There Are No Good Options Left With Bird Flu

Of all the news about bird flu, this month has brought some of the most concerning yet. Six people working on a chicken farm in Colorado have tested positive for the virus—the biggest human outbreak detected in the U.S. The country’s tally is now up to 11 since 2022, but that’s almost certainly a significant ... Read More

Joe Biden Has COVID-19. How Much Is an 81-Year-Old at Risk?

Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration. Today, for the third time in two years, President Joe Biden tested positive for COVID-19, the White House said. The president was in Las Vegas—attempting to convince voters, donors, and his fellow lawmakers that he is still the candidate best poised to defeat former ... Read More

The Sad Future of Grocery Shopping

A well-stocked grocery store is a wondrous place. Among the gleaming pyramids of fruit, golden rows of bread, and freezers crammed with ice cream, time and space collapse. A perfectly ripe apple might have been picked a year ago; a cut of beef may have come from an Australian cow. Grocery stores defy seasons and ... Read More

What 129 Degrees Feels Like

A large digital thermometer sits at the entrance to the gleaming mid-century-modern visitor center in Furnace Creek, California. When I arrived on Sunday afternoon, it was thronged with people with their phones out, taking pictures. A mood of anticipation hummed through the crowd. A few hours east of us, in Las Vegas, temperatures would rise ... Read More

Neurocosmetics Are Skin Care Gone Wild

Updated at 10:14 a.m. on July 19, 2024. For just $65, the skin-care company Selfmade will sell you a kit that will purportedly help you feel more stable and confident in your relationships—and get better skin all the while. According to the kit’s marketing copy, it comes with a serum that enhances “safety and comfort ... Read More

Fighting to Breathe in Los Angeles County

J o Franco still remembers the moment she realized that her nose worked. Growing up in Wilmington, a Los Angeles neighborhood dotted with oil refineries and next to one of the largest port complexes in the country, she’d always assumed she had a fever, or allergies: “I could never breathe through my nose at all,” ... Read More

There Are Exceptionally Sharp Octogenarians. Biden Isn’t One.

Joe Biden’s problem isn’t his age. It’s his ability to function. America has known a number of exceptional octogenarians who have demonstrated the cognitive and physical stamina to serve in demanding leadership roles. In 1787, at age 81, Benjamin Franklin, who a few years earlier had negotiated a highly advantageous treaty to end the Revolutionary ... Read More

The Silence Doctors Are Keeping About Millennial Deaths

Several years ago, in my work as a palliative-care doctor, I cared for a man in his 60s who had been mostly healthy before he was diagnosed with stomach cancer. After three different treatments had failed him, his oncologist and I told him that a fourth treatment might buy him a few weeks at best. ... Read More

Joe Biden’s ‘Cognitive Fluctuations’

Last Thursday was not a good day for Joe Biden. During the president’s shaky and at times incoherent debate performance, he appeared weaker and frailer in real time than the American public had ever seen. Friday appears to have been a much better day. At a campaign rally in North Carolina, clips of which his ... Read More

Eat More Cheese – The Atlantic

Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration. This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. Times are tough for omnivores. By now, you’ve heard all the reasons to eat less meat: your health, the planet, the animals. All that might be true, ... Read More