This 22-year-old engineer 3D prints dentures to give low-income Americans their smiles back
By Wayne Drash
Jun 22, 2026
Six photos: How a 22-year-old is restoring smiles with 3D printing
6 photos
Connor Gibson is a 22-year-old engineer at Remote Area Medical (RAM), a large nonprofit provider of free dental, vision and medical care to America’s most vulnerable population. He taught himself how to design dentures on his computer, then print them on 3D printers. Click to learn more. Remote Area Medical
At just 22, Connor Gibson is doing something he never dreamed possible: using his engineering skills to 3D print dentures for America’s most vulnerable people — and giving them back their sense of dignity in the process.
“Never, ever, in school did they say, ‘You can design something that could change someone’s life like a denture,’” Gibson told CNN. “It’s not something immediately on someone’s mind when they’re thinking, ‘Oh, I’m going into engineering.’”
Gibson is the dental technology manager at Remote Area Medical, also known as RAM, a large nonprofit organization based out of Rockford, Tennessee, that provides free dental, vision and medical care through volunteer-powered mobile clinics across the United States.
He first began as a volunteer at the nonprofit while attending a local community college. He was instantly inspired by the organization’s mission to help the nation’s poor and was determined to figure out a way to improve the speed at which dentures could be delivered.
The problem?
He knew nothing about dentistry or 3D printing.
“Honestly, if you told me three years ago, this is what I would be doing, I would have called you crazy,” he said.
‘Beyond blessed’
Gibson has since outfitted thousands of Americans with free dentures. He’s seen burly men with tattoos weep when they first look into a mirror to see their new smile. The same goes for elderly widows. He calls them “mirror moments.”
The reaction never gets old.
“That first delivery was really a huge eureka moment,” Gibson said. “Honestly, it humbled me.”
Gibson fits the 3D printed teeth into the gum component as part of the process of making a new set of dentures in the Mobile Digital Dental Lab for a Remote Area Medical (RAM) patient. Remote Area Medical / Eric Hutchinson
Reflecting on that first patient, he paused. “Something that I was able to have a hand in makes a grown man burst into tears,” Gibson said. “To see that raw, human emotion and just know that I played a change in this person’s life … it’s very humbling, and I’m beyond blessed.”
He added, “Since then, it’s all just like fireworks every weekend. That’s what we’re striving for — to get more and more of those mirror moments. It’s something you can’t truly describe unless you’re there.”
On weekends, when RAM’s pop-up clinics operate in full swing, he sleeps in what is known as the “mobile digital denture lab,” with its two 3D printers humming 24/7 until all patients are outfitted. Gibson recently set a personal record of 35 dentures printed in a weekend.
The only frustrating thing about the job, he said, is not being able to serve everyone. As word spreads about a RAM clinic, people line up by the hundreds — many times by the thousands — seeking help for everything from new glasses to dentures to medical care.
“You have people that are really down on their luck,” he said. “The reality is we’re all one slip or one fall away from needing two teeth in the front … just to be able to smile again.”
In the US, about 72 million adults, roughly 27% of the population, do not have dental insurance. These are the people RAM seeks to help. Even for those who have Medicare — the US federal health insurance program primarily for people 65 and older — in most cases it doesn’t cover dental services like routine cleanings, fillings or items like dentures and implants.
Carrying out Stan Brock’s legacy
Remote Area Medical has served over 1 million patients and provided nearly $240 million in care since its founding in 1985, thanks to the charity’s 230,000 volunteers.
It was founded by the late Stan Brock, the captivating British cowboy who co-starred in “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” television series in the 1960s and ’70s, before making it his life mission to provide free healthcare to underserved communities across the United States.
“There’s 50 million people out there that are not getting the care that they need. They simply can’t afford it, and we need to do something about it,” he said in the award-winning 2020 documentary “Medicine Man: The Stan Brock Story.”
RAM’s CEO Chris Hall first joined the charity in 2013. At the time, the organization held about 12 events a year. In 2026, RAM plans to host more than 90 “full-scale medical, dental, and vision clinics.”
