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THE IRISH CLIFFS OF MOHER
Who is my father in this world, in this house,
At the spirit’s base?
My father’s father, his father’s father, his—
Shadows like winds
Go back to a parent before thought, before speech,
At the head of the past.
They go to the cliffs of Moher rising out of the mist,
Above the real,
Rising out of present time and place, above
The wet, green grass.
This is not landscape, full of the somnambulations
Of poetry
And the sea. This is my father or, maybe,
It is as he was,
A likeness, one of the race of fathers: earth
And sea and air.
~ Wallace Stevens
Cliffs 0f Moher, County Clare, Ireland
This is my favorite part:
Shadows like winds
Go back to a parent before thought, before speech,
At the head of the past.
They go to the cliffs of Moher rising out of the mist,
Above the real,
Rising out of present time and place, above
The wet, green grass.
For all the talk about about the “communion with Nature,” it’s not easy to achieve it or convey it. Even Wordsworth occasionally stumbles or goes on too long, or starts philosophizing about Nature with a capital N — or, as Spinoza put it, Dues sive Natura — “God meaning Nature.” Wallace “merely” presents the images, and oddly enough enough thinks about his father, and then his father, and then his father’s father’s father, and so on, in an almost infinite regress.
I say “oddly,” because the standard phrase is “Mother Earth.” But surely fathers are equally our ancestors, intimately fused with all of nature. Insofar as I know, this is the only famous poem celebrating fathers as primeval ancestors, strong as a rock, protective, holding back the endless sea and time. Above all, let us admit, it is a gorgeous poem.
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SAME BOOK, DIFFERENT READER: RE-READING IDRIES SHAH
Earlier this week, a WhatsApp message arrived from an old friend in Brisbane. It was a simple question: had I read Knowing How to Know by Idries Shah? I smiled. I had read it in 1997, when the world and I were both younger, and when I believed that understanding a book meant agreeing with its premise.
What followed that brief exchange was something I did not expect. I picked up the book again, the same collection of stories, observations, and quiet provocations that Shah left behind among his papers before his death in 1996. And I was shaken. Not by the book, which had not changed a single word. I was shaken by the distance between the man who first read it and the man reading it now.
In 1997, I was hungry for knowledge in the way that Shah himself warns about. I consumed books the way one consumes food at a buffet, eagerly, indiscriminately, and with the vague hope that volume would compensate for digestion. When I first opened Knowing How to Know, I was drawn to its intellectual architecture. Shah’s writing felt crisp and authoritative. I treated it as a manual, a set of instructions for becoming wiser, more perceptive, more aware. I underlined passages. I nodded along. I believed I understood.
What I took away from that first reading was, in hindsight, remarkably superficial. I grasped Shah’s central argument that the barriers to knowledge are often invisible to us, that we mistake emotional reactions for spiritual experiences, and that much of what passes for learning is merely the accumulation of comfortable ideas. I agreed with all of it. And in agreeing so readily, I proved his point entirely. I had turned his teaching into yet another comfortable idea.
Three decades have a way of rearranging your thinking. Between 1997 and now, I have built a career, raised a family, buried people I loved, made decisions I regret, and stumbled into wisdom I did not earn. Life, it turns out, is the curriculum that no book can replace but that certain books can illuminate, if you return to them at the right time.
When I opened Knowing How to Know again this week, the words on the page were identical.
But I was not. Where I once read Shah’s observations about self-deception and thought, “Yes, other people do this,” I now read them and thought, “Yes, I have done this.” That shift from observer to participant, from judge to defendant, is the difference that thirty years of living makes.
Shah writes extensively about the barriers that prevent genuine understanding. In 1997, I imagined those barriers as intellectual problems to be solved like puzzles one could think one’s way through. Now I recognize them as deeply personal patterns. The need to be right. The tendency to confuse familiarity with comprehension. The quiet vanity of believing oneself to be a seeker, which can itself become the most effective obstacle to finding anything at all.
Perhaps the most striking example in the book is Shah’s observation about objectivity. He points out that human beings, once they fix their attention on something, struggle to detach from it and therefore can never truly be objective. We have the word “objectivity” in our language, Shah notes, and this leads us to believe we possess the quality itself. He compares this to saying, “I know the word ‘gold’, so I am rich.”
When I first read that passage in 1994, I found it clever. A sharp aphorism, the kind you might quote at a dinner party to sound wise. This time, it stopped me cold. I recognized in it the story of my own life, decades spent confusing the vocabulary of wisdom with its substance, mistaking fluency in the language of understanding for understanding itself. How many times had I used the right words while living in the entirely wrong way? Shah was not being clever.
He was describing a universal human affliction, and I was one of its patients.
One theme struck me with particular force this time: Shah’s insistence that learning requires the right conditions, the right time, the right place, the right state of mind. In my younger years, I dismissed this as mystical gatekeeping. Why should knowledge have prerequisites beyond curiosity and effort? But experience has taught me what Shah was pointing at. I have sat in rooms full of wise counsel and heard nothing, because I was not ready to hear. I have read paragraphs that meant nothing to me at thirty and everything to me at sixty. The book did not change. The conditions changed.
There is a particular kind of humility that comes from re-reading a book you once believed you understood. It is not the humility of ignorance; it is the humility of realizing that understanding is not a destination but a process, one that unfolds across the full span of a life. Shah seemed to know this. His book is not designed to be understood in a single reading. It is designed to meet you wherever you are and to reveal, with uncomfortable precision, exactly how far you still have to go.
My friend in Brisbane probably did not know what he was setting in motion with that simple WhatsApp message. He asked if I had read a book. The honest answer, I now realize, is that I had read it once, but I had not yet known how to know what it was telling me.
I am not sure I fully know now. But the difference between 1997 and today is that I am no longer embarrassed by that admission. In fact, I suspect Shah would say that this is precisely where the real reading begins.
Somewhere in my library, every one of Idries Shah’s writings that I have read and collected across a lifetime sits waiting. They have been patient with me, and I have decided to return the favor. I have pledged to reread them all, one by one, with the eyes I have now rather than the eyes I had then. If Knowing How to Know is any indication, I expect to be humbled, surprised, and quietly rearranged by each encounter.
On Sufi Literature and Its Enduring Influence
Sufi literature occupies a singular and often misunderstood place in the world’s literary and spiritual traditions. Rooted in the classical Islamic world but never confined to it, Sufi writing has crossed centuries, continents, and confessional boundaries with a quiet persistence that few other bodies of literature can claim. Its central concern, the inner transformation of the human being, the dissolution of the ego, the direct experience of what lies beneath the surface of ordinary life, has resonated across cultures not because it offers answers, but because it refuses to let the wrong questions stand unchallenged.
The great Sufi poets Rumi, Hafiz, Sa‘di, Attar, and Bulleh Shah wrote in the full knowledge that their words would be read on multiple levels simultaneously: as love poetry, as spiritual instruction, as social commentary, and as encrypted maps of inner terrain that only certain readers, at certain moments in their lives, would be able to decipher.
This layered quality is not a literary device; it is the epistemology itself. Sufi writing teaches by what it withholds as much as by what it reveals. It places the work of understanding squarely on the reader, and it trusts the reader to arrive when ready, not a moment before.
The influence of Sufi literature on world culture has been both profound and underacknowledged. Rumi is, by most measures, the best-selling poet in the United States, a fact that would have surprised no one in 13th-century Konya and astonishes everyone who learns it today.
Goethe drew extensively on Hafiz in his West-Eastern Divan. Emerson and Thoreau found in Sufi texts a vocabulary for the transcendentalist intuitions they were already forming. In psychology, both Jung and Erich Fromm engaged seriously with Sufi ideas about the structure of the self and the mechanisms of self-deception. The tradition has quietly shaped far more of the modern mind than the modern mind tends to admit.
Idries Shah belongs squarely within this tradition, though he worked in English and addressed the contemporary Western reader with a directness and pragmatism that distinguished him from many of his predecessors. Where earlier Sufi masters encoded their teachings in verse and allegory designed for a different cultural context, Shah translated not merely linguistically but conceptually the essential substance of Sufi teaching into a form accessible to a 20th-century mind.
His was a literature of inoculation: designed not to make the reader feel elevated, but to make the reader aware of the very mechanisms by which they avoid genuine elevation. That is a harder and more lasting gift. ~ Sohail Rao, Facebook
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COULD A MODERN ENGLISH SPEAKER UNDERSTAND 16TH CENTURY ENGLISH?
Step out of a time machine into 1550s London, and you won't need a translator. You will, however, think you've landed in a pub full of pirates.
The 16th century encompasses the Tudor period and the dawn of the Shakespearean era. The language spoken during this time is classified as Early Modern English.
Grammatically and syntactically, it is almost identical to the English spoken today. Anyone who has read a Shakespeare play has already encountered the written form of this language.
However, hearing it spoken aloud would be a very different experience due to a linguistic phenomenon called the Great Vowel Shift. During this era, English pronunciation was undergoing a massive, centuries-long transition. To a modern ear, a 16th-century Londoner would sound like they were speaking with a thick, rustic accent—often compared to a modern Irish, Yorkshire, or West Country accent.
Here are a few noticeable differences a modern listener would encounter:
Hard "R"s: Unlike the crisp, non-rhotic accents associated with modern upper-class British English, 16th-century English was heavily rhotic. Every "r" was pronounced with a hard, distinct growl.
Different Vowels: Words like house sounded more like "hoose," and time sounded closer to "teem." The word reason was pronounced like "raisin," which is why Shakespeare frequently used the two words as puns.
Familiar Pronouns: People routinely used thee, thou, and thy for informal conversations with friends and social inferiors, while reserving you and your strictly for formal address or speaking to superiors.
Vocabulary would present occasional stumbling blocks. A modern speaker would have to rely on context clues to parse archaic words like anon (soon), marry (a mild exclamation derived from the Virgin Mary), or betwixt (between).
Ultimately, communication would be entirely possible. It would likely take a few days of active listening for a modern English speaker to attune their ear to the speed and heavy accent of a 16th-century Tudor, but they could absolutely hold a conversation, ask for directions, and order a pint of ale.
pub interior ~ SepiaGlyphs, Quora
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PRZEWALSKI’S HORSES IN THE EXCLUSION ZONE AT CHERNOBYL
In 1998, thirty endangered horses were released into the toxic wasteland of Chernobyl to eat radioactive grass. Instead of dying off, they multiplied into the hundreds.
The original idea was to use these robust grazers to manage overgrown, highly flammable grasses that threatened to fuel wildfires and spread radioactive ash. Today, they create a surreal scene of wild, ancient-looking horses galloping through abandoned Soviet villages.
