Both our kids are back at college. Between semester breaks and weekend visits, empty nesting continues in fits and starts. This week, the weather, our calendars, and a childless house aligned for our first real empty-nest flex: we last-minute rebooked a trip to avoid the snow. So this week's flex was really an ironic flexodus - a successful run to Denver to avoid winter weather. But now I'm writing in a hotel lobby and missing my espresso machine. One follow-up - Last week's opening (Sephora is in my future?) generated an unexpected flood of makeup recommendations. Now I need to figure out what:
makeup the makeup artist used in this picture.
(Her artistic talents were very much put to the test.) Note: The next newsletter will likely be on 2-8-26. I am travelling next weekend.
AI-supported analysis:
https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/90115e77-705a-4dc7-9f73-34c457dca5aa
National Geographic reviewed the health benefits of reading. They cited Yale research indicating that reading extends life (by an average of 23 months!) and protects against cognitive decline. The study tracked 3600 adults for more than a decade, controlling for education, income, and baseline health. The proposed mechanism is via stress reduction, similar to meditation. Both physical books and audiobooks engage the same brain pathways, and just 10-30 minutes daily is enough to see benefits, making this one of the most accessible longevity interventions available. There is no indication whether working out (with a mix of activities) is synergistic with reading (see above). Article:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/health/article/reading-longevity-brain-health
AI-supported Analysis:
https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/264ec0bc-a2a6-49f1-bd91-5c56ab56f72e
The data from this study are not statistically significant, but interesting nonetheless. Scientists trained people to increase activity in their brain's reward center using real-time MRI feedback, then gave everyone a hepatitis B vaccine to see if "thinking positively" could boost immune response. Participants who learned to use mental strategies focused on positive expectations showed greater activity in one brain region (the VTA) and stronger antibody responses to the vaccine. The findings suggest "positive thoughts" could influence how well one's immune system responds to vaccination and offer a potential scientific basis for the power of positive thinking and the placebo effect. Article:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-025-04140-5
AI-Supported Analysis:
https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/8a11981f-41e8-493c-b97c-4054f2036078
AI-Supported Summary:
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/scroll-through-this-article-yo-fRkfw5YuR5.Dd40Hx3jKUw#0
The All-In Podcast interviewed Dr. Oz last week. Despite being a bit of a love-fest, the podcast is a fantastic example of how difficult it is to have a clear, data-driven conversation about healthcare. The hosts and Dr. Oz highlight many of the US healthcare system's common and real problems: rural and economic access issues, unsustainable costs, workforce shortages, and fraud, waste, and abuse. Their solutions are overly simple and highly dependent on technology - wide-scale data sharing (which falsely assumes a minimum of data quality), AI-supported care (which depends on high-quality data and the patient's ability to contextualize their symptoms), and specific medications (like GLP-1s). The frustrating part is that none of their suggestions are bad ideas. However, shaping human behavior is messy and inconsistent, healthcare systems (especially for the chronically ill) are Byzantine, and the most expensive healthcare costs are the end-points of diseases that take decades to develop and often have no "magic bullets" for treatment. Over-simplification, confirmation bias, and omission fallacies are all forms of anti-science rhetoric. Here is the episode:
https://youtu.be/b5p40OuTTW4?si=xX-cl8P0mHMWt_Y8
I had Perplexity watch the YouTube version of the podcast to offer some analysis:
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/help-me-analyze-this-video-poi-HxJZgwc5RVS9DPN6jsGOFg#0
The Unbiased Science podcast captured why consumer tech driving long-term health choices is so difficult. Their review of food-advising apps, like Yuka, highlights the challenge of context and complexity: Apps like Yuka aim to make decision-making easier. People use them because they want a simple answer. Scan, score, done. That's the seduction. The problem is that simplicity comes at the cost of accuracy.[...] This oversimplification might feel comforting in an age of information overload, but it often leads to inaccurate or unfair assessments. Understanding why requires a look at what a real cosmetic and food safety evaluation involves and how formal scientific review differs from the snapshot judgments made by apps. You can read the transcript of the episode here:
https://theunbiasedscipod.substack.com/p/that-app-scoring-your-groceries-we
Related: Robert Kennedy publicly linked his vocal problems (spasmodic dysphonia) to doses of the flu vaccine he received in the 1990s. There is little evidence linking the flu vaccine to this disorder. Read the article and pay attention to the following fallacies:
Contrast: Healthcare is noisy because, often, uncertainties outnumber the certainties, and people are desperate for better answers. Occasionally, someone with resources attacks the problem with the intensity of a startup. Sid Sijbrandij, the billionaire founder of GitLab, used his wealth and obsessive engineering mindset to treat his own cancer. This biotech blog details his journey—it's worth the read, if only to marvel at what unequal resources can achieve when pushing scientists and research to solve problems with evidence.:
https://centuryofbio.com/p/sid
AI-Summary of the events:
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/summarize-this-blog-with-the-f-ORMyWgd4RtadvLt3wY_49Q#0
AI-supported Summary:
https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/b5323801-21bb-480e-8b56-b184b7d795be
Nothing makes a wintery weekend more comforting than reading about the risks of malicious AI agent "swarms." This editorial by a Nobel laureate and AI experts describes how autonomous AI agents can now create coordinated "swarms" of fake online personas that manipulate public opinion at scale and sophistication, mimicking human behavior that evades detection, fabricates online consensus, and potentially corrodes democratic discourse. (Imagine if we redirected that swarming intelligence toward sourdough recipes or nuclear fusion.) Article:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adz1697
AI-Supported Summary:
https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/07c1d369-0040-43b1-9026-9a1551652093
Here is the (peer-reviewed?) paper:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289621000799?via%3Dihub
A certain juvenile delight drew me to this article; the (rendered) image of prototaxites is...evocative. These 25-foot-tall, branchless, tree-shaped organisms inhabited Earth 400 million years ago. Since their discovery 165 years ago, their biological identity has remained mysterious; the leading theory held that they were massive fungi. This new study (using chemical fingerprinting and microscopy on Scottish fossils) found that Prototaxites lacks fungal molecular signatures and has internal structures unlike those of any known organism. They appear to be an extinct lineage of complex, multicellular life with no modern descendants. Article with striking image (I think they knew what they were doing):
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-mysterious-407-million-year-old-fossil-may-represent-a-previously-unknown-branch-of-life-180988052/
The scientific paper:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aec6277
AI-supported analysis. (You can giggle like a first grader and still be educated!):
https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/f7fb1427-1c82-4cde-8a2e-d86049231550
Grok is my choice this week.:
ChatGPT
The Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative (PMC) uses wastewater viral RNA levels to forecast COVID-19 rates over the next 4 weeks.:
https://pmc19.com/data/
Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam