A Buddhist practitioner recounts standing with interfaith clergy outside an LA detention center during ICE actions, speaking unprepared to riot-geared LAPD officers about the fear he sensed in them. He traces how the Eightfold Path, particularly Wise Speech and sila, helped him move past lifelong conditioning to stay silent and avoid conflict. The piece argues…
A Latina Buddhist practitioner reflects on the bodhisattva vow through the story of Chenrezig shattering at the world’s suffering. She argues that genuine practice should break us open in response to injustice like ICE raids, and warns against spiritual bypassing that hides behind concepts like equanimity and non-duality to justify inaction. Teaching: • Frame the…
A qualitative study of 16 stakeholders in Senegalese elite sport found that injury prevention and management rely heavily on individual initiative rather than structured systems, with coaches filling roles far beyond their remit—first aid, return-to-play decisions, emotional and even financial support. Cultural factors like pain normalization, traditional medicine use, and mental health stigma shape care-seeking,…
Todd Hargrove’s serialized chapter frames walking as the foundational bipedal movement humans evolved for, contrasting modern undermovement with ancestral norms of 5-10 miles daily. He outlines six theories for why bipedalism emerged (carrying, efficiency, thermoregulation, vision, threat display, postural feeding) and details the anatomical adaptations—longer legs, lumbar lordosis, arched feet, hip extension range—that made upright…
A Washingtonian reporter visits the opening day of Trump’s Great American State Fair on the National Mall and finds sparse crowds, broken rides, and bare-bones state booths after several states and musicians pulled out over the event’s political tilt. The promised nostalgic Americana feels hollow, with cramped tarp-draped tents, a Ferris wheel that breaks down,…
Stronger by Science argues that isometric training is often dismissed because of poor application (planks, wall sits) rather than inherent ineffectiveness. The piece reviews muscle action types—isotonic (concentric/eccentric), isometric, isokinetic—and previews evidence showing isometrics can build strength and hypertrophy, aid tendon rehab, and manage pain when programmed with adequate intensity, duration, and joint-angle specificity. Teaching:…
Researcher Julie Elie identified 11 core calls in zebra finch vocabulary and verified her classifications by testing whether the birds themselves categorized calls the same way—by meaning rather than sound. Her work, which combines machine learning with behavioral context, won the 2026 Coller-Dolittle Prize for advancing two-way interspecies communication. She emphasizes that decoding signals requires…
Researchers engineered bacteria-infecting phages to bind tumor-specific integrins and deliver malaria antigen instructions, redirecting vaccine-built immunity to attack cancer cells. In mice previously vaccinated against malaria, this approach eradicated tumors in 44% of cases with no recurrence at one year. The principle could extend to any pre-existing vaccine immunity, including flu or covid, and human…
Maria Popova’s Orion essay traces how fungi were long overlooked by Western taxonomy despite being the symbiotic substrate that brought plant life onto land. Weaving Lewis Carroll, Emily Dickinson, her mother’s foraging, and mycorrhizal science, she frames fungi as organisms of polar powers and underground interdependence that resist the human urge to sort life into…
Maria Popova explores Viktor Frankl’s rediscovered 1946 lectures, Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything, delivered eleven months after his liberation from Auschwitz. Frankl rejects both nihilistic pessimism and naive optimism, arguing that meaning is found through individual moral choice and ‘sober activism.’ He insists that what remains when everything is stripped away is the…