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WHEAT
for the people of the village of Ponikla
Tassels flow through my hand,
beads of grain roll against
the husk of my palm.
I lean to the bright
lost fire of the weeds:
the blue flame
of cornflowers,
papery mouths of poppies.
A rooster’s few
drawn-out notes.
Now the journey
of echo.
I stand shoulder-deep
in blond light.
The wind holds me,
then lets me go.
A farmer halts his horse,
points at me with his whip:
Black head, strong head.
You will never go crazy.
*
I wonder why
I have never gone crazy.
My hair, a crow’s wing.
The fields of wind.
I knew love early,
and let it go.
I am the harvest now.
~ Oriana
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ANTON CHEKHOV, WRITER AND PHYSICIAN
By day he healed bodies; by night he healed souls—and as tuberculosis devoured his lungs, he wrote his way to immortality.
Anton Chekhov was 24 years old when he earned his medical degree. He was also already a published writer, churning out humorous sketches to pay for his education and support his struggling family.
Most young doctors chose one path. Chekhov chose both.
He opened a medical practice in rural Russia, treating peasants who paid him in eggs, chickens, or nothing at all. He listened to their coughs, examined their fevers, sat beside deathbeds. He learned the rhythms of ordinary suffering—the way poverty grinds people down, how hope flickers in the smallest moments, how death visits quietly and without ceremony.
Every patient taught him something about being human.
By night, he transformed those lessons into literature. He wrote short stories about unremarkable people living unremarkable lives: a clerk trapped in bureaucratic monotony, a woman waiting for a love that never arrives, a family selling the estate they can't afford to keep.
No grand heroes. No dramatic villains. Just people, fumbling through existence with all their contradictions intact.
Chekhov famously said: "Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress." He loved both. And both taught him the same truth—that life is fragile, absurd, heartbreaking, and somehow beautiful all at once.
But there was a shadow growing inside him.
In his twenties, Chekhov began coughing blood. Tuberculosis. The same disease he diagnosed in his patients was now consuming his own lungs. As a doctor, he knew exactly what it meant: a slow, inevitable decline.
He kept working anyway. Kept writing. Kept practicing medicine. Kept refusing to let death dictate the terms of his life.
His stories became gentler, more observant, laced with a tenderness that came from understanding how little time anyone has. He didn't judge his characters for their failures or celebrate them for their victories. He simply saw them—in all their messy, contradictory humanity—and loved them anyway.
He wrote four great plays that revolutionized theater: The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and finally, The Cherry Orchard.
The Cherry Orchard premiered in January 1904. By then, Chekhov could barely breathe. He knew it was his farewell—not just to theater, but to life.
The play tells the story of an aristocratic family forced to sell their beloved estate, including its famous cherry orchard. There's no villain causing their downfall, no hero to save them. Just time, change, and the quiet ache of letting go.
In the final scene, the sound of an axe echoes through the empty house as the orchard is cut down. It's not bitter. It's not angry. It's just... the sound of an ending.
Chekhov wrote his own goodbye into that ax stroke.
Six months after the premiere, his health collapsed. He traveled to Germany seeking treatment, though he knew it was futile. On July 15, 1904, in a hotel room in Badenweiler, his breathing became labored.
The doctor arrived. Chekhov—himself a physician who'd witnessed countless deaths—looked at him calmly and said in German: "Ich sterbe.”
I am dying.
Then he did something extraordinary. He asked for champagne.
The doctor poured three glasses. Chekhov drank his slowly, savoring it. He remarked on how long it had been since he'd had champagne. He smiled.
Then he lay back, closed his eyes, and died.
It was the final act of a man who'd spent his entire life observing the absurd, tragicomic beauty of human existence—and who chose, in his last moment, to toast it anyway.
Chekhov's genius wasn't in grand statements or dramatic revelations. It was in his tenderness. He understood that ordinary life—with all its disappointments, small joys, and quiet endurance—is where the real story lives.
He showed us that comedy and tragedy aren't opposites. They're twins, inseparable, sharing the same heartbeat.
He taught us that you don't need heroes to make great art. You just need attention, compassion, and the courage to see people as they truly are.
Anton Chekhov spent his life listening—to coughs, to laughter, to the unspoken loneliness of ordinary souls. He turned suffering into understanding, and understanding into art.
And when his own suffering finally ended, he didn't rage or weep.
He asked for champagne.
Because even at the edge of death, he believed life—this strange, difficult, beautiful life—was worth celebrating.
~ The Curiosity Curator, Facebook. November 15, 2025
Oriana:
Why did he say “I’m dying” in German? The obvious reason was practical: he was addressing a German-speaking physician. But I think there was another reason as well.
Saying something—especially something frightening, painful, difficult to confront—in a foreign language creates a feeling a distance. It’s easier to say certain things in a language that's not our native tongue. In a way, those words are just sounds. In a foreign language, words don't bleed.
However, German is so earth-like, it doesn’t feel sufficiently distant to me. French, I feel, is elegant and (for me) disconnected from emotion. It's what I call a "crystal language," like a crystal bowl meant for display rather than use. I say this strictly as a non-native speaker; I’m sure it’s very different for a native speaker of French.
*
Speaking of how various languages sound, we have audio recordings of Tolstoy and Tennyson—even one of Robert Browning. But no recordings of Rainer Maria Rilke are known to exist, although he lived until 1926. In a letter written in April of that year to Dieter Bassermann, Rilke noted that the phonograph could contribute "to a new, orderly sense of responsibility toward the reading aloud of a poem (by which alone its whole existence appears)."
We do, however, have a vivid description of Rilke as a performer. Here is Marie von Thurn and Taxis' account of a reading he gave at her home, Lautschin Castle, in Bohemia in July 1911:
~ Rilke read in a very characteristic manner, always standing up, in a voice capable of infinite modulations, which sometimes rose to an amazingly sonorous volume, in a strange, singing tone that strongly stressed the rhythm.
It was entirely different from anything one had ever heard — startling at first, then wonderfully moving. I have never heard verse spoken more solemnly and, at the same time, with greater simplicity; one could have listened to him forever.
It was remarkable what long pauses he made. Then he would slowly bow his head, almost closing his heavy eyelids, and one could hear the silence, as one hears the pauses of a Beethoven sonata. ~
This letter is quoted in the 1949 book, Rilke: Man and Poet, by Nora Wydenbruck, which is well worth hunting down. Wydenbruck (1885-1962) was an Austrian-British author and painter, now best known for her German translations of Four Quartets and several of Eliot's plays. In 1948, she published one of the first English translations of the Duino Elegies.
Today recordings of Rilke's poetry and prose are available in many languages. Some of my favorites are those by the German actor Sven Gortz. He may not emphasize the meters as much as Rilke himself apparently did, but he has a fine sense of the human drama in poems like 'An Archaic Torso of Apollo'.
https://www.diehoren.com/2016/01/what-kind-of-performer-was-rilke_8.html
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WHO SURVIVED THE BLACK DEATH?
Those who had cats…
In the long history of human-animals relationships, a few episodes stand out in which one species has made a significant contribution to the survival of another. Rarely do cats get credit for such an accomplishment—more often dogs or horses, and then, usually in times of war—but the Black Plague of Europe is one of those times.
By way of background, the ancient Romans, in their conquest of Egypt, had brought cats home to Europe. Cats subsequently suffered a period of disfavor during the superstitious Middle Ages, for they had become associated with witches and the Devil; some people believed black cats were witches in disguise, or that they assisted witches in performing their craft. Those who kept cats as pets were the objects of much suspicion, and widespread cat hunting led almost to their extinction.
When rats from Asia brought the bubonic plague to Europe via trading ships in the mid-1300s, the epidemic (variously known as the Black Plague, the Great Plague, the Black Death, and the Great Mortality) swept across the continent, resulting in devastating loss of human life. In all, one-third of the population of Europe—some 34 million people—died. In England alone, more than half the human population perished; in some parts of France, ninety percent.
It took the authorities some time to figure out the cause of the problem. At one point they tested the theory that the disease was being spread by dogs and cats; thus the mayor of London ordered the execution of all such pets. Despite the extermination of millions of companion animals, however, the plague did not abate but actually accelerated, for, of course, the elimination of all cats was soon followed by an explosion of the rat population.
Eventually it became evident that people who had kept cats, in violation of the law, fared better; for the cats, according to their nature, killed the rats that carried the fleas that really carried the plague. People slowly began to deduce the rat-flea-disease connection. When the truth finally came to light, cats were quickly elevated to hero status, and soon became protected by law.
The Great Plague ended when the fleas started dying, as a part of their natural life cycle, in the cold of fall and winter. Subsequent plagues would visit Europe over successive generations, and other continents suffered similar outbreaks; it would not be until the 19th century that scientists really began to understand the epidemiology of the plague. Increased sanitary conditions over time helped reduce its incidence, and with the discovery of antibiotics in the 20th century, the threat of the plague was greatly reduced.
Would it be a stretch to say that, by bringing the rodent population under control, cats saved humans from extinction? At least, European humans? At a minimum, cats deserve credit for heroically saving the species that, through ignorance, almost wiped them out.
http://EzineArticles.com/161249
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FRANK GEHRY
Frank Gehry, one of the most influential architects of the last century, has died aged 96.
Gehry was acclaimed for his avant garde, experimental style of architecture. His titanium-covered design of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, catapulted him to fame in 1997.
His breakthrough in the architectural world came years earlier when he redesigned his own home in Santa Monica, California, using materials like chain-link fencing, plywood, and corrugated steel.
His death was confirmed by his chief of staff Meaghan Lloyd. He is survived by two daughters from his first marriage, Leslie and Brina, as well as his wife, Berta Isabel Aguilera, and their two sons, Alejandro and Samuel.
Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (Basque Country, northern Spain)Born in Toronto in 1929, Gehry moved to Los Angeles as a teenager to study architecture at the University of Southern California, before completing further study at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1956 and 1957.
After starting his own firm, he broke from traditional architectural principles of symmetry, using unconventional geometric shapes and unfinished materials in a style now known as deconstructivism.
Through blending unexpected materials and sheathing buildings in stainless steel to create curvy exteriors, Gehry created buildings that took on arresting sculptural shapes.
Later in his career, Gehry used 3D modeling similar to that used by aerospace engineers to shape windy buildings, a practice largely avoided by other architects because of the complexity and costliness of construction.
In 1989, at the age of 60, Gehry was awarded the industry's top accolade, the Pritzker Architecture prize, for lifetime achievement.
The Pritzker jury said his work possessed a "highly refined, sophisticated and adventurous aesthetic.”
Titanium and glass
"His designs, if compared to American music, could best be likened to Jazz, replete with improvisation and a lively unpredictable spirit," the panel said at the time.
Gehry's international breakthrough with the Guggenheim transformed the city of Bilbao, boosting tourism to the city and the local economy. Crafted out of titanium sheets, limestone, and glass, the museum was instantly celebrated as a modern marvel.
Architect Philip Johnson, Gehry's American contemporary, described the structure as "the greatest building of our time."
Other cities tried to replicate its success, branded the "Bilbao effect", where investment in daring art could revitalize ailing economies.
The cultural phenomenon was parodied in a 2005 episode of The Simpsons, in which the fictional town of Springfield invites Gehry, who voiced himself in the cartoon TV show, to design a new concert hall.
In the episode, the shape of the concert hall is jokingly inspired by a letter Gehry had scrunched up.
The guest appearance later "haunted" Gehry, who told the Observer in 2011 that people sincerely believed his real-life designs were inspired by crumpled paper instead of complex computations.
