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The gut has been called our “second brain,” influencing everything from mood to metabolism. Now, scientists are asking whether it might also be shaping pain. In the case of a rare, debilitating condition marked by burning, hypersensitive limbs, researchers have identified an altered microbial signature that could help diagnose and explain the disease’s mysterious biology.

Elon Musk just joined the club of industrialists who build cities. Starbase, a brand-new municipality in Texas anchored by SpaceX’s rocket launches and Martian dreams, is the latest experiment in corporate governance dressed up as civic innovation. But is this techno-utopia a launchpad for the future or a reboot of a bygone and problematic past?

From the anti-vaccine movement and COVID denialism to the promotion of raw pet food, the wellness-industrial complex has repeatedly shown that its primary concern is profit — not health. The result is suffering and death of animals and humans that could have been prevented.

This week’s reading tour spans the fall of elites, the social glue of hobbies, corporations that have lost their way, and Taco Bell’s bold leap into nuggetdom. From crumbling trust in authority to overpriced pine and industrially processed poultry, it’s a buffet of modern times.

If you've been hopping between arms for booster shots, a new study suggests that your lymph nodes remember exactly where you first got jabbed and perform far better when you return to that same arm. It seems location does matter.

We expected miracles; what we got was a legal minefield. As GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic reshape bodies and bottom lines, a growing swarm of lawsuits threatens to upend the billion-dollar industry. Are patients being blindsided, or is this just the next chapter in America's pharmaceutical blame game?

Your vitamin C supplement isn’t organic or natural. It’s completely lab-made, using GM corn. But its chemical structure is undeniable the same as the real squeezed thing. And you can’t tell the difference.

Can science offer clear guidance when the ground beneath it is inherently unstable? This question lies at the heart of many modern policy debates, where data, algorithms, and statistical models promise objectivity while colliding with messy realities. As science increasingly steps into domains once dominated by moral judgment and democratic debate, we’re left to wonder whether statistical precision can truly define fairness — or merely reframe it.

RFK Jr. and his Make America Healthy Again movement are demonizing seed oils. The conversation about seed oils predates MAHA, but the resurgence is pulling even more people into the confusing, junk-science-addled conversation about whether seed oils are unhealthy. We need to learn to navigate this terrain because we will see these tactics over and over again as MAHA takes control of the narrative around healthcare. 

How stupid are chickens? Stupid enough that in 1954, a scientist put tiny prism goggles on freshly hatched chicks to see if they could still find lunch. Not even close. They spent their early lives blindly pecking at phantom food, not terribly different from today's Yankees hitters.

Real science doesn’t settle debates with a show of hands. It builds momentum across studies, disciplines, and data until the picture gets too clear to ignore. H. Holden Thorp, the editor of the journal Science, argues that’s not consensus; it’s convergence. It’s what we should be listening for if we can hear it over the static.

Three hundred fifty thousand of you are predicted to die every year from heart disease caused by exposure to plastics, a new Lancet study says. But you can rest easy: the headlines don't match the threat. You are unlikely to be in a bag, plastic, or otherwise, anytime soon. Here's why.

This week’s reading list is your passport to places you didn’t know mattered and policies you didn’t know would hit your wallet. From Trump-era pharma tariffs to copper that powers your phone, and a banned library lecture that shouldn't be controversial — this is your brain on curiosity.

Red 40, Yellow 5, and Blue 1 may soon be history. Not because science says they're dangerous, but because the court of public opinion has ruled against them. In a move fueled more by consumer fears than by conclusive evidence, the U.S. government has decided to scrub synthetic food dyes from our plates, ushering in a new era of regulatory caution that looks much more European.

While flu and measles are making the rounds and COVID is still lingering, the only thing spreading faster than viruses is confusion over who’s really at risk. It turns out we still are unable to craft smart, evidence-based public health policy when it comes to aging.

It is easy to promise readiness for the next disaster; it is much harder to maintain the political and public will to prepare. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed leadership failures and systemic design flaws that left us exposed. We built a pandemic response system optimized for appearances rather than effectiveness. A recent review moves past partisan narratives, offering a sharper, more unsettling diagnosis: our institutions failed because they were designed against our very human nature.

Nobody denies that science is plagued by an epidemic of fraudulent and politicized research, nor that it wastes billions of taxpayer dollars. But is the problem severe enough to justify completely eliminating public funding for scientific research? Let's take a look.

When Mark Hahn asked me about "poisoning mosquitoes with human blood," I couldn't resist chuckling. It kicked off a lively conversation covering everything from mosquito-borne diseases to an exciting new painkiller — all in a day's work dissecting science for a curious audience.

You’d probably be horrified if a stranger licked your face on the subway.
But if that stranger has four legs and a tail, suddenly it’s "adorable."
Spoiler: Your pooch's mouth isn’t clean — it’s a petri dish with a tongue.

While HHS Secretary Kennedy frets over food dye in Froot Loops, his 2023 attack on Gardasil — a vaccine proven to prevent deadly cancers — reveals a troubling willingness to distort life-saving science for political points. RFK Jr.'s bizarre blending of misinformation and misplaced outrage underscores the urgent need to separate fear from fact when public health is at stake.

Colorectal cancer, long associated with aging, is rising alarmingly in younger adults, especially those born in the 1980s. Investigators are looking past family history and lifestyle to mutational signatures, telltale scars etched deep into our DNA, pointing to possible early-life exposures that set cancer’s deadly wheels in motion long before symptoms appear.

"Sugar is addictive." It's a widespread, well-researched claim — and it's probably false. The assertion oversimplifies complex eating behaviors driven by an even more complicated cluster of influences. While sugar intake can stimulate reward pathways in the brain similar to drugs, it lacks several key characteristics of true addiction, leading to a less satisfying but more accurate conclusion: We've picked a convenient scapegoat instead of solving our real nutritional problems.

What starts as digital applause can quickly devolve into a chorus of chaos. In the Wild West of online connections, praise, poison, and pseudoscience often sit side by side, especially when the topic is science and the target is women.

We’re often told to “follow the science” — a comforting phrase that suggests clarity, objectivity, and consensus. But in today’s hyperpolarized world, even science itself has become a political Rorschach test. A new study in Science reveals that Democrats and Republicans cite science differently and effectively operate from separate scientific realities.

“Rapid unscheduled disassembly” — the corporate version of “oops,” made famous by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Whether it’s exploding rockets, free-riding empires, AI on fast-forward, or a measles bioweapon conspiracy, this week’s reads ask: is breaking stuff the new innovation strategy?