“The goal for usis to make someone’s day better,” Hall told CNN.
Gibson, left, was a community college student when he first began volunteering for RAM and realized he could help the organization. Remote Area Medical
He said Gibson embodies everything about Brock and his legacy. “Connor never had the opportunity to meet Stan,” Hall said. “But if Stan was to meet Connor, I think Stan would see someone who truly has the ability to change the world, someone who has passion to help other people.”
The work of the organization was featured in April by CBS’s “60 Minutes,” including Gibson’s passion to outfit patients with dentures. In the weeks since the story aired, Hall said donations have poured in, along with countless volunteers wanting to help.
A manufacturer of 3D printers reached out, he said, about donating newer and better machines that will give RAM a fleet of three mobile dental units, instead of its current one lab.
That will allow RAM — and Gibson — to make over 100 dentures in a single weekend — tripling the number of “mirror moments.”
“That changes the patient’s life,” Hall said. “But truthfully, it changes that patient’s family. It changes the community around them. It gives them life again.”
‘I made it my mission’
It was the documentary on Brock that first inspired Gibson. He saw the film at a movie theater in 2023 with his father.
“That movie really opened my eyes when it comes to where our nation is right now,” he said.
A native of rural Seymour, Tennessee, Gibson had never heard of RAM — let alone that it was headquartered in his backyard. He immediately began volunteering, first escorting people to and from the various vision, dental and medical areas.
At the time, Gibson was an engineering student at Walter State Community College in Morristown, Tennessee, a town of more than 33,000 people — best known for the filming of the 1981 horror movie “The Evil Dead.”
Gibson self-taught himself about 3D printing. When a patient’s images are uploaded into a computer file, he can send them to the 3D printer to make dentures that fit each individual patient. Remote Area Medical
During his spare time, Gibson threw himself into learning as much as he could from RAM’s dental experts. They used the traditional method to make dentures, involving molding and casting and repeat patient visits. The whole process could take up to three months.
To Gibson, it seemed clunky, antiquated and completely inefficient.
“What’s funny is Connor came to us with no dental experience at all,” said Hall. “Connor self-taught himself the majority of the dental anatomy and the terms and vocabulary of the dental industry to take this project and move it forward.”
Gibson took the same approach with 3D printing. He had trained in computer-aided design (CAD), learning how to use software to make designs. He felt he was better suited to make architectural blueprints than dentures.
“I made it my mission and studied up like I was doing a test, studying up on videos and documents — anything I could find on how to make a denture using this specific software and how to 3D print it.”
He ultimately devised RAM’s Mobile Digital Denture Lab, allowing the organization to outfit patients the same weekend and shrinking denture delivery from three months to just a few hours and reducing costs in the process.
When he first came up with the idea, Gibson said he got turned away at 3D printing conventions whenever he approached vendors and asked if they might want to partner. At a dental convention in Las Vegas a couple years ago, Hall said Gibson was recognized as a “leading expert in the expansion of digital dentistry.”
Gibson grabs a newly printed set of teeth from the 3D printer in RAM’s mobile denture lab in preparation for assembling a set of dentures for a patient. Remote Area Medical / Eric Hutchinson
“We laughed about it about it afterwards because as we were walking back to our hotel room, he couldn’t even stop in the casino,” Hall said. “He wasn’t old enough to do that.”
Hall added, “He’s a truly wonderful person, and we’re honored to be in the same room.”
Bridging the gap
Not the type to give up, Gibson secured RAM’s first printers through grants.
Gibson isn’t the first person to 3D print dentures. However, he is credited with devising the first mobile denture lab in the United States, allowing easy access and care for those who need RAM’s help.
“Never did I have the chance to step back and realize until that moment of ‘whoa, this is the bigger picture of how I can utilize my engineering degree to be good for our nation and for my community,’” he said. “With the mobile denture lab, it lets us bridge that gap and meet patients where they are at.”
He hopes to get the new labs up and running by year’s end so he can give even more people their smiles back — after all, he repeated, “we’re all one slip or one fall away.”