'Pushing the envelope'
His work in Bilbao put him in high demand, and he went on to design iconic structures in cities all over the world: the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago's Millennium Park, the Gehry Tower in Germany, and the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y2p22z9gno
"He bestowed upon Paris and upon France his greatest masterpiece," said Bernard Arnault, the CEO of LVMH, the worlds largest luxury goods company which owns Louis Vuitton.
With a largely unpredictable style, no two of his works look the same. Prague's Dancing House, finished in 1996, looks like a glass building folding in on itself; his Hotel Marques in Spain, built in 2006, features thin sheets of wavy, multicolored metal; his design for a business school in Sydney looks like a brown paper bag.
Gehry also designed the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, layered in metal resembling sails billowing in the wind. After it opened in 2003, critics described it as a "pile of broken crockery", a "fortune cookie gone berserk" and an "emptied waste basket.”
In a 2007 interview with the New Yorker, Gehry shrugged off the concert hall's critics: "At least they're looking!" he quipped.
Tributes are celebrating his eagerness to discard convention — and forge his own creative legacy.
Paul Goldberger, author of Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry, came to know Gehry closely, and said he wanted to work "until the day he died.”
"He was one of the very few architects of our time to engage people emotionally," Goldberger told BBC Radio 4's The World Tonight.
"He was all about pushing the envelope... wanting to use the most advanced technology to do the most adventurous things."
In a statement, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney extended his "deepest condolences" to Gehry's family and the "many admirers of his work."
He added: "His unmistakable vision lives on in iconic buildings around the world."
Bilbao's Guggenheim Museum posted a video tribute to Gehry.
"We will be forever grateful," the museum wrote on Instagram, "his spirit and legacy will always remain connected to Bilbao".
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y2p22z9gno
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'A WOMAN SHOULD CAST OFF HER SHAME TOGETHER WITH HER CLOTHES': WHAT WOMEN IN ANCIENT TIMES REALLY THOUGHT ABOUT SEX
A new book tells the history of the ancient world through women. Here author Daisy Dunn explores what they had to say about their own sexuality – flying in the face of misogynist male stereotypes.
According to Semonides of Amorgos, a male poet working in Greece in the 7th Century BC, there are 10 main kinds of women. There are women who are like pigs, because they prefer eating to cleaning; women who resemble foxes, as they are peculiarly observant; donkey-women, who are sexually promiscuous; dog-women, marked for their disobedience. There are stormy sea-women, greedy Earth-women, thieving weasel-women, lazy horse-women, unattractive ape-women, and – the one good kind – hard-working bee-women.
Of all the women described in this list, which pulsates with the misogyny of the time, those so-called sexually promiscuous "donkey-women" are perhaps the most mysterious.
Sappho gave powerful expression to female desire
Historical accounts from the ancient world tend to reveal the cloistered nature of women's lives. In Greece, women were usually veiled in public, and in Rome, they had "guardians" (ordinarily their father or husband) to supervise their movements and handling of property. Was the concept of the lusty woman pure male fantasy? Or were women of the ancient world more interested in sex than is generally believed?
As I learned while researching my new book The Missing Thread, the first history of the ancient world to be written through women, we have to look hard if we want to uncover what women really thought about sex.
The vast majority of the surviving sources were written by men who were prone to exaggerate women's sexual habits in one direction or the other. Some went to such lengths to emphasize a woman's virtue that they made her seem almost saintly and inhuman. Others purposely presented women as sexually voracious as a means of blackening their characters. If we took these descriptions at face value, we would come to the conclusion that women in the ancient world were either all chaste, or sex-mad. Fortunately, it is possible to peer into the hearts of some classical women, who provide a far deeper view of female sexuality.
Confessions of infatuation
Looking to the same period as the poet quoted above, we encounter Sappho, who composed lyric poetry on the Greek island of Lesbos in the 7th Century BC. Gazing at a woman sitting talking to a man, Sappho documented the intense physical sensations she experienced – fluttering heart, faltering speech, fire through the veins, temporary blindness, ringing ears, cold sweat, trembling, pallor – all of which are familiar to anyone who's ever fallen in lust. In another poem, Sappho described garlanding a woman with flowers and reminisced wistfully about how, on a soft bed, she would "quench [her] desire". These are the confessions of a woman who understands the irrepressibility of infatuation.
Sappho's poems are so fragmentary today that it can be difficult to read them accurately, but scholars have detected in one of the papyri a reference to "dildos", known in Greek as olisboi. These were employed in fertility rituals in Greece, as well as for pleasure, and feature as such on a number of vase paintings. Later in Rome, too, phallic objects had a talisman-like quality. It would not have made sense for women to shy away from symbols that were believed to bring good luck.
So far were ancient women from flinching at the sight of erotica that some were even buried with them. In the period before Rome came to prominence, the highly skilled Etruscans dominated the Italian mainland and filled it with scenes of a romantic nature. Numerous works of art and pieces of tomb statuary depict men and women reclining together. An incense burner featuring men and women touching each other's genitals was interred with an Etruscan woman in the 8th Century BC.
How prostitution was perceived
You only have to visit an ancient brothel, such as those of Pompeii, to see that sex was frequently on show. The walls of the dismal, cell-like rooms in which sex workers plied their trade are covered in graffiti, much of it written by male clients, who liked to comment on the performances of named women.
Historical accounts and speeches abound with descriptions of the hardships endured by such workers. Against Neaera, a prosecution speech delivered by Athenian politician Apollodorus in the 4th Century BC, provides particularly startling insight into the precariousness of these women's lives. Just occasionally, however, we hear from a woman in touch with this world – and her words surprise.
In the 3rd Century BC, a female poet named Nossis living in the toe of Italy wrote in praise of an artwork and the fact that it was funded by a sex worker. A glorious statue of Aphrodite, goddess of sex and love, sung Nossis, had been erected in a temple using money raised by Polyarchis.
Polyarchis was not an anomaly. An earlier hetaera (courtesan or high-status sex worker) called Doricha used the money she had acquired similarly to purchase something for public view, in her case impressive spits for cooking oxen to be displayed at Delphi.
It was not sex these women embraced but rather the rare chance it afforded them to be remembered after they died. The vast majority of the women they knew were destined for anonymity.
Male writers' insights
Male writers, for all their prejudices, can provide some of the most interesting insights into women and sex. In 411 BC, the comedian Aristophanes put on a play called Lysistrata, in which the women of Athens organize a sex strike in a bid to persuade their husbands to agree to peace terms during the Peloponnesian War. This was a real conflict, waged between Athens and Sparta and their respective allies across three decades.
Many of the women in the play are less than pleased at having to give up their pleasure. They are made to conform to the donkey-woman stereotype for comic effect. There is a moment, however, at which the play turns in a serious direction and Aristophanes offers a more convincing female viewpoint.
The title character Lysistrata, who organizes the strike, describes what it is really like for women in wartime. Not only are they banned from the Assembly, in which the war is discussed, but they are repeatedly bereaved. And while such a protracted conflict is hell for married women, it is still worse for unmarried women, who are deprived of the chance to marry altogether.
While the men, Lysistrata points out, may return home from war grey-haired and still marry, the same does not hold true for virgins, many of whom will be deemed too old to wed and procreate. These lines convey the difference between the male and the female experience of war so accurately that it is tempting to believe that they reflect what women of the day were really saying.
We may find real women's fears surrounding sex expressed in Greek tragedy too. Sophocles, the playwright most famous for Oedipus Rex, had a female character in his lost play Tereus describe what it is like to go from being a virgin to a wife. "And this, as soon as one night has yoked us," utters Procne, a mythical queen, "we must commend and deem to be quite lovely."
It was quite usual among the upper classes for marriages to be arranged. A woman's first experience of sex could be as disorientating as Procne described.
Ancient sex tips
Women sometimes committed such thoughts to papyrus. In a letter attributed to her, Theano, a Greek female philosopher in the circle of Pythagoras (some say she was his wife), offers her friend Eurydice some timeless advice. A woman, she writes, should cast off her shame together with her clothes when she enters her husband's bed. She can put both back on together as soon as she has stood up again.
Theano's letter has come under scrutiny and may not be authentic. Nevertheless, it closely echoes what many women have said to each other in more modern times, and its advice seems to have been followed by women in the ancient world as well.
A certain Greek poet, Elephantis, was allegedly so keen to give women sex tips that she wrote her own short books on the topic. There is sadly no sign of her work today, but it is mentioned by both the Roman poet Martial and the Roman biographer and archivist Suetonius, who claimed that Emperor Tiberius (notorious for his sexual appetites) owned copies.
Where other women are quoted in other men's writings, they tend to express themselves in terms of love as opposed to sex explicitly, which marks them out from some of their male contemporaries, including Martial and Catullus.
Lesbia, the pseudonymous lover of Catullus, tells him that "What a lady says to her lover in the moment / Ought to be written on the wind and running water". The phrase "pillow talk" comes to mind.
Sulpicia, one of the few Roman poetesses whose verses survive, describes her misery at being in the countryside away from her lover Cerinthus on her birthday – and then her relief that she can be in Rome after all.
These women did not need to describe sex with their beloved in crude detail to reveal what they really thought of it. Men may dominate the sources but women, as Aphrodite well knew, could be every bit as passionate when the curtains were closed.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20240610-what-women-in-ancient-times-really-thought-about-sex
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MATERNAL PARADOX
In the early 2020s, a trend called ‘gentle parenting’ gained popularity among millennial parents, and I quickly found my friends who are parents of young children getting wrapped up in it. My high-school best friend Macy, mother of two boys aged two and four, explained over coffee that she tries never to say ‘No’. Midway through our two-hour catch-up, the older one threw a small fit when she stopped him from tipping the sugar bowl into his milk. ‘I can see you’re upset because you really wanted to pour the sugar yourself,’ Macy said calmly. ‘But sugar isn’t for pouring right now. How about you stir your milk instead?’
Always validate the child’s feelings, prioritize warmth at all costs, and avoid negative words such as ‘no’, ‘don’t’ or ‘bad’ – that’s how Macy explained gentle parenting to me. This certainly isn’t how she and I remember our mothers parenting us in 1990s Hong Kong. Before Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (2011) scandalized Western readers, Chinese parents were already infamous for their strictness – corporal punishment for wayward and defiant children, academic excellence as non-negotiable, and ‘No’ delivered once, sharply, without negotiation or explanation.
Macy laughed ruefully: ‘My mother would have given me one look and I’d have known to sit still. Now I’m reading articles about how saying “no” damages my sons’ self-esteem.’
My friend learns everything about parenting from books and Instagram reels, not her own mother. And gentle parenting certainly isn’t the only parenting philosophy trending among young mothers these days. AI-powered apps like Glow Baby, which has garnered more than a million downloads, help mothers track milestones and manage feedings, while also providing personalized recommendations tailored to each baby’s needs. Sleep training divides into warring camps: cry-it-out advocates cite studies on self-soothing. Attachment-parenting proponents warn of cortisol damage – harm caused by prolonged, high-stress hormone levels. There’s also the age-old breast versus bottle debate, repackaged as ‘fed is best’ versus ‘breast is best’.
All of these purport to be ‘science-backed’, but there’s no shortage of backlash against the philosophy. The journalist and mother Polly Dunbar writes in The Independent that gentle parenting is a set of rules regulating the behavior of parents, not children. She worries that this kind of parenting raises a generation of spoiled brats who prioritize their emotions and needs over those of others. Psychologists also argue that validating emotions doesn’t essentially solve the child’s behavioral problems.
