The Colonoscopy as Tempo of Mortality
Five years. That allotment sounds like a breather, but in fact is not. The plastic jug of GaviLyte is the bell that tolls for me, and also perhaps for thee.
Science & Nature
Dreamworks: Manipulating Our Deepest Secrets
Fragmented sleep might not be restful, but I love it, because I can finally remember what I dreamt. The stories play like movies, colors saturated, plots full of twists. Some are spun from trivia; others are Hitchcockian, suspenseful and complex. Who writes these scripts? Who does that weird and…
The Culture of Animals, Why They Are Not Us, but Why We Need Them as Our Co-Creators of Reality
Language has allowed us to be bound together by codes of law; to move easily between past and present and future; to fathom the deepest mysteries of the universe. But while scholars were busy defending our species’ superiority, biologists were uncovering mysteries of animal communication that shot down one “special” human capacity after another.
Time to Turn Psychopathy Over to AI?
Something dark and sharp must live deep inside me, because when I read “There Are No Psychopaths,” I am disappointed.
Psychopaths explain so much. The twisted little smile that crosses someone’s face, quickly hidden, after they cause pain. The impulse, spreading fast these days, to watch the…
How Most of the World Communicates
When I asked for a curator at the Saint Louis Zoo who would educate me about animal communication, I was hoping for chatty, irreverent primates or soulful, wise elephants. Instead, I was sent to Dr. Ed Spevak, the zoo’s acclaimed curator of invertebrates.
Brilliant, fired with enthusiasm for…
Where Did I Put My Glasses?
It was all so amusing when it happened to other people. To old people. Such fun to say dryly, when one’s parent scrambled, frantic, to find their glasses, “They’re on your nose.”
But the other day, I was the one hunting for the glasses on my nose. Granted,…
Ritalin Works–But Not the Way We Thought
ADHD, sleep deprivation, amphetamines and the truth of why they work.
A Healthy Home Should Not Be a Luxury
Another fluffy news release about home interiors. I move to delete it—but the backstory catches me. An interior designer who had to tear apart her own home because her toddler was struggling to breathe? She wound up a certified expert in home wellness…
The Storms of St. Louis and the Shelter We Need for Them
Snow fell with the confidence of something that knew it would be felt. Streets emptied. Sound dulled. The city became a held breath between east and west, a place where movement slowed because it had to. There was nothing especially dramatic about this at first. Just cold. Just accumulation.
Coming to Our Senses
We live in a sensory desert in which rooms are deodorized, soundproofed, and painted in neutral colors. But “sensehacking" can transform experience.