The Rundown: Chevron and Microsoft just signed a 20-year deal to build a 2.67-gigawatt gas-powered data center in the Permian Basin in West Texas, which the Wall Street Journal says could become one of the largest data centers in the U.S.
The details:
Chevron’s subsidiary Energy Forge One signed a 20-year PPA with Microsoft for Project Kilby, a co-located gas power and data center complex in Texas.The 2K-acre Reeves County site will reportedly run on GE Vernova and Caterpillar turbines fed by Chevron’s Permian Basin gas.Chevron is partnering with Joulent on development, targeting FID by the end of 2026, first power in 2028, and $10B+ in tax revenue.The co-located design delivers power directly to Microsoft, limiting grid impact while giving Chevron cash flows decoupled from oil and gas price swings.
Why it matters: AI workloads are pushing tech giants to lock in decade-long energy supply deals, creating a new market for fossil fuel companies to plug directly into the data center buildout. Project Kilby marks Big Oil’s clearest bet yet that AI’s power hunger — not the energy transition — is the next growth frontier.
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Sometimes we like convenience stores for their charm as much as their actual convenience.
Now, a new one popping up in Hong Kong is hoping to endear customers and crank up the novelty factor by having the whole thing be run by a single humanoid robot. The South China Morning Postreports that it’ll be the first of its kind to open in the bustling city.
Plopped on the Hung Hom waterfront, the 24-hour pop-up — packaged in a portable “capsule” — will be managed by “Xiao Gai,” a humanoid built by the Beijing-based AI and robotics firm Galbot. At five feet and six inches tall, it will use its gangly six feet of arm span to stock shelves, pick out out items, and handle customer checkouts, according to Inside Retail.
The Hong Kong Investment Corporation, which is backing the project, is hailing it as a sign of how AI “is entering people’s everyday lives in more tangible ways.”
According to Galbot, the Xiao Gai bot can start friendly conversations and speak in multiple languages, selling everything from snacks to over-the-counter medicines. Galbot projects that the sheer novelty of the store will boost the area’s foot traffic by up to 40 percent, and plans to roll out another 100 robot-managed capsule stores in ten cities.
Amusing as the pop-up might be, it’s another sign of robots being deployed to take over actual roles in the workplace. In May, Japan Airlines announced it would start experimenting with robot baggage handlers at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, one of the busiest airports in the world.
There’s quite a bit of potential for this to go wrong, though perhaps that could boost the robot shop’s attraction as a pure curiosity. Viral footage earlier this year, for example, showed a restaurant robot suddenly go berserk, flinging tableware everywhere as employees struggled to get it under control.
One wonders how the robot will handle the business side of operations, too. An AI agent that was put in charge of running an entire coffee shop in Stockholm blew through most of its budget in barely a month, making blunders like ordering 3,000 latex gloves.
I’m a tech and science correspondent for Futurism, where I’m particularly interested in astrophysics, the business and ethics of artificial intelligence and automation, and the environment.
Benito Mussolini stepped out onto the Piazza del Campidoglio at 10:58 in the morning of April 7, 1926. He had just delivered a speech prepared for him by his lover, the Jewish writer Margherita Sarfatti.
The speech had been a success, and Mussolini left satisfied, making his way through the cheering crowd.
Suddenly, a woman approached within a few meters of the Duce. She was holding a Lebel, a deadly revolver issued to the French army during the first world war. She pointed it at the dictator and fired.
Mussolini shortly after the assassination attempt which grazed his nose. wikimedia
Mussolini was grazed on the nose by the bullet. The next day’s newspapers reported that he was saved by a sudden shift of his head while giving the Roman salute. The woman attempted a second shot, but the gun failed to fire.
Blocked and beaten by the crowd, the woman was immediately arrested and taken to the Mantellate prison (a Roman female prison), where she gave her personal details. She claimed not to remember the attack and appeared surprisingly calm and indifferent.