Because these horses live entirely off the land in a heavily contaminated environment, they do indeed carry measurable levels of radioactivity. The soil in the Exclusion Zone remains laced with radioactive isotopes like Cesium-137 and Strontium-90. When the horses graze, drink from local streams, and inhale dust, they absorb these radionuclides. Strontium mimics calcium and accumulates in their bones, while Cesium mimics potassium and binds to their muscle tissue. If a radiation detector were swept over one of these animals, it would register above normal background levels.
However, the horses are not suffering from acute radiation sickness. The chronic, low-dose radiation they experience may cause subtle cellular damage, an elevated rate of genetic mutations, or slightly shortened individual lifespans compared to horses in pristine environments. Yet, from a population standpoint, the herd is thriving remarkably well. They behave like normal wild horses, forming harems, breeding successfully, and expanding their territory.
The success of the Przewalski's horses highlights a fascinating ecological paradox about the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. For wildlife, the continuous exposure to environmental radiation turns out to be far less harmful than the everyday presence of human civilization. Without people paving over the land, competing for resources, or hunting them, the horses have found an unexpected sanctuary.
The radioactive landscape essentially acts as an invisible barrier keeping modern development out, allowing an endangered species to multiply successfully in one of the most toxic, yet entirely untamed, nature reserves on the planet.
Przewalski’s horses in Chernobyl
~ NovaPrism, Quora
Just De WItt:
Years ago I read an article about birds in the radioactive exclusion zone: they also did quite well. What happened was high speed evolution. Birds born with defects caused by radation (like different colored feathers) weren't picked out by the other birds for mating. So basically the birds that had offspring were the birds that could handle the radiation quite well. I guess something similar happened with the horses.
Also the almost complete lack of human intervention may have helped those species to thrive. Besides the odd group of Russian soldiers who in 2022 thought it was a good idea to dig trenches in the radiation zone in the past 40 years the area has barely been touched by human intervention. [Oriana: Some of those Russian soldiers did end up in hospitals with radiation sickness.]
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AIPAC FACES CRITICISM OVER MONEY IN POLITICS
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has been getting a lot of attention this election cycle, with some Democratic candidates proudly declaring they've sworn off contributions from the group. In Michigan's Democratic primary for U.S. Senate this month, Abdul El-Sayed lambasted his opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens, for receiving AIPAC support.
El-Sayed's victory was emblematic of the increasing influence of the Democratic left and the rising animus toward both the pro-Israel group and money in politics more broadly.
AIPAC's focus is on strengthening the U.S.-Israel alliance. Founded in the early 1950s, it worked for decades to maintain strong bipartisan relationships in Congress and push for policies that benefit the two countries' partnership.
"They always had a couple of basic rules. Number one, they did not endorse candidates," said Ken Toltz, a longtime gun violence prevention activist who began his political career at AIPAC several decades ago.
Ahead of the 2022 election cycle, AIPAC's status quo transformed when it created a political action committee and super PAC — a massive sea change.
Decrease in Americans' support of Israel
Criticism of AIPAC has increased as support for Israel has eroded among Democrats as a result of the war in Gaza and the ongoing Iran war.
"Things started going south for them because of the extent of devastation in the Gaza war and public opinion turning against Israel," said Ron Kampeas, the former Washington bureau chief for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
A recent Pew Research Center survey found that 60% of U.S. adults have an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 53% last year. For the first time since Gallup started asking the question more than 20 years ago, more Americans in February said their sympathies in the Middle East lay more with Palestinians than Israelis, by a 41% to 36% margin.
In July, over 100 House Democrats voted to cut aid to Israel. The effort ultimately failed, but it was a significant sign in the shift of support, even splitting the Democratic leadership.
Toltz said that it's a "five-alarm situation" and that AIPAC's venture into campaign spending has toxified the brand.
"The proof is in the pudding. What have they accomplished in these three election cycles? Do we have a more supportive Democratic Party? No. Do we have a more supportive Congress? No. Is the relationship stronger? No," Toltz said.
Misperceptions
At times, AIPAC's fundraising has been painted — implicitly or explicitly — as coming from foreign agents.
"It's perfectly fine to be critical of AIPAC, perfectly fine to be critical of Israel — it's perfectly not fine to say that an American organization is actually a foreign organization or a front for a foreign government. That's just not true," Jones, the Democratic political analyst, said in an interview.
"It's very dangerous to say that American citizens, especially American Jews, can't express their political opinion and donate to a political cause that supports the country of their choice. It's almost like a dual-loyalty old stereotype that Jews are really not loyal Americans, they really are part of some Jewish conspiracy," Jones said.
In ads blanketing the U.S. this primary season, AIPAC is often singled out by name.
"AIPAC has somehow become the symbol of everything that's wrong with money in politics," Jones said.
Dorton, the United Democracy Project spokesperson, said, "It's very concerning that anti-Israel candidates on the far left have chosen to single out AIPAC in the primary process and literally not mention any other organization."
"We're an American organization made up of millions of pro-Israel American voters who believe in American values and American democracy," he added. "The issue of a stronger U.S.-Israel relationship is equally valid to any other advocacy.”
As the political debate around AIPAC grows more heated, that central mission may be facing some of its toughest challenges since the group's founding.
Dorton, the United Democracy Project spokesperson, said, "It's very concerning that anti-Israel candidates on the far left have chosen to single out AIPAC in the primary process and literally not mention any other organization."
"We're an American organization made up of millions of pro-Israel American voters who believe in American values and American democracy," he added. "The issue of a stronger U.S.-Israel relationship is equally valid to any other advocacy."
As the political debate around AIPAC grows more heated, that central mission may be facing some of its toughest challenges since the group's founding.
https://www.npr.org/2026/08/13/nx-s1-5923565/aipac-israel-primary-elections
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WHY THE EARLY HUMAN POPULATIONS STAYED SMALL
For over 200,000 years, the entire global human population was under one million. We had the biological capacity to outbreed other apes, so why did we remain so incredibly rare?
This staggering demographic stagnation was not due to a lack of fertility, but rather a brutal combination of ecological limitations and the sheer caloric cost of raising a human child.
The most immediate constraint on early human populations was mobility. Early humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers who had to constantly move across the landscape to follow animal herds and find seasonal plant foods.
Because human infants are born completely helpless, a mother had to carry her child until they could walk long distances on their own. It is practically impossible for a nomadic forager to carry two non-walking infants along with essential supplies.
Consequently, births had to be spaced at least three to four years apart.
Furthermore, human children are uniquely expensive to raise. The human brain is a massive energy drain, consuming up to 60% of a newborn’s resting metabolic rate. In harsh Pleistocene environments where calories were often scarce, keeping just one large-brained child fed required immense effort from both parents and the extended community. Having multiple dependents simultaneously was an energetic luxury that early foraging societies simply could not support.
Beyond intentional birth spacing and immense energy demands, early populations were kept in check by staggering mortality rates. Anthropological data suggests that in prehistoric societies, up to half of all children died before reaching puberty due to disease, accidents, predators, or starvation. Even when birth rates were relatively high, the replacement rate was so low that net population growth remained effectively at zero for millennia.
Finally, the planet could not support a massive population of foragers. Hunting and gathering requires vast territories to sustain a single band of people. The carrying capacity of wild landscapes is incredibly low compared to cultivated land. It took the invention of agriculture to concentrate enough calories into a small enough area to break the hunter-gatherer bottleneck.
Once people stopped moving and started farming, communities could store excess food, mothers could safely have children closer together, and the human population finally began its exponential climb. ~
NovaPrism, Quora
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WHY GERMANY CONTINUED FIGHTING THE HOPELESS BATTLE OF BERLIN
The Battle of Berlin in 1945 was a total waste of time to the Germans.
Towards the end of April 1945, Germany was defeated in the war. It was all over, victory was impossible. The huge Soviet army was already encircling Berlin and the allied forces of the west approached on the other side.
Even a prudent ruler or government would have said, We give up. This ruling would have averted many deaths.
Hitler said "No." The Nazi leaders, particularly Hitler, could not give up. They were in a dream, and they were giving orders to their soldiers to protect the capital. It was a reckless command.
The army that was fighting in Berlin was not a real army. They were primarily aged men and young recruits of Hitler Youth. They did not have adequate tanks, fuel to their limited number of trucks, and aircraft. The Russians on the other hand were well equipped.
There was no advantage in waging the battle. It merely delayed the conclusion of the war by two weeks.
During the two weeks, the Germans had lost between 80,000 and 100,000 men in vain. This useless battle had also destroyed Berlin leaving the city in broken stone and rubble.
But worst of all thousands of common German people were subjected to the brutal combat.
They would have saved themselves, as well as spared a colossal waste of lives simply because of fanaticism, by surrendering earlier. ~ Alex, Quora
Colm MacKernan:
Apparently, several people did counsel Hitler to look for an armistice with the Soviets, and when he didn’t rejected out of hand, which is what he mostly did, he would explain that he needed a significant victory before he would approach Stalin to negotiate … the problem is after November 1942 there were no victories of any significant nature for the Germans. So the crucial gating event never happened, and from 1944 onwards the Soviets were on a roll, so why would they have agreed to an armistice?
It is also believed that before the sixth army was defeated at Stalingrad, the Soviets, i.e., Stalin, did contemplate some sort of armistice with the Germans. Maybe if Hitler had broke that discussion and say October of 1942, or at least before early 1943, it might have happened. You can’t understate the degree of cynicism of Joseph Stalin.
Joan Gratzer:
You forgot to mention that the Russians lost 81,000 dead and 280,000 wounded taking Berlin.
Colm MacKernan:
Prescient Germans, even some hardline Nazis reckoned the war was lost in late 1942 or early 1943. Rommel for example confided to senior staff after the Second Battle of El Alamein in November 1942, not only that the war in Africa was lost, but that the broader war was effectively lost due to overwhelming Allied industrial and material superiority. Hjalmar Schacht, Germanys most respected economist, a former president of the Reichsbank and Hitler’s first minister of finance wrote a sharp critique to Hermann Göring in November 1942 warning that the war was unwinnable and Hitler needed to seek an Armistice while Germany still could.
Fritz Todt, the Nazi Reich Minister for Armaments and Munitions died in a mysterious plane crash on February 8, 1942, shortly after taking off from Adolf Hitler’s Wolf's Lair headquarters in East Prussia after he had argued with Hitler, claiming the war could no longer be won and also that Hitler needed to seek an armistice. Albert Speer took his place. General Franz Halder, Chief of the Army General Staff until his dismissal by Hitler in September 1942, had reached a similar conclusion.