I have not sent these articles to Macy, lest she beats herself up for doing it all wrong yet again. But what may be oddly reassuring is that mothers have been getting it wrong for a while, as motherhood has long been a profession requiring credentials no mother could ever fully possess.
The paradox facing my friend (and many mothers across the globe) wasn’t invented on Instagram or TikTok: ‘mothercraft’ in the hegemonic, Western sense was engineered more than a century ago by Victorian-era experts who convinced mothers they couldn’t trust themselves. ‘Good motherhood’ has since become a moving target that tracks social class and institutional power more than biology or care, with poor, working mothers and mothers from racial minorities bearing the brunt of motherhood surveillance. This invention of maternal standards transformed motherhood into a mechanism for controlling not just children’s development, but women’s bodies, choices and lives.
Seen in this light, today’s anxieties echo a much older project – one that began when mothering was first recast as a science. With her book Mothercraft for School Girls (1914), Florence Horspool, an inspector for midwives in Swansea in Wales, was doing something both revolutionary and ominously familiar. Her guide reads like any parenting bestseller on Amazon today: the correct way to bathe a baby, developmental charts, nutritious recipes. Horspool, also honorary secretary at Swansea’s Mothers’ and Babies’ Welcome, was writing a manual not merely for her 12- to 14-year-old students. She was codifying a revolution in the making: the transformation of private maternal care into public policy, the conversion of kitchen wisdom into classroom curricula.
From Mothercraft for School Girls (1914) by Florence Horspool.
Horspool’s classes, like the other mothercraft classes that sprang up in England’s urban and industrial centers during the Edwardian era, were a direct response to the national call to train better mothers to raise the nation’s children. Britain had emerged victorious from the Boer Wars (1880-81; 1899-1902), but the victory was shadowed by staggering losses and a humiliating revelation of national weakness.
When patriotic Britons willing to fight for the nation rushed to army recruitment centers in great numbers, recruiters found that these men lacked what it took to survive a war, or even a weeks-long sea voyage to reach it. The 860-page Report of the Inter-departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration (1904), chaired by Almeric FitzRoy and commissioned to investigate why British men were too frail for war, states that in Manchester, England’s industrial hub, 75 per cent of recruits had been turned away as unfit for duty. The national rejection rate reached a staggering 40 per cent for a war that had relied heavily on volunteers.
This crisis of physical unfitness sparked what contemporaries called ‘the campaign for national efficiency’, and a need to discipline mothers: the term ‘mother’ appeared 1,102 times in the FitzRoy report. The committee had identified the usual suspects: industrial pollution, slum housing where nine children were packed into one single room with their parents, contaminated water supplies, grinding poverty.
Yet, though the committee recommended tackling factory pollution and housing reform alongside maternal education, it was motherhood that captured the imagination of public health officials and became the primary focus of intervention. The pursuit of physical efficiency would be achieved not through structural reform, but through the creation of more efficient mothers: school girls were recommended to be trained in infant feeding and management, mothers to be lectured on the importance of milk being heated to 40 degrees Celsius, and ‘ladies’ health societies’ to be established nationwide to nurture women qualified to raise the nation’s men.
Even so, Horspool admitted that her mothercraft classes were met with criticism; even back then, 12 was considered too young to be taught the craft of motherhood. Yet, as Horspool wrote in her preface, working-class girls were already helping their mothers to nurse younger siblings, and ‘the teaching of Mothercraft simply means teaching them what they already know and practice, but know and practice badly.’ Horspool was satisfied with the results of her classes: ‘These future mothers … will not be the victims of ancient custom, indeed they … will continue to regard the education they receive at the Mothercraft classes as of superior authority to the advice of a past generation.’
Horspool’s instructions were not suggestions but imperatives: babies must be weighed weekly, fed on rigid schedules, and bathed according to precise protocols. The text included detailed charts for tracking infant weight gain, and explicit warnings about the dangers of old wives’ tales.
Through manuals like Horspool’s, maternal care had been transformed from a private domestic skill into a matter of state concern. And, as the gospel of scientific motherhood took hold, next came its apparatus – the careful sorting of worthy mothers from worthless mothers. The influential 1913 report by I G Gibbon for the National League for Physical Education and Improvement crystalized the logic: Schools for Mothers should focus on the ‘respectable’ working poor – those with irregular but steady work – rather than waste resources on what he called the ‘idle and vicious’ classes below them. The evangelical fervor of maternal education drew a new moral boundary and demanded its own doctrine of election: some mothers could merit the state’s pedagogical grace, and some should be abandoned to their ignorance.
Public health legislation didn’t have to explicitly name class to enforce it. Middle-class mothers, with their private doctors and well-stocked nurseries, existed outside the range of municipal health visitors and school inspections. Working-class mothers, by contrast, were visible: their children attended public schools where medical officers recorded weights and teeth; they gave birth in municipal maternity wards; they lined up at infant welfare centers for cod-liver oil and lectures on the dangers of traditional remedies.
Once these mothers were in the system, health visitors, functioning like foot soldiers, would make sure they stayed in it. These agents were trained in the principles Horspool had codified for schoolgirls. Their job was to cross the literal threshold of the working-class home, notebook in hand, and translate public health policy into domestic practice – while reporting back on what they found in the households. They counted heads in cramped bedrooms, noted dampness on the walls, and inquired whether the baby was being breastfed ‘on schedule’. They could recommend a child for medical treatment, but they could also flag a mother for neglect. Officially, they were there to advise; unofficially, they were the state’s eyes and ears in the kitchen and the scullery.
(Infant mortality began a major, long-term decline around 1900 but, ironically, not because working-class mothers were being trained. Public health officials today attribute dramatic increases in infant health to the introduction of clean water, sewage systems, pasteurized milk, and basic hygiene informed by germ theory. These public-health improvements dramatically reduced the infectious diseases that had been the leading killers of infants.)
For women, now primed to aim for the ideal of ‘good motherhood’, there was no escape.
Consider this: at the turn of the century, the moral panic of infant death by ‘overlaying’ – the accidental smothering of infants who slept in the same bed with their parents – consumed the minds of infant welfare enthusiasts. The number of deaths from overlaying was small – the rate in 1911 was only 1.4 per 1,000 – but the incidents attracted a disproportionate amount of attention. The authors of a 1903 article in The British Medical Journal blamed ‘drunken, careless, or incapable’ mothers for this kind of infant death. The solution was simple: a separate cot for the baby. In 1906, The Lancet insisted that any ‘sober, kind-hearted, and hard-working’ parent could devise some kind of cot with ‘a little self-denial’.
The fact that most working-class families could not afford a separate mattress, cot and blanket for the baby was not a concern for these maternal and infant welfare societies. In her book Round About a Pound a Week (1913) – the Nickel and Dimed of Edwardian Britain – Maud Pember Reeves documented how, for families surviving on a pound per week (just under $5 at the time), sharing a bed with infants simply made economic sense. Her study of poor families in Lambeth in south London revealed a broader pattern: the gap between expert advice and economic reality. Many children never tasted milk once weaned, but this had nothing to do with maternal ignorance. As Reeves explained: ‘The reason why the infants do not get milk is the reason why they do not get good housing or comfortable clothing – it is too expensive.’
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Not having a baby doesn’t grant you a free pass from the cult of good motherhood. My father has been relentless in badgering my husband and me to have a child. ‘Your life won’t be complete without one,’ he says each time we talk. ‘And don’t you think it’s selfish to stay childless?’ I stay composed and remind him it’s a decision between my husband and me. He doesn’t pause before replying: ‘It concerns me – and your in-laws, and, frankly, humanity itself. After 30, a woman’s shelf life is over. What’s left, if not children?’
If my father’s words sound like a red flag, they probably are. But he is also the archetypical Chinese parent who wants the best for me: that I’d get excellent grades, collect degrees and accolades, establish myself in capitalist society, own a house, find a man of at least the same calibre and financial means to marry, then have kids. Now I’m one step away from the whole shebang. I used to think my father’s words belonged to his generation, a relic of Confucian family logic. But the older I get, the more I realize how little these scripts change, even if the vocabulary shifts.
The script stems from the positioning of children as the center of any family, often at the cost of the mother. In Centuries of Childhood (1960), Philippe Ari̬s argued that the modern concept of childhood as a sacred, separate stage of life Рone requiring intense parental devotion and expert guidance Рemerged only in the 17th and 18th centuries. Before this, children were integrated into adult life; afterward, they became the center of an increasingly inward-focused family.
But Ariès also observed something else: with childhood elevated to the status of ‘divine purity’, motherhood had become its priesthood. The divinity of the child demanded the subordination of the mother. What appeared to be reverence for children was, in practice, an instrument for regulating the behavior of women.
Ariès’s book has garnered criticisms from medieval historians, but parts of it still ring true today. Contemporary motherhood operates under what researchers call ‘intensive parenting’ – a philosophy demanding that mothers optimize every aspect of their children’s development through constant vigilance and expert guidance. The five key beliefs of intensive parenting still echo Ariès’s thesis: parenting is best done by mothers; significant time must be invested to meet children’s needs; expert knowledge should guide decisions; resources must be devoted to stimulating activities; and children are inherently precious and innocent.
Across the world, the same script plays out in different costumes. In the US and the UK, it’s called gentle parenting. Globally, attachment parenting promises secure children but demands constant availability. Japan’s kyoiku mama (‘education mother’) and Korea’s eomma-pyo (‘mother’s brand’) is expected to orchestrate her child’s every academic success, while sociologists describe Western middle-class parents practicing ‘concerted cultivation’, an equally labor-intensive choreography of lessons, sports and self-esteem. Each framework claims to liberate mothers through knowledge, yet all tighten the same knot: whatever they do, they can always do more.
The apparatus of scientific motherhood that emerged in Victorian Britain didn’t just create standards for child-rearing. It created a comprehensive system for managing women’s lives. The same logic that blamed working-class mothers for infant mortality also circumscribed what women could do, where they could go, and who they could become. And baby’s welfare never ceased to be the state’s concern, or even its key performance indicator. In the past few years, Taiwan’s ministry of health and welfare evaluated hospitals and local health bureaux on whether 50 per cent of infants were exclusively breastfed for six months, turning an intimate, time-consuming act into a national ‘gold standard’. The cult of intensive motherhood, dressed up in the language of children’s welfare, has always been a means of restricting women’s freedom.
The machinery never disappears; it only modernizes. Where lady visitors once audited kitchens, employers and HR policies now monitor women’s bodies and productivity. In the United States – a country without a law on universal federal paid parental leave – only 13 states and the District of Columbia guarantee paid family leave through state programs. As a result, many new mothers are pressured to return to work within weeks of childbirth, often while still physically recovering and trying to establish breastfeeding. At the same time, they are told by doctors, hospitals, lactation consultants, workplace-wellness programs and parenting culture that exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months is the unquestioned standard of ‘good motherhood’.
The vocabulary has changed but the script remains. We no longer speak of ‘race suicide’ or ‘maternal duty to the Empire’, but the command to reproduce, to nurture, to be endlessly giving – these are simply newer versions of the same social contract that has bound women for centuries. What we call ‘motherhood’ has never been a private instinct; it has always been a public institution, one designed to manage women’s bodies, emotions and ambitions in the name of stability.
https://aeon.co/essays/how-scientific-motherhood-polices-and-subjugates-women?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=a45f3a8689-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_12_05_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-19d630b572-838110632
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JAPAN IS FACING DEMENTIA CRISIS
Scientists at Waseda University in Tokyo are developing caregiving robots
Last year, more than 18,000 older people living with dementia left their homes and went missing in Japan. Almost 500 were later found dead.