The woman in question was Violet Albina Gibson, the daughter of the 1st Baron Ashbourne Edward Gibson. The Baron was the Lord Chancellor of Ireland for almost 20 years (1885-1905), before its independence from Great Britain. Gibson was born in Dublin on August 31, 1876, into a pro-British Anglican family.
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After the assassination attempt, Gibson was branded insane. The political motive behind the attack was hushed up to reduce the embarrassment of both British and Italian governments.
Only by downgrading the attack to the senseless behaviour of a madwoman – judicially certified by a court – could it have been possible, as indeed happened, to proceed with Gibson’s repatriation, as all parties hoped.
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This version of history was believed for decades. It was only in 2014 that Gibson’s story was brought to a wider audience by the documentary, Violet Gibson, The Irish Woman Who Shot Mussolini, based on the work of historian Frances Stonor Saunders. Finally, in 2021, Dublin Council honoured her stand against tyranny with a plaque outside her childhood home.
Now, new evidence buried in a number of Italian archives, uncovered by one of us (Giovanni), further substantiates Gibson’s clear anti-fascist political motives and reveals how the attack was carefully planned. It shows how:
When Gibson moved to Rome, she lived next door to the Duke of Cesarò, an opposition leader, prominent anti-fascist and a man she would later claim was her lover.
Gibson’s acquaintance with the Duke was further corroborated by a new analysis of her psychiatric report.
Gibson moved to Italy after the murder of Giacomo Matteotti, the socialist leader kidnapped and killed by a fascist squad.
Gibson travelled to the small town where the trial of Matteotti’s murderers took place.
Evidence from several key witnesses was ignored or twisted.
Who was Violet Gibson?
At the age of 18, Gibson was a debutante in the court of Queen Victoria. Debutantes were young, upper-class women who were presented to the monarch to mark their official entry into high society and the marriage market.
Gibson was photographed standing next to the future King George V in 1897 during a visit to the Ashbourne family in Howth Castle, when he was Duke of York.
In conflict with her family, Gibson converted to Catholicism at the outbreak of the first world war and Scotland Yard registered her “anti-British pacifism”. Over the years, she would develop a Christian-socialist attitude that saw her sympathise with the poor.
She also had strong ties to Italy, a country she had visited frequently and for long periods as a young woman. Partly because of her father’s interest in Italian reunification, on which he had written extensively, she had always followed Italian politics with passion and apprehension as the country was falling towards right-wing extremism.
She was extremely worried about the rise of fascism, starting at least from the 1923 assassination by a fascist squad of the priest Don Giovanni Minzoni.
Then, according to her family, in August 1924 she reacted furiously to one of the first BBC news broadcasts reporting the discovery of the body of socialist leader Matteotti.
The suspicions of Mussolini’s involvement in plotting his murder ushered in a long period of crisis that the Duce only managed to overcome in January 1925. It accelerated his authoritarian drift toward dictatorial power, with support he had won from King Victor Emmanuel III.
British reaction to Gibson’s arrest
There were violent reactions from the fascist movement following Gibson’s attempt. The fascists were by then a powerful force in the country and were calling for revenge against those who had dared to plot against the head of government.
George V’s embassy in Italy issued a statement the day after the assassination attempt. It said the embassy was unaware of Gibson’s presence in Rome, believing that she was interned in a nursing home in England. King George V himself, perhaps embarrassed by that old photo of himself, immediately condemned “the ignoble attack”.
British Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain also expressed “horror” at the act committed by a woman belonging to the British aristocracy in a telegram to Mussolini.
We have also reviewed correspondence, stored in the UK’s National Archives, sent from Chamberlain in the aftermath of the attempt. In these messages he instructed Ambassador to Italy Sir Ronald Graham to help Italian investigators. The ambassador told Chamberlain he had “little doubt” that Gibson was “a tool of outside influence”. Nevertheless, Chamberlain instructed him to suggest she was mad and she should be in a mental institution in England. He said this would minimise repercussions on the hitherto good international relations between the two countries, reporting also that Churchill was “charmed by Mussolini”.
Almost in unison, Gibson’s family members also denied that there could be any political significance to her actions. They promised, if released, she would be properly cared for in a health facility in England.