By late 1942 and early 1943 a large number of the more intelligent people in the Nazi hierarchy were saying privately that the war could not be won — and by 1943 most were beginning to expect defeat unless Hitler found a way to bring an end to the war at least in the short and medium term with some sort of armistice with the Russians at least. So continuing the war was essentially pointless for Germany from about 1942 onwards.
Apparently to some Hitler explained he needed some sort of big victory before approaching Stalin for an armistice… but a big enough victory never happened after 1942.
Of course you could say the same about the First World War: Germany lost that war pretty well in the first month at the First Battle of the Marne — it just took more than four years for them to realize it.
Russia has lost the war in Ukraine, and lost it in the first two weeks, but four years later they were still losing men pointlessly. The problem for Germany and World War I was that they were going to have to give up all the territory they managed to grab in the first year of the war, Belgium, Northern France, et cetera. So for millions of casualties, they would’ve ended up pointless.
Colm MacKernan:
The problem for Hitler was that by 1939 the wheels were coming off economically, he managed to get a quick boost by the Anschluss with Austria which allowed him to take over Austria’s foreign exchange reserves, and a similar filip with Czechoslovakia, but economically the Nazi regime did not add up, and they were getting ever closer to disaster. Moving to further conquest was a short-term solution, although even that stopped working by about 1941.
Germany was actually massively dependent on imports for all sorts of things, oil seed for example for animal feed without which pork, chicken, other poultry and even beef was going to be in short supply. Iron or, petroleum (synthetic petroleum was very expensive to make) and all sorts of metals for alloying. Things were actually getting to a bit of a desperate state by 1939. Moreover, Nazi Germany had been cut off from international credit to a large degree, not because of Jewish bankers (whom obviously the Nazis tried to blame), but just because it was an obvious bad credit risk.
Mark Johnson:
I read somewhere that Hitler wanted the country utterly destroyed. Something like being the punishment for being unworthy of his genius. That by losing the country proved it was weak and didn't deserve to exist.
The Nero Decree
Hitler issued the order on March 19, 1945.Its official name was the Nero Decree.It used a scorched-earth strategy to ruin the country from within.
Rok Ruž9č:
Well, if you ask the soldiers, they fought so that more German people could retreat to the west, where they would fall under occupation of western allies as opposed to the horrors of Russian occupation.
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ARE HUMANS ABLE TO HAVE MORE OFFSPRING THAN OTHER GREAT APES?
I was surprised to learn that the answer is yes.
The key number to think about is the interbirth interval. That’s the number of years between times that a given female gives birth. That number varies for people. A woman living in a hunter-gatherer society might give birth every 3–4 years.
In some farming societies, that number could go down to as little as 3.
Years ago, when Puerto Rico had an enormously high birth rate, it wasn’t unusual for a woman to get pregnant a year after giving birth. Some conservative Amish groups have interbirth intervals of as little as 1.5 years.
Great apes can’t reproduce that often. “Orangutans have their babies 8 years apart and chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, have their babies 6 years apart.”
Part of the reason for the long intervals is that it takes a long time for infants to be weaned, roughly 2–6 years. Orangutans are especially slow. Human children are weaned at around 1 year in modern societies and at around 2-4 years for hunter-gatherers.
Modern human societies allow more people to survive.
One other factor is that people in modern societies are much more likely to survive childhood and reach adulthood than apes or humans living in the wild. Nearly all modern children survive until adulthood. By contrast, substantial childhood death are common in a hunter-gatherer society. Disease, starvation, and predators routinely kill up to half of all children before they reach reproductive age. These people die at rates similar to those of wild great apes.
The remarkable advanced in medical science, and especially the discovery and wide application of immunization against most common previously deadly diseases by vaccination, allowed for the survival of most offspring leading to the doubling and redoubling of the human population during the past century.
All Great Apes have among the lowest fertility rates of all mammals, giving birth an average of only once every four to six years. The human worldwide birthrate right now is 2.2 to 2.3 children per woman, just barely above replacement rate, and dropping. According to the UN, the overall human population will peak around 2084 and then begin to decline in absolute terms.
IS IT POSSIBLE FOR A HUMAN AND ANOTHER APE TO PROCREATE?
There are no reliable historical accounts of the resulting hybrids, despite evidence of incidental sexual contacts between humans and apes. For instance, there was a Soviet scientist named Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov, who tried for about a decade to create a viable human-orangutan hybrid via in vitro fertilization, and failed.
The reason behind why ligers and mules can be born as a result of the procreation of their parents is because the parent species are genetically similar enough for a viable offspring to be carried to term. Animals within the same genus tend to be able to reproduce with one another; though that isn’t to say that those that hail from separate genuses are incapable of doing so.
Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and humans do belong not the same genus, but to the same family. Lions and cheetahs; both belong to the family Felidae; however, lions belong to the genus Panthera while cheetahs belong to the genus Acinonyx. They’re both members of the cat family, yet, owing to lower genetic similarity, are incapable of interbreeding the way lions, tigers, leopards and jaguars can.
Coyotes, wolves, and domestic dogs can all interbreed and produce fertile offspring because they belong to the same genus (Canis) and share 78 chromosomes.
Coyote (Canis latrans)
The majority of humans today aren’t in fact pure Homo sapiens. A significant amount of admixture between Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis occurred in the past resulting in only those hailing from Sub-Saharan Africa being free of Neanderthal genes.
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HOW TO REDISCOVER YOUR PURPOSE LATER IN LIFE
Margaret is 67 and, by most measures, doing well. Since leaving her senior role two years ago, she has stayed busy: joining a community board, taking on consultancy work, signing up for courses and retreats. She is, as she put it, ‘doing all the right things’. And yet, she told me, something feels off.
She is not depressed. But she feels tired, as if the effort of keeping everything going has become harder than it used to be. ‘I keep adding things,’ she said, ‘but nothing quite sticks the way it used to.’
As a psychologist and consultant who helps people find their purpose later in life, I hear stories like Margaret’s a lot. Take David, 71, a former GP, who described something similar. He volunteers, travels, stays socially connected, and would be seen by others as making the most of this stage of life. And yet, as he put it simply: ‘Everything looks fine on paper. I just don’t know what I’m actually doing it for any more.’
Margaret and David are based on real clients of mine, but I’ve changed their names and personal details to conceal their identities. Their experiences are more common than we tend to acknowledge. Many people in their 60s and 70s and beyond remain active, capable and outwardly engaged. Their lives still look full. But, privately, many notice a growing gap between how life appears and how it actually feels: a subtle flatness or loss of direction.
If this resonates with you, you might have found that it’s easy to interpret your loss of direction as a personal failing, as if something needs fixing. You may also have noticed that much of the popular messaging around later life is far from helpful. From ‘second act’ narratives to the idea of an ‘encore career’, popularized by writers such as Marc Freedman, and the wider calls from TED talks and other media outlets to ‘reinvent’ yourself at 60 or beyond, later life is often framed as a time to begin again. For some, this is energizing and appropriate. But many of my clients tell me that it just adds to their sense of failure and makes them feel under pressure.
There are good reasons to doubt that reinvention is the answer to later-life malaise. The lifespan psychologist Laura Carstensen’s socioemotional selectivity theory shows that, as people become more aware of time as finite, their priorities begin to change. Rather than seeking novelty or broad exploration, many older adults become more selective about where they invest their energy, favoring meaning, emotional depth and relationships over expansion for its own sake. A reduced appetite for reinvention, then, is not a loss of drive. It reflects an adaptive change in motivation.
The psychoanalyst Erik Erikson offers a complementary perspective. In The Life Cycle Completed (1982), he proposed that, in later adulthood, our developmental task moves toward integration: weaving accumulated experience into a more coherent, internally aligned sense of self. Discarding previous identities and starting afresh are not part of this process. Integration is about deepening and consolidating what is already there.
Drawing on these insights, rather than reinventing yourself in later life, I propose a solution that I call reorientation. This approach acknowledges that your direction of growth is changing, becoming more selective and reflective. What follows is a series of steps to help you work with that change rather than push against it.
Identify what still matters to you
Over time, our lives accumulate layers of roles, obligations and routines. Some remain deeply meaningful. Others persist largely through habit or a long-standing sense of responsibility. The first step towards reorientation is learning to tell the difference.
Try this: take one commitment you currently hold – such as a committee position, a social role, a regular obligation – and sit quietly with it for a few minutes. Ask yourself two questions: Does this still feel alive to me? And: If I were choosing this today, would I still choose it?
Notice what arises. You are not making a decision yet, simply observing. A role that once expressed your values may, over time, have become something you maintain out of inertia rather than genuine meaning. Noticing this, without judgment, is where reorientation begins.
You can repeat the process with your various commitments in life.
My client Margaret tried this with her consultancy work. When she sat with it honestly, she realized she was continuing largely because it felt like proof that she was still useful, not because the work itself still engaged her. That recognition, uncomfortable as it was, gave her something real to work with.
I also tried this exercise myself, focusing on my role as secretary for a voluntary organization. On paper, it still sounded like something I ‘should’ value. However, in practice, it had come to feel like an obligation rather than something that engaged me. When I sat with the two questions, the answers were clear. It no longer felt alive. And if I were choosing it today, I would not choose it. Even the events and visits, which might once have held interest, no longer drew me in.
That recognition was uncomfortable. But it was also clarifying. It shifted the question for me from ‘Should I continue?’ to something more honest about what I actually want to give my time to now.
Keep a brief energy log
Many of my clients tell me of their frustration at not feeling as energetic as they used to. But I tell them that not all tiredness signals the same thing. Some effort can be enlivening even when it’s demanding. Other effort creates a more diffuse exhaustion that lingers, a sign that energy is being directed in ways that no longer fit.
The cultural pressure to keep reinventing can make this harder to interpret. If things feel hard-going, you might assume that you should push harder or try something new. But persistent depletion in later life may simply mean your energy is being directed in ways that no longer align with what matters to you.
A more useful question than Am I tired? is: What kind of effort is this?
One way to explore this is to keep a brief energy log for a week. After each significant activity or commitment, note in a sentence or two how you feel, not just physically, but inwardly. Do you feel more settled, or drained and vaguely resentful? Over time, you’ll find that patterns tend to emerge.
Margaret noticed she could spend an entire afternoon writing, or in a meaningful one-to-one conversation, and feel replenished. In contrast, an hour in a committee meeting left her feeling flat for the rest of the day. The log made visible what she had previously been dismissing as general tiredness.
When I completed an energy log myself, I noticed something similar in my own week. Writing and time in nature tended to leave me more settled and energized. Some conversations had the opposite effect. Not all, but certain interactions left me feeling depleted in a way that lingered.