Police say such cases have doubled since 2012.
Elderly people aged 65 and over now make up nearly 30% of Japan's population — the second-highest proportion in the world after Monaco, according to the World Bank.
The crisis is further compounded by a shrinking workforce and tight limits on foreign workers coming in to provide care.
Japan's government has identified dementia as one of its most urgent policy challenges, with the Health Ministry estimating that dementia-related health and social care costs will reach 14 trillion yen ($90bn; £67bn) by 2030 — up from nine trillion yen in 2025.
In its most recent strategy, the government has signaled a stronger pivot toward technology to ease the pressure.
Across the country, people are adopting GPS-based systems to keep track of those who go missing.
Some regions offer wearable GPS tags that can alert authorities the moment a person leaves a designated area.
In some towns, convenience-store workers receive real-time notifications – a kind of community safety net that can locate a missing person within hours.
Robot caregivers and AI
Other technologies aim to detect dementia earlier.
Fujitsu and Acer Medical's aiGait uses AI to analyze posture and walking patterns, picking up early signs of dementia – shuffling while walking, slower turns or difficulty standing – generating skeletal outlines clinicians can review during routine check-ups.
"Early detection of age-related diseases is key," says Hidenori Fujiwara, a Fujitsu spokesperson. "If doctors can use motion-capture data, they can intervene earlier and help people remain active for longer."
Meanwhile, researchers at Waseda University are developing AIREC, a 150kg humanoid robot designed to be a "future" caregiver.
It can help a person put on socks, scramble eggs and fold laundry. The scientists at Waseda University hope that in the future, AIREC will be able to change adult nappies and prevent bedsores in patients.
Similar robots are already being used in care homes to play music to residents or guide them in simple stretching exercises.
They are also monitoring patients at night — placed under mattresses to track sleep and conditions — and cutting back on the need for humans doing the rounds.
Although humanoid robots are being developed for the near future, Assistant Professor Tamon Miyake says the level of precision and intelligence required will take at last five years before they are safely able to interact with humans.
"It requires full-body sensing and adaptive understanding — how to adjust for each person and situation," he says.
Emotional support is also part of the innovation drive.
Poketomo, a 12cm tall robot, can be carried around in a bag or can fit into a pocket. It reminds users to take medication, tells you how to prepare in real time for the weather outside and offers conversation for those living alone, which its creators say helps to ease social isolation.
"We're focusing on social issues... and to use new technology to help solve those problems," Miho Kagei, development manager from Sharp told the BBC.
While devices and robots offer new ways to assist, human connection remains irreplaceable.
"Robots should supplement, not substitute, human caregivers," Mr Miyake, the Waseda University scientist said. "While they may take over some tasks, their main role is to assist both caregivers and patients."
At the Restaurant of Mistaken Orders in Sengawa, Tokyo, founded by Akiko Kanna, people stream in to be served by patients suffering from dementia.
Inspired by her father's experience with the condition, Ms Kanna wanted a place where people could remain engaged and feel purposeful.
Toshio Morita, one of the café's servers, uses flowers to remember which table ordered what.
Despite his cognitive decline, Mr Morita enjoys the interaction. For his wife, the café provides respite and helps keep him engaged.
Kanna's café illustrates why social interventions and community support remain essential. Technology can provide tools and relief, but meaningful engagement and human connection are what truly sustain people living with dementia.
"Honestly? I wanted a little pocket money. I like meeting all sorts of people," Mr Morita says. "Everyone's different — that's what makes it fun.”
Sharp's Poketomo robot has been designed to give companionship to patients
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g9e34yzvgo
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GREAT DYING AND 5 MILLION YEARS OF LETHAL HEAT
In Earth’s history there have been numerous catastrophic episodes that have altered the course of life on the planet, wiping out many species and paving the way for the rise of others, says Sheena Harvey.
However, none were as great as the events of around 250 million years ago, when 81 per cent of marine species and 70 per cent of vertebrate terrestrial animals went extinct, as well as the greatest known number of insect species and a huge number of plants.
It’s hardly surprising that this momentous event has become known as The Great Dying.
The cause of the mass extinction is thought by scientists to have been a massive increase in volcanic activity in present day Siberia.
The eruptions created a vast lava plain known as the Siberian Traps, set fire to oil and coal deposits and created dangerous emissions of methane gas.
The resulting combination of atmospheric CO2, sulphur dioxide and methane destroyed much of the ozone layer, let in solar radiation and acidified the oceans to such as extent that the entire globe was affected. The Earth heated up for five million years and life died on an unprecedented scale.
The enormous level of lives lost has been established through the study of layers of sediment where the fossils of creatures have been identified and counted. For example, in a study of two sedimentary zones in south China it was found that 286 of the 329 marine animals present in the first zone had disappeared by the time the second zone had been laid down.
The volcanic trigger for this mass extinction has been established by many different researchers through further studies of the fossil record but a question has always remained — why was the warming of the planet so prolonged on that occasion? Previous and later instances of global warming in the history of Earth did not last nearly as long as five million years.
Could The Great Dying happen again?
Now, a new paper — Early Triassic Super-greenhouse Climate Driven by Vegetation Collapse — published in the journal Nature Communications, puts forward a compelling theory linked to the demise of the tropical forests that was caused by the volcanic activity.
It is well known that plants remove and trap much of the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide, keeping the levels in the air appropriate to a gaseous mixture that will sustain life. The loss of plant cover in The Great Dying, argues the paper, made the bad atmospheric situation much worse. It was insufficient carbon capture that sounded the final death knell for a large proportion of organisms.
Lead author, Dr Zhen Xu, from the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds, says: “Critically, this is the only high temperature event in Earth’s history in which the tropical forest biosphere collapses, which drove our initial hypothesis. Now, after years of fieldwork, analysis and simulations, we finally have the data which supports it.”
If we were only considering the events of 250 million years ago this study would possibly just be an interesting addition to our knowledge of the evolution of the planet. But the paper’s authors believe there is a valuable lesson to be drawn from the further evidence they have uncovered of the causes of mass extinction. Our present-day loss of tropical rainforests will potentially contribute even more than previously thought to a long-term damaging rise in Earth’s temperatures.
Scientists believe that we are approaching a tipping point, borne out by Earth’s previous experiences, beyond which the over-heating of the planet and the death of countless species will become inevitable. In other words, without a serious focus on preventing further large losses of the world’s all-important forests, we could be facing a second Great Dying.
In the paper’s conclusion the warning is given: “We believe this case study indicates that beyond a certain global temperature, vegetation die-back will occur, and can result in further warming through removal of vegetation carbon sinks. Our study demonstrates that thresholds exist in the Earth system that can accelerate climate change and have the potential to maintain adverse climate states for millions of years, with dramatic implications for global ecosystem behavior.”
https://www.discoverwildlife.com/environment/great-dying-two
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HOW THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION ENDED
The extinction of the ancient Egyptian religion was a centuries-long process that occurred during the Roman era in Egypt, especially when the Roman administration shifted from paganism to Christianity.
In 30 BCE, following the suicide of Egypt’s last Pharaoh Cleopatra VII, Egypt was annexed into the Roman Empire under Octavian (later known as Emperor Augustus). The Pharaoh cult which spanned 3 millennia had come to an end, although the ancient Egyptian religion (cult of Isis, Osiris, Horus, Anubis, Hathor, Bastet, among others) remained widely practiced and tolerated; the cult of Isis spread to southern Europe, including Rome.
Emperor Augustus actually ordered the construction of the temple of Dandur in Upper Egypt, dedicated to the Goddess of Isis.
In 42 AD, Saint Mark introduced Christianity to Egypt through the city of Alexandria, establishing the Coptic Church of Alexandria which to this day remains the largest Christian denomination of Egypt, particularly the Coptic Orthodox Church.
Saint Mark the Evangelist, founder of the Coptic Church of Alexandria
Christianity initially spread among the Greek-speaking elite of Alexandria (Hellenized upper class native Egyptians and ethnic Greeks), although paganism remained dominant in the city, and rural Egyptians held into the ancient Egyptian religion for much longer.
The turning point was in the 4th century; Emperor Constantine I converted to Christianity and issued the Edict of Milan in 313 AD, legalizing Christianity, boosting conversions to Christianity and as the religion spread, practices like mummification began to decline. Paganism remained dominant however, and retained its status as the official religion of the empire.
In 380 AD Emperor Theodosius I made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, and in 391–392 AD, he passed decrees which prohibited paganism, leading to the destruction or closure of ancient Egyptian temples and others being converted into churches.
Christian cross later placed on an ancient Egyptian temple
Most Egyptians became Christians by the end of the 4th century, following the Coptic Orthodox Church. Paganism remained practiced in isolated pockets for a century, until Emperor Justinian I closed down the last operating temple (Philae) in 537 AD, dedicated to Goddess of Isis, ending all organized pagan practices. This is widely seen as when the ancient Egyptian religion had been extinguished.
The Temple of Philae
The Arab conquest of Egypt occurred in 642 AD, ending 6 centuries of Roman rule and leading to yet another religious shift; Coptic Christians—descendants of ancient inhabitants who converted from the ancient Egyptian religion to Christianity—converted to Islam through the centuries for various reasons, with Islam becoming the dominant religion (as it is today) by the 10–12th century, other sources extending to the 14th century.
~ Karim, Quora
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MORE ADULTS ARE CHOOSING TO REMAIN CHILD-FREE
I recently spent time in a group of millennial and Gen X colleagues, and the conversation inevitably shifted to children and families. I was shocked to find that more than half of us had chosen to remain child-free.
Growing up, whenever I said I didn’t want children, I’d get sideways glances or hear the familiar line: “You’ll change your mind when you get older.” (Spoiler: I haven’t.)
In recent years, I find that I am not alone. In fact, a growing number of adults are choosing to remain child-free—a decision that was once stigmatized but is now gaining wider acceptance and understanding. Many of us are motivated by a desire for freedom, concerns about mental health, financial and political considerations, or simply a lack of desire for children.
Exploring the reasons behind this shift offers insight into some cultural changes.
Evolving Social Norms Around Family and Gender Roles
In recent decades, many adults have shifted their priorities away from traditional milestones like marriage and children. For some, the appeal of personal freedom, travel, and career growth outweighs the desire to start a family. According to a Pew Research Center survey, the majority of child-free adults say they “just didn’t want” children. This trend highlights a rise in individualism, with more people defining success on their own terms instead of following traditional expectations.
The stigma around being child-free has lessened, allowing more adults to embrace this choice without fear of judgment. Earlier research on this topic primarily focused on heterosexual women who were considered “childless,” rather than the “child-free” or “childless-by-choice” framework that highlights how not being parents can be an active decision.
These shifts are also tied to broader changes in gender roles. Traditional expectations—particularly the assumption that women must become mothers—are evolving, and more adults are redefining fulfillment outside of parenthood. However, while many women still face judgment and negativity for their choice, it is noteworthy that both men and women report similar reasons for not wanting children.
Greater Awareness of Mental Health and the Influence of Trauma
Even as societal stigma around being child-free fades, the decision is often rooted in mental health and well-being. For many, it is about protecting their emotional health and breaking cycles of trauma. As conversations about mental health become more open, more people are recognizing the importance of emotional readiness before taking on the responsibilities of parenthood.
For some, remaining child-free is a conscious way to heal and avoid repeating painful patterns from abusive or traumatic family experiences. And since research further shows that adults who choose not to have children report “no differences in life satisfaction" compared with those who become parents, this shows that fulfillment and happiness do not have to be tied to parenthood.