Investigations
During the initial interrogations with the magistrate (which took place under the liberal penal code of Zanardelli) in four separate interviews in April, May and June 1926, Gibson continued to state, somewhat vaguely and confusingly, that she did not remember trying to shoot Mussolini.
Then, in mid-June, the defendant’s attitude suddenly changed.
On June 12 and 16, under the guidance of lawyer Enrico Ferri and assisted by Bruno Cassinelli, she confessed to being responsible for the attack and claimed she had an accomplice – the prominent anti-fascist politician, Duke Antonio Colonna, Duke of Cesarò (1878-1940).
She also claimed she was insane. This seemed to be enough to quell rumours of a conspiracy. It was all the work of a mad woman, acting alone.
But a question loomed: what was Gibson doing in Italy in the first place?
New evidence
Our fresh critical analysis of the trial documents shows that Gibson arrived in Italy with her lady-in-waiting Mary McGrath in October 1924 and lived in Rome at Via Gregoriana. This was just a few steps away from the Duke of Cesarò’s house in Via Gregoriana. But when she talked about her movements across Rome in subsequent interviews, she never mentioned this address.
This, together with the Duke’s admission of having met Gibson in 1912 in Munich at a conference of the Theosophical Society, suggests that – despite the Duke’s denials – he and Gibson had met in Rome prior to the attempted murder.
Furthermore, it is important to stress that Gibson’s companion in Italy, Mary McGrath, distanced herself from the prevailing family attitude that attributed Gibson’s mental infirmity as the cause of the attack.
Our archival research clearly shows that, when summoned by the Italian Consul in Dublin on May 19, McGrath maintained that she did not believe her mistress was insane, and even added that she suspected she used to meet many people every day during her stay in Rome.
However, from the defendant’s somewhat extravagant and in our view quite intentional judicial behaviour (claiming to be both mad and responsible for the crime), an altered mental state emerged during interrogations that was used to suggest the existence of a cognitive bias.
By declaring herself insane, she denied full responsibility for the criminal act. Further doubts also arose from the fact that she told the experts she loved the Duke of Cesarò, yet continued to denounce him as an accomplice.
Under the liberal penal code in force at the time, admitting responsibility for the attack while simultaneously declaring herself insane (and therefore irresponsible for the act) forced the magistrate to order a psychiatric evaluation.
From the testimonies gathered during the police investigations and checks conducted by the experienced police commissioner, Epifanio Pennetta, other important aspects emerged.
Although they were willingly denied by Gibson, these findings confirmed instead the defendant’s clear premeditation of the attack, carried out with anti-fascist motivations.
Contrary to this perspective, erasures and misrepresentations would instead emerge, which can only be explained, historically, as prejudicially influenced by the Mussolini regime.
These aspects were not accepted as significant evidence in the Special Military Tribunal – which took over the case – and were not subsequently examined by historians, with the exception of some references in the book by American historian Richard O. Collin, who was the first to shed some light into the Gibson affair in 1986.
Attending Matteotti’s trial
A critical piece of evidence which was ignored by investigators at the time was the fact that several witnesses testified to having seen Gibson attend the trial against Giacomo Matteotti’s assassins in Chieti between March 16 and 24, 1926.
These testimonies are highly significant: only devout anti-fascists travelled to the small mountain town where the regime had moved the highly sensitive trial.
Travelling to Chieti was neither easy nor straightforward at the time – even now it takes three hours by coaches which didn’t exist at the time. It required a very serious commitment.
In contrast to these witness testimonies, Gibson would categorically deny having attended the trial.
The body of socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti is discovered on the outskirts of Rome on August 16 1924, two months after his disappearance. Archivio GBB/Alamy
Surprisingly, she was believed by the military magistrates despite their own affirmation in the ruling that her past, present and future statements should be prejudicially deemed false and unreliable.
Upon her return to Rome from Chieti, likely disappointed by the outcome of the legal proceedings, which had resulted in only light convictions for Matteotti’s assassins, Gibson would demonstrate her desire to implement a plan she had perhaps already conceived for some time. A plan that was kept secret.