Paying attention to this changed how I responded. Rather than assuming I simply needed to be more available or more patient (the usual ‘push harder’ mentality), I began to place clearer boundaries around my time. In some situations, that meant deliberately keeping conversations brief. In others, it meant recognizing that I did not need to engage at all.
I didn’t withdraw from people completely, but I began paying attention to when my energy was being spent in ways that no longer felt sustainable – and then I made adjustments accordingly. Use your energy log to make the same intentional tweaks to your own life so you spend more time doing things that leave you feeling energized.Channel what has always mattered most to you.
Earlier in life, growth often involves acquiring new skills, identities and experiences. In later life, development more frequently involves integrating and expressing what is already there.
This step involves a change in how you view your own depth. Rather than accepting the reinvention narrative and asking yourself: What new path should I take?, I suggest that it can be more helpful to ask: How might what I already know, value and do well be expressed in ways that better fit who I am now?
To make this more concrete, try mapping your experience. Take a sheet of paper or open your Notes app, and jot down three things: the knowledge or skills you have built over decades; the values that have remained consistent across your life; and the kinds of contribution that have felt most meaningful. Then look at where these overlap. Perhaps at this stage in your life you have a chance to give this particular intersection of skills, values and meaning greater priority.
For Margaret, this exercise surfaced something she had been undervaluing. Her deepest satisfaction had consistently come from helping individuals think more clearly about their own lives, not from managing, leading or consulting at scale.
If you gain a similar kind of insight from the task, ask yourself one further question: How can I find a way to express this more in my life? Often the answer points not towards doing something entirely new, but to something already present in your life that has been crowded out by obligations that once made sense but no longer do.
For instance, Margaret realized she had been trying to maintain the form of her earlier career when the essence of what’s always mattered most to her is something more relational. She began to consider how this might take a different form. Instead of continuing with consultancy work that required her to maintain a professional identity that no longer fully fit, she explored offering more focused one-to-one conversations and creating space for writing, where she could express that relational depth more naturally.
I came to a similar realization when I completed this reflective exercise during a three-month sabbatical. Stepping back from my usual consultancy work made it easier for me to see what I had always found most meaningful through my career – the opportunity for deep reflection.
I realised that writing and time spent managing my woodland were closer expressions of that same underlying value. They offered a different way of engaging, one that felt more aligned with how I wanted to spend my time now.
By rebalancing my priorities, I wasn’t reinventing myself, but giving more room to a purpose that had always been present but never fully expressed.
Reframe how you think about your contributions
Contemporary culture often equates contribution with visibility – celebrating concrete achievements, making a splash and building a brand. Similarly, if your identity has long been tied to visible achievement, this can make the natural evolution of later life feel like diminishment.
But while the kind of contributions people make in later life often change form and might seem less visible, they are certainly no less valuable. Mentoring, sharing perspective, offering sustained presence to others: these can carry real meaning, even when they are less externally visible than earlier achievements.
If you’ve been feeling anxious about what you can contribute later in life, one way to approach this is through a simple reframing exercise. Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the left, write what you feel you still need to build or prove. On the right, write about all your stories, skills, experiences and perspectives that you could share. Give yourself 10 minutes, and resist the urge to edit as you go. Then read back the right-hand column slowly. For many people, the second column turns out to be richer than expected.
Now, try shifting the question you ask yourself, from What will I leave behind? to What knowledge and experience do I already carry that is worth passing on? That reframing can once again make your later life purpose feel less like a project requiring reinvention and more like a natural expression of who you have already become.
Margaret found that when she stepped back from maintaining the scale of her earlier career and began offering one-to-one conversations to a small number of people navigating their own later-life transitions, the flatness lifted. The work was less visible, but it felt, as she put it, ‘like mine again’.
I have reframed things similarly in my own life. Spending more time in my woodland, alongside a greater focus on writing, has brought me a deeper sense of purpose and satisfaction. Yes, the work itself is less visible, but it feels more fully aligned with how I want to live.
There is also a secondary beneficial effect. I like to think that having that space to think and write has also made me a calmer, more settled presence with others. The contribution is not always in what I do, but in how I am. If you are able to make similar adjustments in your own life, I hope you too will notice these kinds of secondary benefits.
FINAL NOTES
The need for reorientation can be easy to miss because it doesn’t arrive as a single moment or turning point. It shows up as a gradual awareness that ways of living that once felt natural to you now take more effort and don’t feel as meaningful. It can be easy to misinterpret these feelings – to feel like you’re failing or not trying hard enough – and to think the answer must be some kind of dramatic reinvention. Reorientation offers a healthier alternative that’s more in tune with later-life psychology.
Six months on, Margaret has stepped back from the consultancy work and left the community board. She has not replaced these with something new. Instead, she has created more space for writing and a small number of one-to-one conversations, both of which her energy log consistently identified as more sustaining. She describes the change not as starting over, but as ‘finally listening to something I had been ignoring for a while’.
That, in essence, is what reorientation offers: a more honest relationship with the life you have already built, and a clearer sense of where meaning for you now resides.
https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-rediscover-your-purpose-later-in-life?utm_source=Psyche+Magazine&utm_campaign=5f6291ee0d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_08_21&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-8e23a7006c-838173901
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WHY OLDER PEOPLE ARE HAPPIER
Around the world, happiness tends to peak later in life. It has more to do with balancing priorities than elderly wisdom.
After playing mahjong for an entire day, our retired parents came home glowing with satisfaction. They recounted the specific moves of the game and the thrill of well-executed wins. They were tired, but it was a good kind of tiredness, the kind that comes from a well-spent day. What is their secret to being so happy?
For many of us, achieving this momentary state of joy and wellbeing (what psychologists call ‘hedonic happiness’) is surprisingly difficult. Often, the deliberate search for happiness can even lead to less of it, an established ironic phenomenon known as the happiness paradox. It is like trying to catch a bar of wet soap: the tighter you squeeze, the faster it slips away. Yet, like many other older people, our parents seemed to find happiness effortlessly, apparently making them immune to the paradox.
In fact, research spanning 145 countries has identified a U-shaped happiness-age curve, whereby self-reported wellbeing tends to dip in mid-adulthood and peak in old age. Despite the functional deterioration (such as health decline, cognitive impairment) and other losses that often accompany aging, older adults generally report being happier than do younger adults.
So, why are older adults happier? And what can we learn from them?
To understand their secret, we propose the concept of intergoal compatibility. Successfully achieving happiness depends not just on finding things that make you happy and doing them, but on whether being happy and pursuing happiness fits into your current broader system of life goals.
For younger and middle-aged adults, life goals typically resemble a crowded, competitive landscape. If you are middle-aged or younger, then you are likely in the ‘accumulation phase’ of life, juggling multiple high-stakes objectives: acquiring skills, building a career, raising a family, saving for major expenses, establishing your reputation, and so on. In this phase, goals centered on growth, future security and achievement take priority. These goals are time-sensitive and demanding, requiring immense dedication of your resources (such as time, energy, focus), and they often ask you to delay gratification today for a payoff tomorrow.
As a consequence, when a younger adult engages in a purely hedonic activity (such as playing mahjong, binge-watching a TV series, or taking a long nap), it often triggers a sense of goal conflict and opportunity cost. A day spent seeking happiness can feel like a day stolen from success. You may be physically at the mahjong table, but mentally still at your office desk. This internal friction generates stress and anxiety, dampening the joy the activity was meant to produce.
For older adults, however, their hierarchy of goals has shifted. One might assume this shift is simply a result of wisdom – that older adults have ‘life figured out’ through decades of experience. While life experience certainly plays a role, research suggests a more important driver is our ‘perceived time horizon’: the years we feel we have ahead. As illustrated by what the lifespan psychologist Laura Carstensen calls the ‘socioemotional selectivity theory’, when future time feels limited as we grow older, our goals pivot away from long‑term achievement and toward emotional happiness and meaning. As a result, happiness moves to the center of the goal system, and life is reorganized to be more compatible with happiness goals, making happiness more attainable.
This distinction between wisdom and time horizon is crucial. A landmark study by Carstensen and the social psychologist Barbara Fredrickson published in 1998 suggested that this shift isn’t unique to old age, but can be driven by changes in the perceived time horizon. They found that when younger people (specifically, symptomatic HIV patients) faced a shortened time horizon, their goals adjusted to resemble those of older adults, prioritizing emotional connection over future achievement. Conversely, when Carstensen and her colleagues in another study asked healthy older adults to imagine a medical breakthrough that extended their lives by decades, their goals shifted back toward those of younger people.
This shows that the ‘secret’ to older adults’ happiness isn’t necessarily some mystical wisdom gained only through age. Rather, it is an adaptive adjustment in response to a shrinking time horizon. Because older people are more keenly aware than younger people of their time being finite, maintaining social connections and enjoying life aren’t ‘distractions’ from more important work – these activities are their ‘work’ and primary life priorities.
Based on all this, we suggest that the most important lesson we can learn from older adults about happiness is that: 1) the compatibility between happiness pursuits and other life goals matters; and 2) we can deliberately adjust our system of life goals to improve this compatibility. The question then becomes how to make these adjustments.
Given the heavy responsibilities on our plates, achieving the kind of intergoal compatibility that older adults enjoy might seem impossible. You can’t simply act retired when you have a mortgage to pay, children to feed and a career to build. However, this structural challenge is often made worse by unhelpful beliefs about what happiness is and how it works.
Many of us have internalized a zero-sum mentality, viewing happiness and ambition (for growth, achievement, and success) as enemies. This false dichotomy causes us to swing between two extremes.
On one end lies the ‘grind mindset’. People in this mode prioritize ambition above all else. They view effort and stress as the fuel for success, and relaxation as the rust that corrodes it. In this mindset, we convince ourselves that we must engage in hard, continuous labor, delaying gratification indefinitely to ensure success. This may even lead to the stigmatization of happiness pursuit as mere hedonism – a moral failing of indulging oneself in pleasure when one should be grinding.
On the other end lies the YOLO (you only live once) trap. Here, people rebel against relentless pressure by treating pleasure as the only thing that matters, neglecting the very real need for long-term achievement and meaning. This approach attempts to force happiness into a life that cannot sustainably support it, often leading to a chaotic existence where pleasure is chased to numb the anxiety of neglected responsibilities.
Both extremes miss the mark. The first leads to burnout: you might succeed in your career but find yourself miserable, depleted and, over time, potentially losing the vitality and motivation that made you successful in the first place. The second leads to a lack of purpose and a fragile foundation for the future. Many younger adults are left stuck in the middle, oscillating between overwork and guilty procrastination, never fully inhabiting either state.
