Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration. The first person who taught me something about death and defiance was the mother of a family friend, an older woman who had moved from Punjab to the United States to be closer to her son. I remember her as delicate and draped always in pastel salwar kameezes. After she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which moved quickly to claim her bones and her brain, her desire to return to Punjab intensified. When my parents told me about the end of her life, it was with a mixture of…

Of the first three elements to appear after the Big Bang, only one is available to buy as a bath soak. The Sads Smashing Anti-Stress Bath Treatment, which comes in shiny silver packaging, lists lithium as an ingredient and promises to take users “from weighed down to mellowed out.” It’s one of dozens of over-the-counter lithium supplements that claim to support a healthy mood. The metal is also an ingredient in Novos Core, a supplement marketed to “target the 12 root causes of aging,” plus in Life Extension, XtendLife, LifeLink, Youngevity, and AgeImmune. The anti-aging entrepreneur Bryan Johnson’s “Essential” multivitamin…

Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration. Presidents always seem to have a crisis to deal with. George W. Bush had 9/11. Barack Obama had the Great Recession. Donald Trump had the coronavirus pandemic. Joe Biden had the war in the Middle East. For America’s next president, the crisis might be bird flu. The United States is in the middle of an unprecedented bout of bird flu, also known as H5N1. Since 2022, the virus has killed millions of birds and spread to mammals, including cows. Dairy farms are struggling to contain outbreaks. A few humans…

On a recent Sunday morning, I sat on a cushioned mat across from Sister True Vow, a Buddhist nun at Blue Cliff Monastery. I had traveled two hours north from Brooklyn to Pine Bush, New York, to seek her perspective on the human tendency to want. “Desire and craving mean forever running and grasping after something we don’t yet have,” Sister True Vow told me, making gentle but unwavering eye contact. There was something else I wanted to know about desire, though. So I asked what she thought of Ozempic. Before my visit to Blue Cliff, I had been thinking…

One Sunday earlier this month, Dave Portnoy ordered a pizza, plopped down on his couch to watch football, and lit a blunt. He was angry. The Barstool Sports founder, who is beloved by many right-leaning young men, was in his mansion in Massachusetts, where he could legally smoke weed “like a human,” as he said in a video posted on X. But he can’t do that at his home in Miami. “Freedom. It’s about freedom,” Portnoy said, encouraging viewers to vote yes on an amendment that would legalize recreational cannabis in Florida, before blowing smoke into the camera. If Florida…