Economic and Political Factors
Raising children has never been cheap. But having a family today comes with significant financial challenges: from housing costs to education, child care, health care, and many other expenses; all factors that contribute to many adults' decision not to have children. For many of my clients and those in my social circle, economic uncertainty and the rising cost of living make the prospect of parenthood daunting or can even make it feel unattainable. Pew Research Center (2024) found that many “say not having kids has made it easier for them to afford the things they want, have time for hobbies and interests, and save for the future.”
Furthermore, research points to a rise in adults choosing to remain child-free when reproductive health care is uncertain or unavailable, with studies concluding that “when access to safe reproductive health care is uncertain or unavailable, adults that do not already have children may decide that they do not want children.
Cultural and Media Representation Are Normalizing Child-Free Lifestyles
Media representation has a powerful impact on social norms. Increasing portrayals of child-free adults in movies, television, and social media help normalize the choice not to have children and provide positive examples for others. For many of us, shows like Friends, Seinfeld, and Sex and the City helped normalize adults living fulfilling lives without children, a trend that’s still visible today in both TV and online spaces.
For anyone questioning their choice, let this be clear: being child-free is valid, and your life can be meaningful and fulfilling on your own terms.
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DENMARK EXPORTS “VIKING SPERM”
Some men are having vast numbers of children through sperm donation. This week the BBC reported on a man whose sperm contained a genetic mutation that dramatically raises the risk of cancer for some of his offspring.
One of the most striking aspects of the investigation was that the man's sperm was sent to 14 countries and produced at least 197 children. The revelation was a rare insight into the scale of the sperm donor industry.
Sperm donation allows women to become mothers when it might not otherwise be possible — if their partner is infertile, they're in a same-sex relationship, or parenting solo.
Filling that need has become big business. It is estimated the market in Europe will be worth more than £2bn by 2033, with Denmark a major exporter of sperm.
So why are some sperm donors fathering so many children, what made Danish or so-called "Viking sperm" so popular, and does the industry need to be reined in?
Most men's sperm isn't good enough
If you're a man reading this, we are sorry to break it to you, but the quality of your sperm probably isn't good enough to become a donor — fewer than five in 100 volunteers actually make the grade.
First, you have to produce enough sperm in a sample — that's your sperm count — then pass checks on how well they swim — their motility — and on their shape or morphology.
Sperm is also checked to ensure it can survive being frozen and stored at a sperm bank.
You could be perfectly fertile, have six children, and still not be suitable.
Rules vary across the world, but in the UK you also have to be relatively young, aged 18-45; be free of infections like HIV and gonorrhea, and not be a carrier of mutations that can cause genetic conditions like cystic fibrosis, spinal muscular atrophy and sickle cell disease.
Overall, it means the pool of people that finally become sperm donors is small. In the UK, half the sperm ends up being imported.
But biology means a small number of donors can make vast numbers of children. It takes just one sperm to fertilize an egg, but there are tens of millions of sperm in each ejaculation.
Men will come to the clinic once or twice a week while they're donating, which can be for months at a time.
Sarah Norcross, the director of the Progress Educational Trust charity which works on fertility and genomics, said the donor sperm shortage made it "a precious commodity" and "sperm banks and fertility clinics are maximizing the use of available donors to meet demand.”
SOME SPERM IS MORE POPULAR
From this small pool of donors, some men's sperm is just more popular than others.
Donors are not chosen at random. It's a similar process to the savage reality of dating apps, when some men get way more matches than others.
Depending on the sperm bank, you can browse photos, listen to their voice, find out what job they do — engineer or artist? — and check out their height, weight and more.
"You know if they're called Sven and they've got blonde hair, and they're 6 ft 4 (1.93m) and they're an athlete, and they play the fiddle and speak seven languages — you know that's far more attractive than a donor that looks like me," says male fertility expert Prof Allan Pacey, pictured, who used to run a sperm bank in Sheffield.
Denmark is home to some of the world's biggest sperm banks, and has gained a reputation for producing "Viking babies."
Ole Schou, the 71-year-old founder of the Cryos International sperm bank where a single 0.5ml vial of sperm costs from €100 (£88) to more than €1000 (£880), says the culture around sperm donation in Denmark is very different to other countries.
"The population is like one big family," he says, "there is less taboo about these issues, and we are an altruistic population. Many sperm donors also donate blood."
And that, Schou says, has allowed the country to become "one of the few exporters of sperm.”
But he argues Danish sperm is also popular due to genetics. He told the BBC the Danish "blue-eyed and blond-haired genes" are recessive traits, which means they need to come from both parents in order to appear in a child.
As a result, the mother's traits, such as dark hair, "might be dominant in the resulting child”, Schou explains.
He says demand for donor sperm is coming mainly from "single, highly-educated, women in their 30s". They now make up 60% of requests.
Sperm crossing borders
One aspect of the sperm donor investigation published earlier this week was how a man's sperm was collected at the European Sperm Bank in Denmark and then sent to 67 fertility clinics across 14 countries.
Nations have their own rules on how many times one man's sperm can be used. Sometimes it is linked to a total number of children, others limit it to a certain number of mothers (so each family can have as many related children as they want).
The original argument around those limits was to avoid half-siblings — who didn't know they were related — meeting each other, forming relationships and having children.
But there's nothing to stop the same donor's sperm being used in Italy and Spain and then the Netherlands and Belgium, as long as the rules are being followed in each country.
This creates circumstances where a sperm donor can legally father large numbers of children, though the man is often in the dark about that fact.
"Many recipients, and also donors, are unaware that a single donor's sperm can be lawfully used in many different countries — this fact should be better explained," says Sarah Norcross, who argues it would be "sensible" to bring down the number of children one donor can have.
In response to the investigation into the sperm donor who passed on a gene that led to cancer in some of the 197 children he fathered, officials in Belgium have called on the European Commission to establish a Europe-wide sperm donor register to monitor sperm traveling across borders.
Deputy prime minister Frank Vandenbroucke said the industry was like the "Wild West" and "the initial mission of offering people the possibility of a family has given way to a veritable fertility business."
The European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology has also proposed a limit of 50 families per donor across the EU. That system would still allow one donor's sperm to make more than 100 children if the families wanted two or more babies each.
Concerns have been raised about the impact on the children conceived through sperm donation. Some will be happy, others can be profoundly distressed by the double discovery of being made with donor sperm and being one of hundreds of half-siblings.
The same is true of donors, who often have no idea their sperm is being so widely distributed.
These risks are amplified by readily available DNA ancestry tests and social media where people can search for their children, siblings or the donor. In the UK, there is no longer anonymity for sperm donors and there is an official process through which children learn the identity of their biological father.
Mr Schou at Cryos argues more restrictions on sperm donation would just lead families to "turn to the private, totally unregulated, market."
Dr John Appleby, a medical ethicist at Lancaster University, said the implications of using sperm so widely was a "vast" ethical minefield.
He said there are issues around identity, privacy, consent, dignity and more — making it a "balancing act" between competing needs.
Dr Appleby said the fertility industry had a "responsibility to get a handle on the number of times a donor is used", but agreeing global regulations would be undeniably "very difficult."
He added that a global sperm donor register, which has been suggested, came with its own "ethical and legal challenges.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg8mge23leo
Oriana:
It seems that the archetypal “Nordic” child is still the most desired kind, at least in terms of looks.
Likewise, sperm banks appear to be the closest we have come to “eugenics.”
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BEYOND GENDER (WITH THE HELP OF ‘MAGIC MUSHROOMS’)
There is growing evidence that mind-altering drugs can be used to help people explore aspects about themselves they may not have realized.
Hunt Priest identified as straight for the first 60 years of his life. While he occasionally felt attracted to men, "it was not dominant and I was just much more interested in women", he says. He was happily married to a woman and had a stable career as a senior clergyman at an Episcopal Church in the Seattle area. Priest "never had any judgement about gay people at all", but queer culture and community "wasn't strong part of my experience", he says.
In 2016, however, Priest enrolled in a psychedelic drug trial at Johns Hopkins University. The study aimed to examine the effect of psilocybin – the primary active ingredient in magic mushrooms – on the religious and spiritual attitudes of clergy. For Priest, it would also put in motion major changes in his sexual orientation.
Psychedelic therapists, practitioners and academic researchers are beginning to recognize that mind-altering drugs can open up sides of the self that previously lay hidden, challenging entrenched understandings of gender and sexual orientation.
During two sessions of the trial where Priest received a dose of the psychedelic drug, he says he experienced the presence of God and the Holy Spirit "in a very dramatic and embodied way" that was new to him. "It was not necessarily sexual, but there was a sense of eros and sexual energy.”
Priest did not experience any immediate difference in his sexual orientation. But he did notice a "subtle shift" in how he related to the world, he says. "I was more open."
Around the same time, his life was changing in other ways. He and his family moved to Savannah, Georgia. He switched jobs to work as a church rector, his son left for college and, most significantly of all, his wife asked for a divorce.
In the years that followed, Priest held off dating in the hope that he and his wife might get back together. But five years after they separated, he was having coffee with a male friend-of-a-friend and – to his great surprise – suddenly felt "there was something there", he says. He eventually acted on those feelings. While lots happened in the years between his participation in the Hopkins trial and the start of his new relationship, he credits his psilocybin experience for making that possible. Today, he and the man are still together.
"I don't think psychedelics turned me gay," he says. What they did do, though, was make him receptive to new experiences and showed him it was OK to trust his body and intuition.
"Working with psychedelics means opening yourself up to change," he says. "It brings about transformation."
Of course, unpicking the influence of a drug in such a transformation is complex. For one, the trial that Priest took part in was not conducted blind, so participants knew they were receiving a dose of psilocybin. It could conceivably have been that knowledge itself rather than the action of the drug that gave Priest the freedom to think differently about his sexuality.
A growing body of research, however, is suggesting there is something specific about psychedelic substances that make them useful for supportive explorations of sexual orientation and gender identity.
For decades, mental health practitioners and casual users alike have recognized that psychedelic drugs have potential applications in relationships, sex and sexuality. When therapists began working with MDMA in the 1970s and 1980s, for example, one of the first things they used it for was couples counseling – something that various research groups are now empirically testing. Certain psychedelics are also well known enhancers of intimate pleasure.
Although psychedelic drugs remain illegal in many parts of the world, some of these substances are now being legalized or decriminalized in a growing number of countries – opening up new therapeutic opportunities. Experts also warn against experimenting with these drugs at home or outside a carefully controlled therapy.
"Part of the beauty of psychedelics is that they loosen our fixed notions of ourselves in the world," says Jae Sevelius, a licensed clinical psychologist and behavioral health researcher at Columbia University who conducts research on psychedelics with sexual and gender minority communities. "The fact that they can create space for new ways for people to think about themselves – including their gender or their sexuality – is not at all surprising."
This work takes many forms. Some people intentionally pursue psychedelic therapy to address internalized negativity about their gender identity or sexual orientation, while others arrive at insights unexpectedly. For some, the realization comes in a sudden, ah-ha moment during a drug trip. For others, it may take weeks, months or even years to distill what they have learned about themselves. For most, it takes time to process and integrate it into their lives.
"For some people, this is only something they've ever asked themselves internally, and never spoken out loud," says Baya Voce, a couples counselor and MDMA-assisted couples therapy researcher in Austin. Under the influence of psychedelics, however, sensitive questions about gender or sexuality can become "an open inquiry and an exploration.”