Then, on March 28, 1926, witnesses interviewed during the preliminary investigation reported her presence at Villa Glori – at the anniversary of the founding of the Fascist Party, attended by Mussolini.
Gibson also denied being at this event and was, again, believed by the magistrates.
It’s important to highlight that this episode occurred a few days after the end of the Matteotti’s murderer trial and shortly before the events of April 7.
These testimonies, which the military judges did not credit, lead us to suspect that Gibson may have already been contemplating an attack on Mussolini on this occasion – suggesting clear premeditation and consistent anti-fascist motivation.
The psychiatric report and a lover
On July 8, 1926, psychiatrists were appointed. Sante De Sanctis and Augusto Giannelli were the family’s expert witness and the court-appointed expert witness, respectively. The experts were asked whether, “Miss Gibson was rationally aware and free of will at the time of the accused act”; if the accused was suffering from mental insanity, and “how the statements recently made to the investigating magistrate should be considered”.
This came as a surprise to the experts who tried unsuccessfully to highlight the paradox she was falling into by declaring that she loved a man who she ended up damaging by her accusations.
In August, the mental health experts’ unanimous verdict was that the defendant was partially insane and therefore could not be responsible for her crime.
The spy and the Special Military Tribunal
Meanwhile, Mussolini was pushing forward his authoritarian agenda. In Autumn 1926 there had been two more attempts on his life from the young anarchists Gino Lucetti and Anteo Zamboni (both of whom missed their target).
The government took advantage of the situation by pressing on with its “hyper-fascist laws” which dissolved all political parties, ended Parliamentary democracy and introduced a Special Military Tribunal for crimes against the regime. Crucially, the new tribunal could inflict the death penalty, which was reintroduced 37 years after its abolition.
It is worth noting at this stage that, according to Italian historian Mauro Canali, one of Gibson’s lawyers, Bruno Cassinelli, was also an informant for Mussolini’s government, with the codename Brucassi.
He had already defended Giovanni Corvi, a communist that had killed the fascist MP Armando Casalini in September 1924 (shouting “Vendetta per Matteotti”), and who was also judged mentally insane.
It is easy to imagine that Gibson’s judicial strategy (defended by the same lawyer) was also aimed at obtaining the same declaration of insanity from the military judges. And unlike the original judges, the military judges were influenced by Mussolini who at that point was keen on maintaining good relations with the British government.
The first ruling of the newly operational Special Military Tribunal, was with the Gibson case.
The case was dealt with in a private hearing and a verdict was reached on May 6, 1927. The first point reiterated extensively by the military judges was that nothing but lies could be expected from Gibson.
It was therefore essential to prevent these scandalous lies from being uttered in a public hearing. The ruling therefore established that both her past and present statements and those that could have been made in a public hearing were to be prejudicially deemed false and unreliable.
The final decision on Gibson’s mental infirmity was taken, uniquely, by military judges, who based it on “legal-ethical” reasons.
The verdict
On this basis, the Special Military Tribunal, having ignored all politically relevant aspects of the previous investigation, on May 6, 1927, independently ruled that there was “no case to answer against Violetta Albina Gibson, regarding the crimes she was charged with, because she is not punishable by reason of mental illness”.
The verdict, which explicitly mentioned “the intervention of his excellency Benito Mussolini”, ordered her release in order for Gibson to be admitted to a mental asylum for treatment.
Yet, the police authorities, rather than delivering her to a Roman psychiatric hospital, as had happened in similar cases, released her, once again, on Mussolini’s orders.
Return to England
The regime handed Gibson over to her sister, Constance, On May 9, 1927, in a breach of the usual procedure. Three days later, the sister accompanied Gibson back to England on a long train journey. With them, undercover Italian police, one Italian nurse, three English nurses and a travel agency attendant. None of them were dressed in their usual uniforms and Gibson did not know what was about to happen to her.