We need to update these beliefs. Happiness is neither a luxury nor the enemy of ambition. A wealth of research evidence shows that happiness and ambition both are foundations of a good life, and they complement each other. Happiness builds resilience, strengthens our fitness, broadens our cognition, and makes us more productive in the long run. Conversely, making progress on our other important personal goals builds the foundation for sustainable happiness.
As well as updating your beliefs about happiness, there are also strategies you can use to resolve the friction between enjoying today and building for tomorrow. A core approach we recommend is to reframe your leisure and social activities. Take an afternoon spent relaxing or catching up with friends – if you can see these sorts of pursuits not as time-wasting but as energy-management that’s essential for your career goals, then you’ll find the guilt vanishes.
This compatibility or alignment (using happiness to amplify your other life goals) transforms the pursuit of happiness from a guilty pleasure into part of a well-rounded life.
We want to acknowledge that everyone has their own unique circumstances and priorities. What works for a freelancer might not work for a corporate executive or a stay-at-home parent. Each of us needs to look carefully at our own lives to find the best ways to create this compatibility. Beyond reframing, below are some further suggestions to help you:
Expand your definition of happiness. Younger adults often equate happiness primarily with high-arousal positive emotions – excitement, thrill and intense euphoria. They may think of a wild night out, a rollercoaster, or an expensive vacation. While these experiences have value, they’re not always available and can be difficult to integrate into daily life. Another lesson we can learn from older adults is to appreciate low-arousal positive emotions such as calm, peace and contentment. These gentler forms of happiness are easier to weave into daily routines and can be just as nourishing. You can enjoy a peaceful cup of coffee while reviewing a document or find satisfaction in a tidy workspace.
Choose activities that serve multiple purposes. We often compartmentalize our lives: this hour is for work, this hour is for friends, and this hour is for health. This leads to time scarcity and goal conflict. Another effective happiness strategy is choosing activities that hit two or more targets in one go. For example, if you enjoy social interaction, consider prioritizing socially oriented activities with colleagues or clients (eg, arranging a regular team dinner or forming a study group). You’re building your social network while enjoying yourself.
Seek happiness that feels meaningful. Younger adults often separate fun activities (eg, partying, gaming) from meaningful ones (eg, studying, working, volunteering). To build better alignment between happiness and meaning, look for enjoyable activities that also provide a sense of purpose. If you enjoy writing, you might start a blog that helps others, turning a pleasurable activity into something that also contributes value to the world. If you like fitness, occasionally joining a charity run can add a layer of purpose to your exercise routine. You’re not just having fun, but also building something, contributing, growing.
As we write this entry over the weekend, we feel a distinct sense of contentment. This isn’t just because the pursuit of happiness is a subject close to our hearts, but because, for the first time in a while, we don’t feel the familiar weight of burnout.
Yesterday, we took the afternoon off to visit our parents. We sat around the table, the clatter of tiles filling the room as we played mahjong, something we haven’t done in a long while. In the past, a voice in our heads would have whispered that we were wasting time, that we should be home working. But this time, we reframed the moment. We realized that the laughter we shared and the focus we poured into the game were not distractions from our work; they were fuel for it.
By allowing ourselves to be fully immersed in that joy, we gathered the energy and clarity we needed to write these words today. We don’t have to wait until we are retired to learn this lesson. We can build a life where ambition and joy don’t just coexist, but actually elevate one another.
The art of being present isn’t an escape from the future. Rather, it is the foundation upon which a successful one is built.
https://psyche.co/ideas/why-older-people-are-happier-and-what-we-can-learn-from-them
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WHO INVENTED ICE CREAM?
Ice cream was not invented by a single person. It evolved over thousands of years through contributions from ancient China, Persia, and Europe.
Ancient Beginnings
Ancient China: Rulers in China ate frozen milk and rice mixtures or buffalo milk mixed with camphor and ice during the Tang Dynasty.
Persia & Rome: People mixed mountain snow with fruit syrups, honey, and rose water.
European Evolution
Italy: Cooks during the Renaissance added cream and eggs to frozen treats, creating early gelato.
France: Sicilian chef Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli opened a famous café in Paris in 1886, making frozen desserts popular for the general public.
Modern Production
James Hemings: An enslaved chef for Thomas Jefferson, he crafted an early French-style vanilla ice cream recipe in the late 1700s.
James Hemings was the first American to train as a chef in France. Three-quarters white in ancestry, he was born into slavery in Virginia in 1765. At eight years old, he was purchased by Thomas Jefferson at his residence of Monticello.
Augustus Jackson: An African-American chef from Philadelphia, he improved ice cream manufacturing and storage techniques in the 1830s, earning the nickname "Father of Ice Cream”.
Augustus Jackson was a businessperson, chef, ice cream maker, and confectioner from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is credited as inventing a modern method of manufacturing ice cream and for new flavor development. is widely nicknamed the "Father of Ice Cream".
Jackson did not invent the frozen dessert itself, but he revolutionized its manufacturing process, created new flavor techniques, and popularized eggless "Philadelphia-style" ice cream. He is nicknamed “the Father of Ice Cream”, despite not inventing ice cream.
Nancy Johnson Ice Cream Maker Patent: The Artificial Freezer
In the heart of the 19th century, ice cream was a luxury reserved for those with access to ice houses and who could afford to employ personal chefs. Nancy Maria Donaldson Johnson, an American inventor, changed this and the way we produce ice cream by inventing the world’s first hand-cranked ice cream maker, patented as the “Artificial Freezer” on September 9, 1843 (U.S. Patent No. 3254). This simple invention revolutionized ice cream production by introducing an efficient method for freezing cream and mixing the ice cream mixture evenly.
Johnson’s invention consisted of a wooden tub filled with a mixture of crushed ice and salt, which lowered the melting point of the ice, creating the freezing conditions needed. Inside this tub was a metal container holding the cream mixture. A hand crank located on the lid turned perforated S-shaped paddles attached to a vertical shaft. These paddles efficiently scraped ice crystals from the inner surface of the metal container, constantly allowing fresh portions of the semi fluid mass to freeze evenly against the refrigerating surface. This design made ice cream making less labor intensive compared to the earlier pot freezer method, where ice cream was churned manually in a metal pot surrounded by ice.
Ice Cream for Everyone: Impact on the Ice Cream Industry and Parlors
Johnson’s invention did more than just improve ice cream texture; it democratized ice cream production, making it accessible beyond elite ice cream parlors. Families could now produce ice cream at home using a hand cranked freezer, experimenting with flavors and ingredients. This innovation set the stage for the growth of the ice cream industry, expanding ice cream production and popularizing frozen desserts like frozen yogurt.
Her invention’s principles remain at the core of modern ice cream makers, with the basic design of concentric cylinders and a hand crank still influencing contemporary appliances. The efficient scraping of frozen matter from the inner surface and the mixing of fresh portions of the ice cream mixture made Johnson’s ice cream freezer a breakthrough in freezing cream technology.
Nancy Johnson: The Successful Inventor and Her Legacy
Nancy Johnson was more than just an inventor; she was a very successful inventor who filed the ice cream maker patent in her own name at a time when women inventors faced significant legal and social barriers. Married to Walter Rogers Johnson, a scientist and the first secretary of the American Association, Nancy managed to secure her own property rights and sign legal agreements independently, a remarkable achievement for women of her era.
Together with her sister Mary Maria Stroud, Nancy Johnson was also involved in teaching freed slaves, reflecting her commitment beyond invention. Although Johnson sold the rights to her patent to William G. Young for a modest sum, her invention sparked a wave of innovation in ice cream making, inspiring countless improvements and new patents in the ice cream industry.
Celebrating Scoop-tastic History: Women Inventors Who Shaped Ice Cream
Nancy Maria Donaldson Johnson’s story is a reminder of the history behind our favorite dessert. Alongside other pioneers like Agnes Bertha Marshall, known as the “Queen of Ices,” these women inventors pushed the boundaries of ice cream making. Agnes Marshall patented her own ice cream maker design and contributed recipes and techniques that further shaped the history of ice cream and frozen desserts.
At the Museum of Ice Cream, we’re more than just about tasting; we’re about celebrating the people behind every scoop. Let’s cherish the legacy of women like Nancy Johnson and Agnes Marshall. Their contributions continue to make ice cream a universal symbol of joy and community. Here’s to more scoops, stories, and the endless possibilities that lie in a tub of ice cream! ~ AI preview
Ice cream wasn’t invented once. It was invented over and over again, independently, across different parts of the world, by cultures that had never met and never shared recipes. China, Persia, India, the Middle East. Each one arrived at some version of a frozen, sweet, shareable treat entirely on their own.
I think about that a lot. Because it tells you something important about what ice cream actually is. It didn’t spread through trade routes or colonial influence. It emerged from the same human instinct appearing again and again across history: the desire to turn something cold into something joyful, and to share that moment with someone else.
That’s not a dessert story. That’s a human story. And it’s the reason we built Museum of Ice Cream.
Ice Cream Existed Before It Had a Name
Long before anyone had a word for ice cream, people were already trying to make something that felt like it.
In China around 200 BCE, mixtures of milk and rice were frozen using ice collected from mountain lakes. By the Tang Dynasty, frozen milk desserts were being served to royalty from ice stored in underground houses built specifically for that purpose.
In Persia around 400 BCE, people were eating faloodeh, a frozen dessert made with rose water, lime juice, and delicate noodles, a version of which still exists today. In India, kulfi developed as a slow-frozen milk dessert packed with pistachio, saffron, and cardamom. In the Middle East, people were drinking sharbat, fruit syrups chilled with ice, which is where the words sherbet and sorbet eventually came from.
None of these cultures were copying each other. There were no shared recipes, no cultural exchange, no trade route connecting a Persian faloodeh maker to a Tang Dynasty royal kitchen.
Before it was called "ice cream," the dessert was most commonly known in English as “cream ice" (or "iced cream") during the 17th and 18th centuries. Further back in history, early ancient precursors went by completely different names based on how they were made.
They were all trying to answer the same question: how do you turn something cold into something joyful?
That question is thousands of years old. We’re still asking it today.
Ice Cream Started as a Luxury
For most of history, ice cream wasn’t something kids grabbed after school. It was rare, expensive, and complicated to make. You needed access to ice, which meant either living near mountains or paying for it to be harvested and stored. You needed time. You needed knowledge. For most people, none of those things were available.