Social deprogramming
Researchers are beginning to investigate how psychedelics might assist explorations of gender and sexual orientation. A study published in March 2025 provided a snapshot of just how often people have these experiences. The survey-based study asked 581 participants about how psychedelics have shaped their sexuality, gender and relationships. The participants were self-selected, recruited through psychedelic-related email listservs, newsletters, social media and in-person events. While all of the participants were people who had used psychedelics, "we did not mention anything about sexuality or gender in the recruitment", says lead author Daniel Kruger, a social psychologist at the University at Buffalo, New York.
About one-quarter of women, one-eighth of men and one-third of people with other gender identities said the drugs had heightened their attraction to a gender that they were not usually primarily drawn to. "That's not everyone, but it's still a large number," Kruger says.
At first, Kruger was surprised by this finding. "If you had asked me ahead of time, I would have said that sexual attraction is something that's mostly fixed in people," he says. After more careful consideration, he realized that psychedelics probably were not rewriting fundamental aspects of who someone is, he says, but rather allowing them to "gain insights about themselves and possibly be more open to feelings that they may not have previously considered socially acceptable."
"Ultimately, psychedelics don't change who we are," Sevelius agrees. "They help us remember or discover who we've always been underneath the social programming."
Psychedelics can also increase openness – a personality trait that measures how receptive a person is toward new things. In 2011, researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, found that participants who took a high dose of psilocybin in a laboratory-based trial and reported a mystical experience during their trip scored significantly higher on measures of openness for over a year following the trial compared to those who received a lower dose or an inactive control drug.
Openness encompasses "not only creativity and imagination, but also tolerance for new ideas and experiences", Voce says – including ones around sexuality and gender.
Beyond gender
Around 10% of participants in Kruger's study from March 2025 also said that psychedelics influenced their gender identity or gender expression. Some people reported feeling like the opposite gender while on one of those drugs while others said they experienced both genders simultaneously. There were also some who felt something entirely different. They "felt they were in a space that went beyond gender", Kruger says. "The concept of gender no longer made any sense."
Kruger warns, however, that "psychedelics are not for everyone and there are many risks that people need to be aware of". In another recent survey of over 1,200 psychedelics users, he and his colleagues found that most reported adverse experiences during their trips, including fear, sadness and loneliness. "I do not think it is a contradiction that we also documented that many people have difficult experiences with psychedelics," he says. "Taking psychedelics without adequate preparation or in difficult environments may increase that risk."
As with sexual orientation, psychedelics seem to be pulling back the curtain on pre-existing gender-related questions in the person's mind, says Chandra Khalifian, a licensed clinical psychologist and co-founder of Enamory, a psychedelic-assisted couples therapy center in Del Mar, California. "It's less that psychedelics directly cause changes in gender perception, and more that they create space to explore feelings and thoughts that were already present but perhaps not previously acknowledged.”
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Shaina Brassard, a 39-year-old woman in Albany, New York, experienced this in 2022, during a ketamine-assisted therapy session. She was coming down from the high, gradually becoming aware of her body again, when she noticed – with a jolt of surprise – that her hand was resting on her breast. "I was like, 'Whose breast is this?'" she recalls. "The presence told me about the absence that had just taken place."
Brassard realized that she had just spent over an hour without thinking about her biological sex or social gender. "I had experienced the trip as this blissful break from the weight of being a woman in the world," she says. Instead, she had felt like a pure “consciousness or soul.”
She came away from the experience still identifying as a woman, but with less attachment to her gender and more compassion for others, from non-binary people to men. "It has always been obvious to me that gender is a social construct, but this gave me a felt certainty that our bodies are containers for our souls," she says.
In some cases, psychedelic experiences can prompt people to recognize and affirm a different gender identity. The social implications of such realizations and their related changes can be highly variable based on context, Sevelius says. But having them at all is important for allowing people "to explore new and different aspects of themselves that were previously inaccessible to the conscious mind, or felt too socially stigmatized to fully acknowledge.”
Catriona Wallace, an artificial intelligence ethicist and organizational behaviorist at the University of New South Wales in Australia, identified as a woman but "always had this sense of a boyishness about me", she says. Wallace seemed to discover the reason for that sense during an ayahuasca trip in Peru, when she had a vision of a little boy who had died and attached his spirit to her. "It was absolutely traumatic," she says.
Afterwards, she shared this vision and the women in the retreat center performed a ceremony to "release the boy's spirit". When Wallace returned home, "I was changed," she says. She was rid of a long-standing stomach pain that had not been solved through Western medicine or operations, she says. Genderwise, she also felt "completely other.” She saw a gender counselor, who said it was ok to be something else entirely, which came as "such a relief", she says. "The binary notion was too rigid for who I am."
After publicly identifying as non-binary, she lost a few friends – mostly men, she says. Her children have all come to accept her new identity, though, and she now helps other people who are exploring their gender with the help of psychedelics.
"All in all, it's good," she says. "I have a much greater sense of peace and ease in not having to subscribe to any gender stereotypes.”
Support is key
People's responses to gender- or sexuality-related insights sparked by psychedelics can depend largely on the support they receive, both professionally and personally. "These experiences – especially when they're unexpected or surprising – can be very confusing for people and may be isolating," Sevelius says.
Ideally, professional support is involved, if not during the trip itself, then in the important work that comes afterward while processing it. "It is really important that psychedelic-assisted therapy practitioners are affirming and aware of the potential for someone's sense of identity to evolve, and to see this not as a negative outcome but as potentially healing," Sevelius says.
Many people do not have the resources to seek help from therapists who are competent in psychedelics, identity-affirming integration, LGBTQ+ issues or all three. Family and friends can also provide crucial lifelines for a person processing major shifts to their identity, but again, not everyone has a supportive network. For people raised by caregivers who "talked about never being able to accept a queer kid", Voce says, or who belong to a straight, conservative peer group, "it's much harder to say, 'I'm the person who's going against the grain'."
It can also be difficult if a current romantic partner is not on board. "That can be an identity shift for the other person in the relationship too," says Kayla Knopp, a licensed clinical psychologist and, with Khalifian, a co-founder of Enamory. A husband and wife in their 60s recently came to Knopp, for example, after the husband started exploring bisexuality and gender identity, and trying out cross-dressing.
The wife "had a really negative reaction", Knopp says. Tensions were eased somewhat after the couple tried ketamine-assisted therapy and found, afterwards, that they were better able to talk through what this meant for their relationship. "It wasn't a big, dramatic thing," Knopp says. "They just both felt a little more open and softer with each other.”
The essential question
Psychedelics can also be used therapeutically to help undo some of the harm caused by a world that isn't fully supportive of sexual and gender minorities. Rachel Golden, a psychologist in private practice in New York City, regularly uses ketamine-assisted therapy to help queer, trans and gender-expansive clients see themselves more positively. "Psychedelics help to unravel entrenched notions some of these patients have of being 'wrong' and allow them to recognize that they're deserving of humanity, dignity and respect," Golden says.
Sevelius, Golden and colleagues recently developed a novel program designed by and for transgender and gender-expansive people to use ketamine-assisted group therapy to explicitly target identity-based trauma. In a small pilot study – the results of which are currently under peer-review for publication – eight participants underwent this treatment. They experienced significant improvements with their negative mental health experiences overall, including lower scores in depression and anxiety symptoms. They also had lower scores on cognitive fusion, a measure of attachment to entrenched beliefs. The participants described experiencing powerful reductions in shame and negative self-talk, decreases in internalized transphobia and increases in gender euphoria. "We got amazing results as to how affirming it was for people to work with ketamine in this context," Sevelius says.
One of the powerful aspects of using psychedelics in a therapeutic context is that they enable the person to do the healing work themselves, says Rob, a 60-year-old in New Jersey who asked for his last name to be withheld for privacy. The understanding and self-acceptance "is being brought to me not by a doctor or a therapist, but myself," he says.
Rob realized he was gay when he was in his mid-teens – just as the Aids crisis was ramping up.
"I remember being pretty sure that I was going to die in this terrible, mortifying, painful and socially unacceptable way because of who I was and what I did," he says. "Fear and shame got right in there – right between my sexual desire and identity, and my courage to express them."
Decades later, psychedelics helped him begin the slow process of unpacking the unresolved identity issues he had spent most of his life trying to repress. On a first trip with MDMA and mushrooms, he realized that shame had caused him to hide his true self by reflexively passing "as straight or dominant". Soon after, on an ayahuasca journey in Costa Rica, he revisited "all the times in my life when I was younger that I had missed an opportunity to have sex." Rather than pass judgement, however, he was able to look back on his young self with compassion, love and even humor.
Rob insists that psychedelics have not fixed him. But they have helped him better accept what he sees as his past mistakes, he says, and to realize that who he is "is actually really great." He still has regrets, but he's better able to commit to things that matter, embrace sexual desire without shame and experience joy in the everyday. "The essential question all people ask is, 'Who am I?'" Rob says. Psychedelics he says, helped him find out.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20251211-psychedelics-are-altering-how-people-see-their-own-gender-and-sexuality
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WHY DID HUMANS BECOME MONOGAMOUS?
Humans are now mostly monogamous, but this has been the norm for just the past 1,000 years.
Scientists at University College London believe monogamy emerged so males could protect their infants from other males in ancestral groups who may kill them in order to mate with their mothers.
Modern culture tells us that each person has their “one,” a perfect partner to share the rest of their lives with.
Although polygamy is practiced in various cultures, humans still tend toward monogamy. But this was not always the norm among our ancestors. Other primates – the mammalian group, to which humans belong – are still polygamous, too.
“The modern monogamous culture has only been around for just 1,000 years,” says Kit Opie, an evolutionary anthropologist from University College London.
Opie describes how the earliest primates – as early as 75 million years ago – were solitary and preferred to to live in isolation: “Adults would only come together to mate.”
As time passed, primates as a whole became more social and evolved to live together in groups, but only humans became truly monogamous. Today, other primate species such as bonobos and chimps mate with multiple individuals in their groups.
“Humans shifted in the other direction,” Opie said.
Why did it happen? Current theories suggest it’s down to the preservation of an individual’s health – and their offspring.
STDs played a role?
As group sizes grew among human societies, from tens of people to hundreds of them, so may have the occurrence of sexually transmitted diseases, according to a recent study.
Chris Bauch and his colleagues at the University of Waterloo in Canada used mathematical models to simulate the evolution of different mating norms in human societies. Using demographic and disease data, they found that when societies become larger, the prevalence of STDs becomes endemic (a regular occurrence) within the population. They suggest that
“This research shows how events in natural systems, such as the spread of contagious diseases, can strongly influence the development of social norms and, in particular, our group-oriented judgments,” Bauch, a professor of applied mathematics at Waterloo, said in a statement.
The team suggests that in smaller societies, of 30 people or so – typical of earlier hunter-gatherer populations – STD outbreaks would have been short-lived and have had no significant impact on a population. However, as societies evolved and agriculture developed to make them even larger, rates of STDs would have been large enough that infertility from infections such as syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhea would have been high, according to the research.
Treatments for these conditions were not then available.
They suggest that monogamy would have therefore given males an advantage when producing offspring. The team also stresses that the STDs would have been a form of punishment for those who were polygamous.
Opie is not convinced of this theory, however, and believes that the larger societies stemming from the onset of agriculture and farming resulted in monogamy because people wanted to preserve their wealth through marriage.
“It’s an interesting approach. … You can imagine this maybe happening in larger societies,” Opie said. “But it’s marriage that matters here, as [this] is what passes on inheritance. … Monogamy is a marriage system, not a mating system.”