Some family members and political figures expressed gratitude to Mussolini for freeing one of their compatriots who had “senselessly” attempted to kill him. In compliance with the ruling of the Special Military Tribunal in Italy, which had erased the political motivation and judicially certified the defendant’s insanity, a further psychiatric diagnosis was ordered to confirm her mental illness.
The “senseless” motivation for the attack was quickly confirmed with a certification of insanity rushed through by Maurice Craig and Bernard Hart, two doctors in Harley Street. Gibson was admitted to St Andrew’s Hospital in Northampton (a town around 60 miles north of London) where she would remain segregated for almost 30 years.
In April 1930, on the fourth anniversary of her assassination attempt, she tried to take her own life, but a nurse found her before she could. Only her sister Constance kept visiting in the hospital, while the rest of the family kept their distance.
Throughout her time at St Andrew’s Hospital, she repeatedly pleaded for her liberation in letters to her family, to the Queen and to members of the government, including Winston Churchill.
When the young Princess Elizabeth married Prince Philip, in 1947, Gibson wrote her a clear, kind and simple letter which read:
In the happiest period of your life, I make this request that you write to the Home Secretary saying that you would be glad if he would release me from this mental hospital so that I can go into a convent…In 1926, I shot at Mussolini and was shut up in this hospital for the course of His Majesty’s pleasure. I am feel quite sure that your kind-hearted grandfather would not take any pleasure in keeping me here any longer, twenty weary years and six months. I am now old, bed-ridden with very bad heart disease and other illnesses…You will not need to fear that I will ever shoot anyone again as I am old and ill and occupied in very quiet matters, especially prayers. So if you get me my freedom, I am sure that such a kind act will bring a blessing on your marriage…
As with most of the other letters, it was never sent and they lie in St Andrew’s Hospital archive.
Epilogue
Antonio Colonna, the Duke of Cesarò – the man Gibson professed to love – was forced to retire from politics after her arrest and the investigation over his role. He died in Rome, aged 62, in 1940 just a few months after fascist Italy had declared war on Great Britain.
Italian partisans eventually killed Mussolini on April 28, 1945. It is not known how Gibson received either piece of news.
A commemorative plaque was unveiled for Violet Gibson at her childhood home on Merrion Square, Dublin, in 2022. PA/Alamy
The collective memory of Gibson was for a long time shaped by the narrow conception of mental health in the early 20th century, the diagnostic conclusions of Italian and British psychiatrists and the international agreement between governments that had her confined in a mental institution.
Gibson died in St Andrew’s Hospital, on May 2, 1956, a few months before her 80th birthday. No friends or family attended her funeral.
In her will, she requested a requiem mass and to be buried in a Catholic cemetery – this final wish was ignored by her family.
Gibson came closer than anyone to killing Mussolini. Her attempt was well planned and executed. Had she succeeded, the history of the 20th century would have been very different.
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Andrea Pisauro is a member of the Matteotti Committee London, set up by the London branches of Associazione Nazionale Partigiani d’Italia, INCA CGIL advice bureau, Partito Democratico and the cultural association Manifesto di Londra to honour the memory of Matteotti in London, his role in the fight for democracy and international antifascist legacy. He has also received funding from the Fondazione Giacomo Matteotti to study the LSE documents over the trial of Matteotti’s murderers
Giovanni Pietro Lombardo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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Remote workers, particularly those living alone, are passing more days with zero human contact.Ievgen Chabanov/Adobe Stock
A new study finds increased isolation and distress in remote-friendly occupations
Jun 18, 2026 / Read time: 6 minutes
Clea Simon
Harvard Correspondent
Key takeaways
Rates of remote work quadrupled in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now researchers have uncovered a sharp rise in mental distress over the same period for workers in remote-friendly roles.
The impacts, driven by rising isolation, were concentrated among those who live alone. According to Harvard economist Amanda Pallais, analyses of American Time Use Survey data reveal “this huge increase in the number of days that people are spending with no human contact whatsoever.”
The rise of remote work, Pallais concludes, explains about one-third of the generalized increase in isolation and mental distress over the past 15 years.
