematic choices prompted memes, discussion and lighthearted dunking, including riffs about Napoleon battling mummies.Some historians have criticized Mr. Scott, but many hope “Napoleon” will generate interest in the events that inspired the film. And while Napoleon didn’t literally hurl projectiles at the pyramids, his invasion of Egypt had a profound effect on Egyptian cultural heritage and how the world understands it today.“Ultimately, the campaign is a defeat — the French lose and get kicked out,” said Alexander Mikaberidze, a professor at Louisiana State University in Shreveport who specializes in Napoleonic history. But Napoleon’s invasion also resulted in a complex scientific and cultural legacy, he added: “the beginning of Egyptology, the beginning of this fascination with Egypt and the desire to explore Egyptian history and Egyptian culture.”The title page of the the multivolume publication Napoleon commissioned upon his return from Egypt.James Smith Noel Collection/Louisiana State University at ShreveportA drawing by Dominique Vivant, later Baron Denon, who accompanied Napoleon on the Egyptian campaign, of French scholars measuring the Sphinx.James Smith Noel Collection/Louisiana State University at ShreveportThe French campaign in Egypt from 1798 to 1801 was driven by Napoleon’s colonial ambitions and a desire to stymie British influence. But in addition to amassing an army of some 50,000 men, Napoleon made the unusual decision to invite more than 160 scholars — in fields like botany, geology, the humanities and others — to accompany the invasion.The scholars documented the cultural and natural landscapes of Egypt, which they eventually compiled into a seminal 1809 publication that contained detailed entries about the Giza pyramid complex. This is one reason historians know that Napoleon visited the pyramids, as shown in Mr. Scott’s film, though it is unlikely he regarded the structures as military targets.“There was a real interest on the part of the scholars and, I think by extension, a real interest by Napoleon to be able to understand these things that Europeans hadn’t really had unfettered access to since the classical period,” said Andrew Bednarski, a visiting scholar at the American University in Cairo who specializes in Egyptology and 19th-century history.In their effort to document Egypt’s vast archaeological heritage, the French scholars seized many important artifacts, including the Rosetta Stone, a rock inscribed with three languages that proved instrumental in deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. The stone and many other spoils ended up in British hands after the French hold on Egypt collapsed in 1801. By then, Napoleon had returned to France.Following the failed campaign, word of Egypt’s cultural wonders spread across Europe and powered a new wave of global Egyptomania. This insatiable appetite for Egyptian antiquities has resulted in centuries of exploration, excavation and exploitation of the region’s vast material culture. Since Napoleon’s invasion, countless artifacts have been removed from Egypt by prospectors and traders, many through clandestine and outright criminal channels.The Rosetta Stone, on view at the British Museum in London, was one of the spoils of Napoleon’s Egypt campaign.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesThe Nefertiti bust, found in Egypt by German archaeologists in 1912.Michael Sohn/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAs a result, many of Egypt’s greatest treasures, including the Rosetta Stone and the bust of Nefertiti, are in museums and private collections far from home. Egypt’s antiquities community has been working for years to repatriate as many artifacts as possible, with some success, while also developing new strategies to protect its cultural legacy within the nation’s borders.“There are more site management plans, an increase in museums and an upsurge in media coverage of antiquities, which is geared not only to attract tourists but also to fostering national pride and educating the general Egyptian public as to the significance of their heritage,” Dr. Ikram said.Egypt has also been confronting a resurgence of looting in recent years as a result of domestic instabilities. The Antiquities Coalition, a U.S.-based nonprofit, estimated that following the 2011 revolution, about $3 billion worth of relics had been illegally smuggled out of Egypt. The Institute of Egypt, a research center that Napoleon established in Cairo during his invasion, burned down in 2011 during the tumult of the Arab Spring. Erosive forces such as pollution and the effects of climate change, including extreme weather, pose another threat to Egypt’s monuments and artifacts.Napoleon’s ill-fated campaign ignited the modern demand for Egyptian antiquities that still rages today. Mr. Scott’s vision of Napoleon shooting cannons at the pyramids of Giza is just a continuation of this longstanding impulse to co-opt Egyptian symbols and market them to a new audience. Many experts have decried the inaccuracies in the film — prompting an expletive-laden response from Mr. Scott. But some see in “Napoleon” the opportunity to revisit the polarizing French emperor’s lasting effects on the world.“Anything that might spark people’s interest in the history of Egyptology, the effects of colonialism around the world, the Enlightenment — any of those things — I think is only positive,” Dr. Bednarski said. More