Bauch and his team noted that other factors would be involved, such as female choice. His team suggests that infections simply helped influence what is now a social norm. “Our social norms did not develop in complete isolation from what was happening in our natural environment.”
Or is it all about fatherhood?
Opie does agree that larger group sizes – and societies – had a role to play in us becoming monogamous, but with a darker rationale: infanticide.
The team at University College London suggests that as primates developed and became more social, their brain size grew to accommodate this increased complexity over time. This in turn meant the brains of infants were larger than previous generations and required more attention – and lactation – from their mothers, resulting in females being less readily available to mate again after giving birth.
“Males [in the group] are basically sitting around waiting to mate with the female,” Opie said. “It would therefore pay for the man to kill the infant, so he can mate with the female.”
As the fathers would want their offspring to survive, they would nurture – and protect – them as necessary by pairing up.
In 2013, Opie published a paper arguing that monogamy came about so males could protect their infants. “One way to deal with this [risk of infanticide] is for the male and female to become a pair,” he said.
Both theories remain exactly that – theories – without the options of a time machine and translator to go back to early human species and explore what happened to make us love the way we do today. But Opie also believes we’re now slowly retreating away from this idea of staying with one partner.
“We’re moving away from ‘Until death do us part’ as women are no longer willing to put up with [polygamy],” he said.
The future of that theory is ours to decide.
https://www.cnn.com/2016/05/17/health/sti-infanticide-human-monogamy
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HOW MONOGAMOUS ARE HUMANS?
Meerkats are incredibly social animals and live in large groups known as 'mobs' or ‘clans'
Humans are a bit like meerkats when it comes to pairing up, according to a study that examined the monogamous lifestyles of different species.
At 66% monogamous, humans score surprisingly highly, far above chimps and gorillas – and on a par with meerkats.
However, we are by no means the most monogamous creature.
Chimpanzees are highly social and form strong bonds but have very different social structures from humans
"There is a premier league of monogamy, in which humans sit comfortably, while the vast majority of other mammals take a far more promiscuous approach to mating," said Dr Mark Dyble at the University of Cambridge.
In the animal world, pairing up has its perks, which may be why it has evolved independently in multiple species, including us. Experts have proposed various benefits to so-called social monogamy, where mates match up for at least a breeding season to care for their young and see off rivals.
Dr Dyble examined several human populations throughout history, calculating the proportions of full siblings – where individuals share the same mother and father – compared with half-siblings, individuals who share either a mother or a father, but not both. Similar data was compiled for more than 30 social monogamous and other mammals.
Humans have a monogamy rating of 66% full siblings, ahead of meerkats (60%) but behind beavers (73%).
Meanwhile, our evolutionary cousins fall at the bottom of the table – with mountain gorillas at 6% rating, while chimpanzees come in at just 4% (alongside the dolphin).
In last place is Scotland's Soay sheep, where females mate with multiple males, with 0.6% full siblings. The Californian mouse came top, at 100%.
However, being ranked alongside meerkats and beavers doesn't mean our societies are the same. Human society is poles apart.
"Although the rates of full siblings we see in humans are most similar to species like meerkats or beavers, the social system that we see in humans is very different," Dr Dyble told BBC News.
"Most of these species live in colony-like social groups or perhaps live in solitary pairs that go around together. Humans are very different from that. We live in what we call multi-male, multi-female groups, within which we have these monogamous, or pair-bonded, units.”
Dr Kit Opie at the University of Bristol, who is not connected with the study, said this is another piece in the puzzle over how human monogamy arose.
"I think this paper gives us a very clear understanding that across time and across space humans are monogamous," he said.
"Our society is much closer to chimps and bonobos – it just happens that we've taken a different route when it comes to mating."
The new study is published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gpvx3exglo
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CLIMBING STAIRS IS GREAT EXERCISE
While it is tempting to take the lift or escalator rather than use the stairs, even scaling just a few flights a day could give your health and mind a boost.
As expeditions go, it was a grueling one. In just under 23 hours on 3 September 2021, Sean Greasley climbed and descended 8,849 m (29,032ft) – a distance that would have taken him to the top of the highest mountain on Earth. By the end, he was dripping in sweat and could barely walk. And he did it all in the relative comfort of his own home.
Greasley holds the world record for the fastest time to ascend and descend the same height as Mount Everest on stairs, achieving it in 22 hours, 57 minutes and two seconds.
While Greasley achieved this on the staircase at his home in Las Vegas, there are others who take stair climbing to other extremes. Tower running, for example, involves racing up enormous flights of stairs inside iconic buildings and skyscrapers. There is even a Tower Running Association and an official tower running global ranking for the elite athletes dedicated to this unusual sport.
Most of us are unlikely to achieve such giddy heights, yet even climbing a few flights of stairs in our daily lives might be something to aspire to. According to research, climbing stairs can have surprising benefits for both your physical health and your brain without needing to hurtle up two steps at a time or break records.
Climbing stairs has been found to improve balance and reduce the risk of falling for older people and improve their lower body strength. Other studies also find that climbing a couple of flights of stairs can positively affect our cognitive abilities such as problem-solving, memory, and potentially creative thinking.
As a "low impact" form of exercise, even short bursts of stair climbing can help improve cardiorespiratory fitness and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. The improvements in aerobic fitness from climbing stairs at home can even be equivalent to those gained using stair machines at the gym.
It's this everyday simplicity that is stair-climbing's greatest strength. Stairs are everywhere – we encounter them at home, at work and in public. Choosing to take the stairs instead of hopping on an escalator or riding in a lift provides us with an incidental form of exercise that can have an outsized impact on our health.
"It's an exercise that nearly everybody can perform because they have access, and they do it on the daily basis," says Alexis Marcotte-Chenard, a postdoctoral research fellow in heart, lung and vascular health at the University of British Columbia in Kelowna, Canada.
Marcotte-Chenard has been researching how to use exercise and nutrition to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, including the effects of "exercise snacks" – brief, spaced-out periods of vigorous activity lasting one minute or less that are performed throughout the day. Stair climbing, he says, is a promising exercise snack as it can be easily adjusted in difficulty by varying pace and requires no complex equipment or cost.
"When you do exercise snacks, you don't need any fancy equipment, you can just use your own body, you can use stairs," says Marcotte-Chenard. "And if you're doing physical activity throughout the day, you don't have to dedicate an hour for your workout.”
Research into exercise snacks, also nicknamed "snacktivity," or "VILPA" (vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity), is on the rise as researchers search for the best exercise solution to combat sedentary habits and physical inactivity which currently puts approximately 1.8 billion adults worldwide at risk of disease.
But what makes stairs such an effective physical workout?
First, climbing stairs is an easy way to elevate your heart rate – an important part of getting physiological benefits. But there are unique benefits of stair-climbing compared to other forms of exercise.
"It increases your heart rate and your oxygen consumption more than if you do fast walking just because it's harder to go against gravity," says Marcotte-Chenard, "And then, if you talk about the muscle, it's mostly the lower body, and we know that lower body strength is a good indicator of overall health and longevity."
Climbing stairs can increase thigh muscle size and strength, and also requires use of the abdominal muscles for stabilization going upwards.
You may not even have to sprint up the staircase to get the benefits. Whilst taking two steps at a time can be more difficult, requiring greater work by the muscles around your ankle and knee, the research is split about whether you actually burn more calories going up one step at a time.
And there is another reason to choose the staircase over the stair machine at the gym – going downstairs.
The muscles at the front of your thighs contract in two different ways: when walking upstairs they will shorten, known as concentric contraction, and when walking downstairs they lengthen, known as eccentric contraction. Although concentric contractions require more oxygen, burn more calories during the exercise itself and are considered more difficult, repeating eccentric contractions is more likely to result in bigger and stronger muscle growth. This is because eccentric contractions cause greater muscle damage during exercise and so more calories are burnt long-term during repair and recovery.
The benefits don't end with muscular thighs either. Researchers have found that stair-climbing results in surprising improvements in cognitive ability.
Andreas Stenling is an associate professor psychology at Umeå University, Sweden, who primarily researches the longer-term relationships between physical activity and health. He and his colleagues studied the immediate effects of stair-climbing on different cognitive abilities in young adults.
"Inhibition and switching were the two main cognitive functions we focused on here," says Stenling, "Cognitive switching, sometimes called mental flexibility, is how easy we're able to switch between cognitive tasks," he says. "So, going from one task to the other without having to reset your cognition, so to speak. Inhibition is about blocking out irrelevant information while you're engaged in the task." Stenling explains that we know that these cognitive functions are important for learning, cognitive word tasks, abstract thinking, and being able to keep your thoughts on one thing.
Stenling and colleagues found that their stair-climbing exercise significantly improved participants' "switching" abilities, which is also considered the most difficult of the cognitive tasks tested for. They also tested for changes in mood, finding that participants felt happier and more energetic after stair-climbing.
Another study published by researchers at the Yamaguchi University Graduate School of Medicine in Japan also found that people who climbed two flights of stairs displayed more focused problem solving than those who took the elevator. Intriguingly, there weren't any improvements in problem solving when they climbed five or eight flights of stairs, suggesting the effect is not dependent upon the number of stairs.
Another study by the same group also found that walking downstairs led to an increase in creative thinking, generating 61% more original ideas than those who traveled using a lift. So if you are looking for a burst of inspiration on a problem you are trying to solve, a quick jaunt up to the next floor and back may be all you need.
There is much interest in the mechanisms which link exercise to cognitive benefits, but little conclusive research. Stenling suggests, however, that the improvements could be linked to the cardiovascular system and the increase in blood flow to the brain, as well as growth hormones such as Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF), which seem to be impacted quickly by exercise in general.
Researchers including Stenling are also keen to explore whether there may be any delayed effects from stair climbing. Most studies focus on the cognitive effects immediately after climbing some stairs. One recent study found, however, that there were some improvements in memory from stair-climbing that carry over to the next day when paired with good sleep quality.
But while the concept of taking 10,000 steps a day is ingrained in the public mind as the benchmark for daily exercise, is there a similar target we should be aiming for when it comes to stairs?
Before we answer that, it is perhaps worth noting that the 10,000 step count number doesn't have a terribly strong basis in scientific research itself and some studies suggest the benefits tend to plateau after around 7,500 steps. The better known figure actually originates from an advertising campaign coinciding with the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, which took off because the number 10,000 in Japanese (万) resembles a person walking.
The research is similarly sparse when it comes to putting a target on stair climbing. But the studies that do exist suggest that climbing more than five flights of stairs daily (equivalent to 50 steps) is associated with a lower risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), which is the build-up of plaque in the arteries.
Marcotte-Chenard and his colleagues are optimistic that exercise snacks, specifically stair-climbing, could provide a good solution to breaking sedimentary habits at work. In a study assessing the psychological responses of office employees undertaking stair-climbing in the workplace, Marcotte-Chenard and colleagues found that 71% of employees preferred several small exercise snacks, climbing 60 steps in three different sessions, over one intense HIIT (high intensity interval training) session of climbing 60 steps three times in one session.
"For them [the participants], it's easier to just go one time up and down the stairs and go back to sitting," says Marcotte-Chenard. "And because you spread it out throughout the day, it seems that people enjoy it a little bit more than if they do it in one single session." The researchers' study is unique for being conducted outside the laboratory, which could suggest that the research is more applicable to the real world.