Thomas Jefferson fell in love with ice cream during his time in Europe and later helped popularize it in America. George Washington reportedly spent what would be thousands of dollars today on ice cream alone. These weren’t casual purchases. Ice cream was a status symbol, something you served at important dinners to signal wealth and access.
Imagine that. The same thing you can buy at a corner store for a few dollars was once reserved for heads of state.
That evolution fascinates me, because it shows how something that started as exclusive became something genuinely universal. That shift didn’t happen by accident. It happened because of one woman most people have never heard of.
The Woman Who Helped Bring Ice Cream to Everyone
One of the most important people in ice cream history isn’t someone most people know. I think about her often.
Her name was Nancy M. Johnson. In 1843, she patented the hand-cranked ice cream maker, which allowed ice cream to be churned more evenly and made the process far more reliable. Before her invention, making ice cream meant stirring a mixture by hand surrounded by salt and crushed ice, a slow and unpredictable process that kept ice cream firmly in the hands of people with professional kitchens and significant resources.
Her invention changed that. It moved ice cream from elite kitchens into everyday homes and eventually helped make large-scale commercial production possible. The first ice cream parlors, the ones that opened their doors to ordinary people for the first time, were built on the foundation she laid.
What I find most significant about Nancy Johnson isn’t the technical achievement, though that matters enormously. It’s what the invention represented. That wasn’t only a mechanical improvement. It was an emotional one. It made joy more accessible. And in my mind, that’s exactly what ice cream has always been about.
Refrigeration Changed Everything
If you want to understand how ice cream became part of everyday life, refrigeration is the turning point.
Before mechanical refrigeration, ice had to be harvested from frozen lakes and rivers in winter, stored in underground ice houses, and transported before it melted. Ice cream was seasonal, expensive, and limited to whoever had reliable access to that supply chain. Most people didn’t.
Mechanical refrigeration changed all of that within a generation. Ice cream became year-round. Production scaled up. Parlors expanded into neighborhoods that had never had one. Families who had only tasted ice cream on special occasions could suddenly have it on a Tuesday in July for no particular reason.
That shift matters more than it might seem. Because ice cream going from rare to routine isn’t just an economic story. It’s a cultural one. When something becomes a regular part of how people mark their days, celebrate their moments, and comfort themselves after difficult ones, it stops being a product and becomes a ritual.
And rituals are what turn food into culture.
Ice Cream Never Stopped Evolving
What I love most about ice cream is that it never stops changing. Every generation finds a new way to reinvent it.
The ice cream cone became popular at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair when a vendor reportedly ran out of bowls and started rolling waffles into cones instead. That accidental improvisation became one of the most iconic ways to eat ice cream in the world.
Frances Hashimoto invented mochi ice cream in Los Angeles by wrapping small balls of ice cream inside soft Japanese rice cake, combining two completely different food traditions into something entirely new. Soft serve changed the texture of what ice cream could be. Liquid nitrogen changed how it could be prepared. Plant-based ice creams opened the experience to people who couldn’t access it before.
Each of these innovations came from someone asking the same basic question Nancy Johnson was asking in 1843: how do we make this better, more accessible, more joyful?
Ice cream keeps evolving because people keep reinventing how they want to experience joy. That’s not a coincidence. That’s the whole point.
Why Every Culture Has Ice Cream
There are very few foods that show up in almost every culture on earth. Pizza belongs to Italy. Sushi belongs to Japan. Tacos belong to Mexico. Most foods have a home.
But ice cream belongs to everyone.
I think about why that is. And the answer I keep coming back to is this: every culture celebrates the same moments. Birthdays. Summer days. Family gatherings. Milestones. Small wins that deserve to be marked. The specific foods change from place to place, but the instinct to mark those moments with something sweet and shareable is universal.
Ice cream shows up wherever people want to celebrate something. It doesn’t matter what language they speak or what country they’re from. The gesture is the same.
That’s why I believe ice cream isn’t just food. It’s a cultural language. One that doesn’t need translation.
Why Ice Cream Matters More Than People Think
When people ask why we built Museum of Ice Cream, they sometimes assume it’s because we love dessert. That’s understandable. But it’s not really it.
We built it because of what ice cream represents.
Think about when ice cream shows up in people’s lives. Birthday parties. First dates. Family road trips. The afternoon after something hard. The celebration after something great. The lazy summer day that doesn’t need a reason at all. Ice cream appears at almost every kind of human moment, and it always shows up on the same side. The side that wants to feel good.
Nobody says let’s get ice cream to have a difficult conversation. Ice cream shows up when people want to connect, to celebrate, to comfort each other, or to slow down for a few minutes and enjoy something together.
That’s why we think of ice cream as culture, not a product. And that’s why understanding where it came from matters. Because when you know that people in Persia were eating faloodeh 2,400 years ago for the same reason you’re eating a scoop today, it changes how the scoop tastes.
So Who Invented Ice Cream?
Nobody did. And everybody did.
Every culture that ever froze something sweet and shared it with someone else contributed to what ice cream is today. That’s not a deflection. That’s the most honest answer history gives us.
At Museum of Ice Cream, we think about that every day. It’s why we built spaces that connect people to ice cream’s history, culture, and meaning, not just its flavor. Because when you understand where ice cream comes from, a scoop becomes something more than dessert.
https://www.museumoficecream.com/blog/history-of-ice-cream/
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HOW FATHER’S DRINKING AFFECTS BABIES
There is growing recognition that how much men drink before conception plays a role in fetal alcohol spectrum disorders
A father's alcohol consumption has long been overshadowed by the focus on what a mother drinks. But that could be about to change following new research.
For more than 50 years, scientists have warned about the risks of drinking alcohol in pregnancy. Recent research has found that a mother's consumption of as little as one drink a week may affect a child's brain development, cognitive function and behavior, and facial shape, while for decades, public health campaigns have repeatedly said that there's no safe amount of alcohol for mums to drink while pregnant.
The scientific consensus seems pretty clear – that prenatal alcohol exposure can cause a variety of problems (although some questions remain around the precise risk of light compared to heavy drinking, for example). Potential harms include neurodevelopmental impairments as well as particular facial features most commonly associated with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD), but also behavioral, cognitive and learning problems, such as speech delays.
The effects cover a broad spectrum, which is part of why FASD is now the preferred description to "fetal alcohol syndrome", or FAS.
But as the risks of maternal alcohol consumption have become better-documented, another potential contributing factor to FASD has remained largely overlooked: how much the father drinks. Research on fertility and reproduction "has been so woman-focused, so maternal centric, that we've not really done our due diligence on the male side", says Michael Golding, a developmental physiologist at Texas A&M University who researches alcohol exposure and fetal development.
Yet researchers like Golding have suspected a paternal role for a long time. "For years now, we've been hearing stories from women who said, 'I never drank during pregnancy, but now I have an FAS kid – and my male partner was a chronic alcohol abuser'," he says. But such stories often were dismissed as mothers being forgetful, if not outright lying.
Recent research, however, raises an intriguing – and possibly game-changing – possibility: these mothers were right all along.
The idea that a father's alcohol consumption before conception could have an impact on the offspring may seem far-fetched. But recent population studies have found that babies whose fathers drank are at a higher risk for various poor health outcomes. One 2021 observational study of more than half a million couples in China, for example, found that the risk of birth defects – including cleft palate, congenital heart disease, and digestive tract anomalies – was higher if the father drank before conception, even when the mother did not drink. Another population study from China compared 5,000 children with congenital heart defects to 5,000 without. Again, while overall risk remained relatively low, it found that babies were nearly three times more likely to have a congenital heart defect if their father drank – defined as having more than 50ml (1.7fl oz) of alcohol per day in the three months before pregnancy – than if he didn’t.
It's important to note that the overall risk of birth defects still remained relatively low. In the 2021 study of various birth defects in China, for example, the most-impacted type – cleft palate – was found in just 105 babies of the 164,151 whose fathers drank.
But this made cleft palate 1.5 times more likely among offspring of fathers who drank, than if the fathers didn't drink. "Our finding suggests that future fathers should be encouraged to modify their alcohol intake before conceiving to reduce fetal risk, considering a paternal drinking rate of 31.0% substantially elevated the risk of birth defects," the researchers wrote.
In July 2024, meanwhile, a study found that if fathers drank alcohol before conception, fetal growth appeared to be impacted.
Still, pinpointing whether the father's alcohol consumption actually caused these issues, as opposed to just being correlated with them, is difficult. While researchers of both studies controlled for confounding factors, such as if the father also smoked, it isn't possible to account for every single potential contributor. "Human studies are extremely messy – there are a lot of confounding factors there," says Golding. "What is the individual's diet? Do they exercise? There are a whole bunch of things there that make it incredibly difficult."
Meanwhile, setting up a randomized controlled trial (RCT), the gold standard of scientific research, isn't exactly an option when it comes to alcohol consumption and pregnancy. Even if it were ethical to tell some fathers to drink before conception, knowing it might have a negative impact on the offspring, it's unlikely that those who were normally teetotalers would start imbibing – or, in a theoretical control group, that those who frequently drank would completely stop.
But you can set up such an RCT for animals – specifically, mice.
Which is what Golding did. First, his team mapped the physical abnormalities associated with FASD in humans, such as smaller eyes and a reduced head size, on to a mouse model. Then they divided mice into groups where just pregnant mothers were given alcohol; where only the fathers were, pre-conception; and where both parents were. When they compared the features of the offsprings, they found a clear theme.
If a mouse mum consumed alcohol in pregnancy, her offspring showed some of the physiological symptoms of FASD that might be expected. But some changes in both cranial-facial patterning and in overall growth got worse when both parents drank. More surprisingly still, some abnormalities in the jaw, teeth spacing, eye size and eye spacing – all symptoms of human FASD – were more pronounced if the father drank compared to if the mother did.
Golding was taken aback. "I told my students to do it again," he says with a chuckle. They did and got the same outcomes, as they have every time they've replicated the study since.
In July 2024, his team published two more studies that underscored paternal alcohol effects on mice offspring. One found that, at midlife, those mice whose parents had both been exposed to alcohol had signs of increased cellular aging in the brain and liver, a possible result of something else they found – markers of mitochondrial dysfunction, which occurs when the tiny organelles that produce energy within our cells stop working correctly.
This was true whether the alcohol-exposed parent was the mother or the father, but was most dramatic if both parents were exposed. This could help explain the results of observational studies on humans, where people diagnosed FASD have found to be hospitalized more often than those without FASD and have a life expectancy that is 42% that of the general population.
Golding's team also found that the face shape of a mouse changed according to how much alcohol its father had consumed. "The take-home message… is that male alcohol use is not going to have a yes/no impact on children; it will have graded effects where the more a man drinks, the worse the outcomes," he says.