Workers have long struggled with striking the right work-life balance for optimal physical and mental health. In recent years, remote work was held up as a powerful remedy for this challenge.
In a new paper for Science, economist Amanda Pallais examines an overlooked cost of this arrangement: When people stop working alongside others, their mental health suffers.
Pallais, Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics, began studying remote work in 2015. Her initial questions on the subject revolved around flexibility.
“We found that workers valued the ability to work remotely more than other forms of workplace flexibility,” she said. “It has large benefits. You may be saving 50 minutes on a commute. You don’t have to get dressed.”
The drawbacks took Pallais longer to unearth. In research that continued after the 2020–21 pandemic — a period over which remote work quadrupled in the United States — she found increasing evidence that this new way of working came with a steep toll on mental health, driven by rising isolation.
Pallais’ new study draws on five nationally representative surveys, with a sample size topping 580,000 respondents. To ensure the effects captured stemmed from remote work itself, rather than the upheaval of COVID, Pallais and her co-authors set aside the peak pandemic years of 2020 and 2021. Instead, they compared the years before the pandemic to the more settled period that came after.
When people don’t go to the office, they spend more time alone during the workday and they are less likely to go out for drinks or dinner afterwards.
Amanda PallaisRobert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics
To avoid reverse causality concerns — whereby workers with mental health problems were more likely to request remote work — U.S. workers in occupations that could be performed remotely, like software engineering and marketing, were compared to workers in jobs that could not, like mechanical engineering and nursing.
Results showed remote work rising far more for workers in jobs that could be done remotely. By 2024, these employees were spending about 30 percent of workdays fully remote.
Also documented was what the co-authors characterize as a “precipitous” rise in mental health problems for workers in remote-friendly roles. The pattern held across various measures of mental distress, including a widely used screening tool called the K-6 Generalized Psychological Distress Scale and the self-reported prevalence of seeing a mental health professional or taking medication for depression or anxiety.
The negative effects were concentrated among people living alone. The American Time Use Survey, collected continuously by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, allowed Pallais and her colleagues to compile self-reported data on hours spent in the company of others, both during the workday and after hours. They found the lack of interactions adding up over the periods they studied.
“Particularly for people living alone, we saw this huge increase in the number of days that people are spending with no human contact whatsoever,” Pallais said. “When people don’t go to the office, they spend more time alone during the workday and they are less likely to go out for drinks or dinner afterwards.”
A large body of literature correlates this type of isolation with negative health outcomes. Indeed, some studies equate the dangers of isolation with smoking or unchecked high blood pressure. The rise of remote work, Pallais’ paper concludes, explains about one-third of the generalized increase in isolation and mental distress found between 2011 and 2019 as well as the post-COVID period of 2022 to 2024.
In a related paper, now forthcoming at the peer-reviewed Quarterly Journal of Economics, Pallais and colleagues show remote work also contributing to joblessness for young workers, potentially responsible for “about two-thirds of the increase in young college graduates’ unemployment since the pandemic,” Pallais said.
“Remote work has obvious benefits that people really value,” the economist said, including benefits for people unable to work in conventional office settings.
However, the downside is that it “worsens mental health, particularly for people who live alone,” as well as depriving young workers of valuable networking.
Ultimately, Pallais said, “the benefits may be more obvious than some of the costs.”
The Rundown: In this guide, you will learn how to share ideas faster with Typeless. Using dictation + AI, you will identify, research, and summarize a topic without touching your keyboard.
Step-by-step:
Download Typeless and complete the tutorial. Make sure the keyboard shortcuts don’t conflict with other appsPress Ask Anything to research: “What are some recent trends in consumer AI use cases that I could use to draft an interesting tweet? Pick one clear idea”Open a useful article, select the relevant text, and tell Typeless to summarize it or rewrite it into your preferred format, such as an X thread or emailUse Ask Anything to open X, Gmail, or Docs, then dictate your draft naturally while Typeless cleans it up and turns rough speech into polished content
Pro tip: If you make a mistake while dictating, correct yourself naturally. Typeless’s AI will understand and only write your final, corrected idea.
Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown
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