Not all research agrees that home stair-climbing is the answer, with some suggesting it is insufficient physical activity to lower the risk of CVD mortality and premature death. Additionally, sufferers of knee osteoarthritis can find stairs to be a painful ordeal. And observational studies even find that some demographics, such as females and overweight individuals, are less likely to take the stairs where there is an alternative.
But for those able to tackle a staircase, choosing it over an elevator could be a great way of getting some incidental exercise that will benefit both your body and mind. See you at the top.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250529-why-climbing-the-stairs-can-be-good-for-your-body-and-brain
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WHY JUST TWO HOURS OF EXERCISE A WEEK CAN BE LIFE-CHANGING
Many people struggle to do the recommended amount of exercise each week. But research suggests even a small amount has powerful effects.
There's no question that exercise is good for the heart. Regular exercise lowers blood pressure and cholesterol and reduces the chances of having a heart attack or stroke.
But sometimes it can be hard to find the time (and motivation) to exercise. So, what's the least amount of exercise you can get away with doing while still seeing these benefits? That answer depends on how fit you are to begin with.
Here's some good news: the lower your starting point is in terms of fitness, the less you have to do to see a benefit.
So, if you're someone who's completely sedentary, then only a small amount of exercise is needed to see a reduction in cardiac risk. From a starting point of virtually zero exercise, an hour or two a week of leisurely cycling or brisk walking might be all you need to reduce your risk of death from cardiovascular disease by as much as 20%.
But as you get fitter and increase the amount you exercise, the cardiovascular health gains diminish and eventually plateau. This is sometimes referred to as a J-shaped curve.
A sedentary person who goes from doing nothing to exercising a couple of hours a week will see the greatest reductions in cardiovascular risk during this period. If they increase the amount they exercise to four hours a week, there would be additional – albeit smaller – reductions in risk (around 10%). But the benefits to cardiovascular health appear to max out after four to six hours a week – with no additional gains beyond this point for everyone.
However, one study in which sedentary people were trained to complete an endurance event, such as a marathon, found that once participants reached seven to nine hours a week of training, they saw noticeable changes in their heart's structure.
Training at this level gives the same reductions in cardiovascular risk as training four to six hours a week. But participants had an increase in their amount of heart muscle, as well as dilation of their cardiac chambers. The heart is like any other muscle: if trained enough, it will get bigger. These changes occurred as early as three months after starting.
So, while the additional hours of exercise don't provide further benefit in terms of reducing cardiovascular disease risk, these changes in the heart's structure will mean improvements in fitness – and hopefully, running a faster marathon.
These sorts of changes were previously only thought possible in elite athletes – but this study is proof that if we're willing to commit, we can not only get the cardiovascular benefits but also develop the heart of an athlete.
After you start doing an hour or two of exercise a week to improve your heart health, something incredible and unexpected might happen. You might actually enjoy it. Four hours a week is the sweet spot that gives the greatest reduction in cardiovascular risk – but if you enjoy training or find a sport you love, you shouldn't let this stop you doing more.
The idea of going from never exercising to working out four hours a week can be daunting – especially if you don't have much spare time. This is where the intensity of your workouts is important.
If you want the biggest bang for your buck in terms of reducing cardiovascular risk, you need to break a sweat. High-intensity interval training (Hiit) is one time-efficient way of maximizing your returns from exercise. It's typically a 20-minute workout comprising short, 30 to 60-second bursts of intense exercise followed by a brief rest in between.
Despite how short these workouts are, their intensity means that after several weeks of Hiit, you'll probably see many benefits – including reductions in blood pressure and cholesterol. However, most Hiit studies have been too small to measure if there's an effect on overall cardiovascular risk.
A word of caution is needed if you have cardiovascular disease. There are several conditions – such as cardiomyopathy (genetic heart muscle disease), ischemic heart disease (narrowing of heart arteries) and myocarditis (heart inflammation, usually viral) – where strenuous exercise is advised against. People with these health conditions should stick to low or moderate-intensity exercise. This will still be beneficial for your heart, while not putting you at risk of harm.
If finding time to exercise in the week is a challenge and you're only able to work out at weekends, rest assured this is still beneficial. One retrospective study of over 37,000 people found those who did their week's worth of physical activity over just one of two days had the same reduction in cardiovascular disease risk as those who did activity spread throughout the week.
So, for a self-professed lazy person who wants to improve their cardiovascular health, the message is simple: even a small amount of any type of exercise can make a big difference.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250106-why-just-two-hours-of-exercise-a-week-can-be-life-changing
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SOYBEAN OIL AND OBESITY
According to the U.S. Soybean Export Council, soybean oil encompasses 57% of all cooking oils used in the U.S., and 30% globally.
Commonly labeled in grocery stores as “vegetable oil,” soybean oil is mainly made from polyunsaturated fatty acids and contains the essential omega-3 fatty acid alpha-linolenic acid, as well as the omega-6 fatty acid known as linoleic acid. More than 50% of soybean oil is made of linoleic acid.
Previous studies show that soybean oil may offer some heart-health benefits. For instance, a study published in September 2021 found that replacing saturated fats with soybean oil may help lower a person’s circulating cholesterol levels and their coronary heart disease risk.
However, other research offers evidence that consuming too much soybean oil or omega-6 fatty acids may increase your risk for certain health concerns, including ulcerative colitis, neuroinflammation, type 2 diabetes, dementia, and obesity.
“Cooking oils are an integral part of our food system and are used not only for cooking in home kitchens, but also in restaurants,” Sonia Poonamjot Deol, PhD, assistant professional researcher at the University of California, Riverside, told Medical News Today.
“They are also increasingly being incorporated into processed and ultra processed foods. Increased consumption of [certain] fats is linked to the development of many metabolic and inflammatory diseases, including obesity. Therefore, understanding the role that cooking oils, especially soybean oil, which is the most widely consumed edible oil in the U.S. and the second most widely consumed edible oil globally, can have on the development of obesity is critical,” Deol explained.
She is the co-corresponding author of a new study recently published in the Journal of Lipid Research that sheds light on how soybean oil might contribute to a person’s obesity risk.
Restricting total linoleic acid intake is key
For this study, researchers focused on a genetically-engineered — or transgenic — mouse model. These mice create an altered version of the liver protein HNF4α. This protein plays an important role in the development and function of not only the liver, but the pancreas and lower gastrointestinal tract as well.
According to researchers, this form of HNF4α normally only exists in humans under specific conditions, such as due to a chronic illness or metabolic stress.
“From our previous studies we knew that these transgenic mice have lower than normal gene expression for the enzymes that are involved in converting linoleic acid into the pro-inflammatory oxylipins,” Deol explained. “We therefore hypothesized that these mice would not get obese on the soybean oil diet because they would have decreased oxylipin production.”
At the study’s conclusion, Deol and her team proved their hypothesis by discovering that transgenic mice fed a high soybean oil diet gained significantly less weight when compared to a normal mouse model fed the same diet.
Additionally, the transgenic mice showed fewer oxylipins, healthier livers, and enhanced mitochondrial function when compared to regular mice on the same diet.
“These findings provide us with the mechanism by which soybean oil causes obesity in mice,” Deol said. “We have also identified the molecular pathways that are involved in soybean oil-induced obesity; this information can be used in the future for the development of preventive and therapeutic strategies against metabolic diseases.”
“Consuming small amounts of soybean oil is perfectly safe and provides a good source of the essential fatty acid linoleic acid,” she continued.
“Soybean oil is not a toxic substance. The problem is that by virtue of it being used in home and restaurant cooking, in animal meals and in processed foods we are taking in much higher levels of linoleic acid than our body needs. This could be leading to excessive accumulation of oxylipins in our body which can then lead to increased obesity and inflammation. Thus, we need to restrict our total linoleic acid intake to 2–3% of the daily caloric intake, and to restrict overall fat consumption (from any type of fat) to the recommended daily amount.”
– Sonia Poonamjot Deol, PhD
Would the findings also apply to humans?
MNT had the opportunity to speak with Mir Ali, MD, a board-certified general surgeon, bariatric surgeon and medical director of Memorial Care Surgical Weight Loss Center at Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, CA, about this study.
Ali, who was not involved in the research, commented that he thought this was an interesting study that sheds some light on how soybean oil may contribute to obesity.
“However, this is a very controlled study in an animal model that may not necessarily work the same in humans,” he continued. “The more information and research on the effects of different cooking oils will help in determining the best oil for cooking. Soybean oil is widely used but has been shown to have detrimental effects, so finding the best alternative would be beneficial.”
“The next step would be to devise a study looking at the effects in humans and the mechanism behind the detrimental effects of soybean oil,” Ali added.
How can I reduce my soybean oil intake?
For those who may want to try reducing the amount of soybean oil they consume in their diet, Monique Richard, MS, RDN, LDN, a registered dietitian nutritionist and owner of Nutrition-In-Sight, offered her top tips.
“Soybean oil is high in omega-6 linoleic acid, which itself, as part of a balanced dietary pattern, is not harmful,” Richard explained. “But much of [the] soybean oil used in the U.S. is highly refined, stripping antioxidants and flavor compounds. It is also the amount consumed, its paired partners, and the process by which soybean oil is derived that raises concern.”
To help reduce a person’s soybean oil consumption, Richard recommended:
Read ingredient lists, not front-of-package claims. If soybean oil, vegetable oil, or canola oil appear in the first few ingredients, that food is likely heavily processed. There may be a more wholesome option or healthier alternative.
Choose whole foods over ultra-processed snacks. The largest source of soybean oil in the American diet is not home cooking — it’s commercial packaged foods, fried foods, and restaurant offerings. Use fresh, frozen, or canned produce when possible. Look for whole grain options like oats, bulgar, quinoa, and brown rice versus pre-packaged noodles, crackers, or pasta kits.
Cook more at home, even 1–2 meals per week. That way you have control over the ingredients, sodium, sugar, and oils used. Look for recipes that have simple, whole ingredients that can be batch cooked for more meals later in the week.
Swap frying for roasting, sautéing, grilling, or air-frying. These methods both reduce oil use and total calorie density.
Choose whole soy foods for natural goodness. Foods such as tofu, tempeh, or soybeans in their pod, aka edamame, are not part of this concern. They are nutrient-dense, fiber-rich, and associated with many health benefits.
Richard offered these tasty soybean oil alternatives, which also have added benefits:
olive oil (extra-virgin, cold-pressed) — great for dressings, marinades, and cooking; benefits have been identified in numerous research studies related to heart and cognitive health
avocado oil — neutral flavor, tolerates higher heat, great everyday option
sesame or peanut oil — a slightly nutty flavor and aroma; excellent in Asian, African, and Middle Eastern-inspired dishes; delivers antioxidants and polyphenols while complimenting flavor profiles of other herbs and spices.
walnut or flaxseed oil — for use at cool or room temperature to top parfaits, desserts, or make dressings.
“The components of our meals matter to our molecules — let’s make the best choices we can,” said Richard.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/soybean-oil-may-contribute-to-obesity-new-study-shows#How-can-I-reduce-my-soybean-oil-intake
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ending on beauty:
Behold: these kings standing here are great
and drag into your lap rare treasures
that each believes to be the greatest.
Perhaps you are astonished at their gifts.
But look into the blanket in your arms,
how He already surpasses all of them.
Amber that is traded near and far,
rings of gold and costly spices
that drift for a moment on the air:
these are quickly fading pleasures
and leave behind a vague regret.
The gift He brings—as you will see—is joy.
~ Rilke, from Geburt Christi' (The Birth of Christ)
Notre Dame de Paris, Portal of the Last Judgment
(My thanks to Kerry Shawn Keys)