Golding isn't the only researcher to find a link between paternal alcohol consumption and FASD-like outcomes in mice. Other studies have found that the offspring of alcohol-exposed male mice are more likely to show fetal growth restriction, metabolic defects and various differences in genetic expression, compared with mice that were not given alcohol. At University of California Riverside, Kelly Huffman, a psychology professor with a background in developmental neuroscience, has been running experiments that have also found that the mouse offspring of alcohol-exposed dads are more likely to show certain outcomes.
The effects aren't as strong as when the mothers are given alcohol after conception. "Which makes sense – remember, these babies have never been [directly] exposed to alcohol," Huffman says. "But look." On screen, she pulls up images of the mouse offspring's neocortexes – the part of the brain involved in higher functions.
In control mice whose parents weren't exposed to alcohol, the primary somatosensory cortex – part of the brain that responds as it receives input from the mouse's whiskers – was in a distinctly different area to the primary visual cortex, which interprets visual cues. There was a clear boundary between them, with no overlap.
In the mice whose fathers, but not mothers, were exposed to alcohol, this region looks very different. "They're all mixed up," Huffman says.
Not only were the mice's brains organized differently, but their behavior and motor skills differed too. Offspring of alcohol-exposed fathers were more likely to fall and take missteps, more hesitant to move around, and took longer to learn how to stay on spinning bars. "They don't improve at the same rate," Huffman says. "Their learning trajectory is a little slowed. That has to do, we think, with perhaps a little hyperactivity, and just problems with sensory motor integration.”
Given that the pups aren't being directly exposed to alcohol in utero, how could this be happening? The most common explanation is a mechanism of genetic changes known as epigenetics. In this, bits of the genome are switched "on" or "off" without any physical changes to the DNA sequence.
Instead, they work through processes that modify the ability of the DNA being read by the cellular machinery, through processes such as DNA methylation, where chemical groups are attached to bits of the DNA molecule. Research has found that alcohol disrupts the normal DNA methylation of sperm, which may go on to change how genes are expressed in the resulting embryo.
Golding has also found evidence in mice that paternal alcohol use can lead to other changes in sperm that affect fetal growth. He and his colleagues have found that chronic alcohol use alters the ratio of inherited fragments a type of genetic material called RNA in sperm.
While the epigenetic effects of paternal alcohol consumption is a relatively new field of research, the consequences of other paternal forms of exposure are better documented. In both humans and in mice, there's particularly good evidence when it comes to smoking and the effect it has on inherited genetic material. The offspring of fathers who smoke are more likely to have birth defects, develop leukemia, and have excess body fat, for example, possibly also due to epigenetic processes.
Despite the role that male drinking appears to play, most researchers agree a mother's alcohol consumption plays a larger role in fetal development than alcohol consumption by fathers.
"The alcohol in the blood of the woman is passed directly across the placenta into the fetus, so that's a very direct effect" on development, says Elizabeth Elliott, a pediatrician and professor of child and adolescent health at Australia's University of Sydney. She has been a long-time FASD researcher and is the senior co-author of a recent academic review of FASD. "It affects the brain and the part of the brain that determines the development of the face, and it affects the development of all these organ systems, the lungs, in the heart, the ears and the eyes, and so on."
It's worth noting, of course, that humans aren't mice. Mouse models can, and often do, provide us with some ideas of what might be happening in terms of human processes, but they don't mean this is definitely what's happening. Much more research is needed before we can determine the contributions of a father's alcohol consumption in humans with any certainty.
Still, the role that a father's drinking could play should not be ignored, Elliott and others say.
While the research is still ongoing, Elliott believes it's time for public health campaigns to address this more directly. It's not just because the father's consumption might cause harm, she says. It would also have "real benefit… because we know that one of the key determinants of a woman drinking in pregnancy is if her male partner [if she has one] is drinking in pregnancy", she says. "It would be a win-win.”
Based on the research so far, how much alcohol is "safe" for a father – not a mother – to drink if he knows his partner may conceive?
We don't have that data. But Golding, for his part, believes that a "very, very occasional drink" is probably fine – especially if a father reduces his drinking in combination with other factors that we know can improve health outcomes for offspring, like exercising and eating well. Still, he adds, "If it were my sons, I would tell them to stop drinking altogether."
While the exact impact of paternal drinking has yet to be teased out, researchers agree on one thing.
"There's this enormous burden that's put on women," says Golding. "But male health is important to fetal development. There is a responsibility of both parties here to support and provide for the health of the baby.”
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240801-fetal-alcohol-syndrome-the-overlooked-risk-of-fathers-who-drink
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CLIMBING STAIRS LINKED TO 39% LOWER RISK OF DEATH FROM HEART DISEASE AND 24% ALL-CAUSE MORTALITY
Climbing stairs regularly was associated with reduced incidence of cardiovascular disease, including heart attacks and stroke, a new review has found.
Those who frequently took the stairs were less likely to die from cardiovascular disease and all causes than those who climbed stairs less often.
As physical inactivity can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, stair-climbing, for as little as 6 flights of stairs, could be a simple and accessible way for people to add more exercise to their routines.
New research could help people who have to decide between using an elevator and taking the stairs. A study reports that regularly climbing stairs could significantly reduce the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease.
Researchers from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital in the United Kingdom carried out the study, published in the American Journal of Cardiovascular Drugs.
Their findings are of particular note, given the rising prevalence of cardiovascular disease.
“Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide,” with cases nearly doubling between 1990 and 2019,” explained Prof. Vassilios Vassiliou, one of the study authors from UEA, in a press release.
“Cardiovascular disease is largely preventable through a healthy lifestyle — including regular physical activity, a heart-healthy diet, not smoking, maintaining a healthy weight, and managing blood pressure, cholesterol, and diabetes,” ~ according to Prof. Vassilios Vassiliou, lead author of the study.
This rise in cardiovascular disease, including coronary artery disease and stroke, represents a total of 523 million cases worldwide, according to the study authors.
Short bursts of stair climbing offer cardiovascular benefits
Medical News Today asked Paddock what was already known about people who frequently took the stairs.
“We know that habitual stair-climbing may co-occur with other health-seeking behaviors, so those that tend to take the stairs may well have overall higher physical activity levels or fitness levels compared to those that don’t,” she explained.
‘Even brief periods of activity can be meaningful’
Although there are some limitations in what the review can confirm, it is another piece of evidence showing how beneficial taking the stairs can be.
“Unlike going to the gym or doing a workout, climbing the stairs is something you can easily fit into your day at home, at work, or when you’re out,” said Paddock.
“Even one- to two-minute bursts of movement performed several times throughout the day can add up and may be associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular events and death,” he said.
Alternatives to stairs
“For people unable to climb stairs, there are plenty of alternatives. Brisk walking, cycling, swimming, water-based exercise, rowing, and adapted seated exercises can all raise the heart rate and provide cardiovascular benefits. Strength exercises such as sit-to-stands can also help replicate the muscular demands of stair-climbing.”~ Opel Baker, MBChB
Otherwise, the researchers believe that taking the stairs could play a role in the ongoing issue of cardiovascular disease in public health.
“Encouraging people to take the stairs in workplaces, public buildings, and homes could form part of a wider strategy to reduce cardiovascular disease at the population level,” suggested Prof. Vassiliou.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/climbing-stairs-linked-39-lower-risk-heart-disease-death-large-study-finds
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SUGAR AND CANCER
A diagnosis of cancer often leaves people searching for ways to resume control of their bodies and minds. Food is one of the first places they turn, and one message looms large in our information ecosystem: Sugar feeds cancer.
The phrase circulates in online forums and patient support groups, leaving many people with cancer fearful that even a slice of birthday cake or a bowl of fruit salad might be fueling the disease they’re fighting.
The concern stems from a scientific observation that cancer cells use glucose — the body’s basic form of sugar — differently than healthy cells use it. Nearly a century ago, scientists discovered that cancer cells have an unusual metabolic pattern: Instead of breaking down all glucose to generate maximum energy, they convert most of it into a simpler molecule called lactate, then release it as waste.
This cancer cell phenomenon, known as the Warburg effect and discovered by Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Otto Warburg in the 1920s, seems counterintuitive. Healthy cells process glucose more efficiently, yielding more cellular energy. Why would rapidly growing cancer cells choose a less efficient way to use glucose?
Jiangbin Ye, PhD, a Stanford Medicine assistant professor of radiation oncology who studies cancer metabolism, said this altered metabolism is less about energy production and more about cells’ identities. His research shows that the shift in how cells process glucose triggers changes in which genes are turned on or off, causing cells to lose their specialized functions. A liver cell stops acting like a liver cell; a lung cell stops acting like a lung cell. This loss of cellular identity is a hallmark of cancer.
Ye’s work focuses on whether reversing this change through metabolic therapies could help cancer cells regain their normal identity and function. But for patients navigating cancer treatment, questions about sugar and diet can create unnecessary anxiety and harmful restrictions.
Fortunately, Erika Connor, a certified oncology dietitian at Stanford Health Care, has expertise she shares with patients daily to help them navigate their options. We asked her to clarify what people should know about sugar, cancer and nutrition during treatment. These are Connor’s five points of emphasis.
1. All cells — healthy and cancerous — use sugar as fuel
Sugar, in the form of glucose, is the primary energy source for every cell in your body, including your brain. It’s so essential, your body will manufacture glucose even if you don’t eat any carbohydrates, converting proteins and fats to produce it. This is a fundamental biological process, not something unique to cancer.
“The reality is that all cells use sugar as a fuel source,” Connor said. Cancer cells use glucose faster than many normal cells, which is how positron-emission tomography, or PET, scans detect tumors: They track areas where radioactive glucose accumulates.
2. You can’t starve cancer cells through diet
One of the biggest misconceptions about the “Sugar feeds cancer” message is the idea that cutting out sugar or carbohydrates will starve cancer cells, Connor said. In reality, cancer cells are remarkably resourceful when it comes to finding energy sources.
“Those little buggers, those cancer cells, are very creative. They will find a fuel no matter what is available,” Connor said. If glucose is scarce, she explained, cancer cells can turn to alternative fuel sources such as amino acids from proteins and fatty acids from fats. Whatever their fuel source, they can keep growing and multiplying.
Connor said many of her patients imagine cancer like it’s a game of Pac-Man, with cancer cells actively seeking out and gobbling up sugar molecules. “That’s just not the case,” she said.
“Cancer cells are not seeking out sugar molecules. They’re eating whatever they can find.”
3. Extreme restrictions can be dangerous during treatment
When people hear “Sugar feeds cancer,” many respond by severely restricting their diets, Connor said. But that can lead to diets that are dangerously short on calories and lead to excess weight loss. The consequences can be serious.
“Undergoing cancer treatment is like running multiple marathons — in terms of the toll it takes on people’s bodies and energy stores,” Connor said. “Patients need to fuel themselves efficiently for that.” Getting enough calories helps patients maintain muscle mass, manage treatment side effects and support their immune systems during an incredibly demanding time.
Connor recalls a patient who took the “Sugar feeds cancer” message so seriously she eliminated all grains and fruits from her diet. By the time Connor met with her, the woman was losing weight rapidly and had become slow to respond in conversation — a sign that her brain wasn't getting enough glucose. Connor helped her gradually reintroduce whole grains and fruits until the patient’s weight was stabilized and she had regained her mental acuity.
4. Added sugar is the real concern — not fruit or whole grains
There is one type of sugar that Connor recommends her patients try to avoid, especially during cancer treatment: the added sugars in processed foods, sweetened beverages and baked goods — not the natural sugars found in grains and fruits.
“Everybody’s definition of sugar is different,” Connor said. “When I ask people to eat less sugar, I’m really referring to added sugar: five spoonfuls of sugar in your coffee, multiple cans of soda a day, or a mocha and a Danish for breakfast.”
Her reasoning isn’t that these added sugars are directly fueling the growth of cancer cells. Instead, she said, “A high intake of added sugar adds another stressor to the body.”
Elevated blood sugar levels trigger increased insulin production, which can promote inflammation — creating a chaotic internal environment that may interfere with treatment effectiveness and healing.
Connor recommends focusing on eating healthful foods: fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds. Even though these can contain natural sugars, the fiber in whole foods slows down carbohydrate absorption, helping to regulate how quickly sugar enters your bloodstream, preventing the blood sugar spikes that come from processed sweets or sugary drinks.
5. Moderation and balance are key
Occasionally eating foods with excess sugar won’t derail your health or fuel cancer growth, Connor emphasized. What matters is your overall dietary pattern: limiting ultra-processed foods, focusing on whole foods including fruits and vegetables, staying hydrated, getting adequate protein, and maintaining a healthy weight.
“I absolutely tell patients they can have that slice of cake as a celebration, or reward themselves for eating well all day with a small treat,” Connor said.
She added that the mental and emotional component of eating during cancer treatment is just as important as the nutritional component. Patients may have side effects from treatments, including nausea, taste changes or difficulty swallowing. During these times, she tells people to eat what they can tolerate, even if it contains some added sugar, then get back on track.
If you have questions about your specific nutritional needs during cancer treatment, Connor recommends you work with a registered dietitian who specializes in oncology.
Ultimately, Connor hopes people will move away from the frightening idea that sugar feeds cancer and toward the more empowering concept of fueling your body in healthy ways to support treatment.
“The phrase ‘Sugar feeds cancer’ is a dangerous statement,” she said. “It switches people’s anxiety on and sets them up for misinformation and panic.”
https://med.stanford.edu/news/insights/2025/10/the-sugar-cancer-connection--five-things-you-should-know.html
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FASTING PRIMES NATURAL KILLER CELLS TO FIGHT CANCER
Periods of fasting reprogram the immune system’s natural killer cells to better fight cancer, according to a new study in mice from researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK).
Fasting and other dietary regimens are increasingly being explored as ways to starve cancer cells of the nutrients they need to grow and to make cancer treatments more effective. (Another school of ontologists takes a "let them eat cake" approach.)
Now a team of researchers from MSK’s Sloan Kettering Institute and their collaborators have shown for the first time that fasting can reprogram the metabolism of natural killer cells, helping them to survive in the harsh environment in and around tumors, while also improving their cancer-fighting ability. The study, led by postdoctoral fellow Rebecca Delconte, PhD, was published June 14 in Immunity.
The findings could help explain one of the mechanisms by which fasting may help the body defend against cancer — along with more generally reducing fat and improving metabolism. And while more research is needed, the results also suggest fasting could be a strategy to improve immune responses to make immunotherapy more effective, the study authors note.
“Tumors are very hungry,” says immunologist Joseph Sun, PhD, the study’s senior author. “They take up essential nutrients, creating a hostile environment often rich in lipids that are detrimental to most immune cells. What we show here is that fasting reprograms these natural killer cells to better survive in this suppressive environment.”
What are Natural Killer Cells?
Natural killer cells, or NK cells for short, are a type of white blood cell that can kill abnormal or damaged cells, like cancer cells or cells infected with a virus. They get their name because they can destroy a threat without ever having encountered it before — unlike T cells, which require prior exposure to a specific enemy to mount a targeted response.
In general, the more NK cells that are present within a tumor, the better the prognosis is for the patient.
For the study, mice with cancer were denied food for 24 hours twice a week, and then allowed to eat freely in between fasts. This approach prevented the mice from losing weight overall, the authors note.
But these periods of fasting had a profound effect on NK cells.
Just as happens in humans, the mice saw a drop in their glucose levels and a rise in free fatty acids, which are lipids released by fat cells that can serve as an alternative energy source when other nutrients aren’t present, Dr. Delconte says.
“During each of these fasting cycles, NK cells learned to use these fatty acids as an alternative fuel source to glucose,” she says. “This really optimizes their anti-cancer response because the tumor microenvironment contains a high concentration of lipids, and now they’re able enter the tumor and survive better because of this metabolic training.”
Fasting Reprograms NK Cells
The fasting also led to a redistribution of NK cells within the body, the researchers observed.
Many of the NK cells traveled into the bone marrow, where, thanks to the fasting, they were exposed to high levels of a key signaling protein called Interleukin-12. This primed the NK cells to produce more Interferon-gamma — a cytokine that plays an important role in anti-tumor responses.
Meanwhile, NK cells in the spleen were undergoing a separate reprogramming, making them better at using lipids as a fuel source.
“With both of these mechanisms put together, we find that NK cells are pre-primed to produce more cytokines within the tumor,” Dr. Delconte says. “And with the metabolic reprogramming, they’re more able to survive in the tumor environment, and specialized to have improved anti-cancer properties.”
It’s unclear yet whether there are two separate populations of NK cells that get trained differently in different parts of the body, or whether the cells end up passing through both sites during their weeks-long life cycle.
“That’s the million-dollar question,” Dr. Sun says. “And one that we have only begun to answer using the cell-labeling techniques we used in this study.”
While human bone marrow samples weren’t studied as part of the project, the researchers note that blood samples from cancer patients show that fasting causes a reduction of freely circulating NK cells in people, just as they observed in mice.
Potential to Improve Cancer Treatments
There are several potential opportunities to advance the mouse-model research toward the clinic, the researchers say. First, clinical trials are already beginning to study the safety and effectiveness of fasting in combination with standard existing treatments. Another avenue would be to identify drugs that could target the underlying mechanisms without requiring patients to fast. Third, NK cells might be able to be put into a fasted state outside of the body, and then be administered to improve treatment effects.
At present, however, more clinical data are still needed about the effects of fasting for people with cancer. Patients should speak with their doctors about what’s safe and healthy for their individual situation.
SUMMARY:
- Protecting Healthy Cells: When you fast, healthy cells enter a protective, slow-growth state. Cancer cells cannot make this shift due to genetic mutations, leaving them exposed.
- Enhancing Chemotherapy: By depriving tumor cells of easy nutrients like glucose, fasting can make them more vulnerable and sensitive to the destructive effects of chemotherapy and radiation.
- Reducing Side Effects: Small clinical trials indicate that water-only fasting for 24 to 72 hours before chemotherapy may significantly reduce treatment-related side effects like nausea, fatigue, and gastrointestinal distress.
- Priming the Immune System: Emerging research, such as a study from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, suggests that fasting can reprogram natural killer (NK) cells, potentially helping the immune system better fight tumors.
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RESTRICTING 3 AMINO ACIDS MAY HELP EXTEND LIFE SPAN
Recent trends and advice have been recommending increased protein intake, especially for certain groups of people.
A recent study, however, suggests that consuming less protein could help extend life span and have many health benefits by improving metabolism and reducing cellular damage.
The study specifically suggests that reducing the consumption of certain amino acids, such as isoleucine and methionine, aids healthy aging, rather than simply reducing the amount of protein consumed.
Evidence so far has supported caloric restriction for its purported longevity benefits, but reducing protein intake has not been widely explored.
Now, a new review, published in the journal Cell Press Blue, suggests that restricting overall dietary protein intake or specific essential amino acids could help people achieve improved health span and increased longevity, similar to that achieved through calorie restriction.
The review, combing over 350 scientific papers on animal and human trials, outlines how restricting dietary protein and specific essential amino acids such as isoleucine and methionine helps promote healthy aging and extends life span.
The review examined the effects of protein restriction on several organisms, including microbes, mice, other animals, and humans, using observational studies, randomized controlled trials, and cell culture experiments.
Researchers found that eating less protein had many health benefits.
Consuming less protein helped the body burn more calories, reduced body fat, and better managed insulin levels by increasing levels of Fibroblast Growth Factor 21 (FGF21), a hormone that helps protect against aging.
A low protein diet also inhibited mTORC1 and activated GCN2, which are two key nutrient sensors that regulate cell growth and stress response, effectively telling the body’s cells to slow down aging and more efficiently clear cellular “trash” through autophagy.
Eating less protein also reduced the number of senescent or aging cells. Senescent cells are often called “zombie” cells because they are damaged cells that stop dividing (mitosis) but refuse to die, driving inflammation in the background.
Another important effect scientists observed of a low protein diet was the improvements in mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell, and decreased reactive oxygen species (ROS) damage to tissues. In animal studies, scientists also saw that lab animals lived longer and had lower age-related frailty when fed less protein.
However, the researchers emphasized that protein needs should be personalized according to physical activity and age.
HOW EATING LESS PROTEIN IMPROVES METABOLISM
Medical News Today discussed the study findings with two experts — Kristin Kirkpatrick, MS, RDN, president of KAK Consulting and a dietitian at the Cleveland Clinic Department of Wellness & Preventive Medicine in Ohio, and Michelle Routhenstein, MS, RD, CDCES, CDN, a preventive cardiology dietitian at EntirelyNourished.
“This review suggests the benefit isn’t simply eating less protein — it’s how the body responds to lower levels of certain amino acids. Protein restriction appears to activate pathways involved in metabolic health and cellular repair, while reducing activity in pathways that may contribute to aging,” Kirkpatrick said.
“Eating less protein, especially certain amino acids, may help the body spend less time in a constant ‘build and grow’ state and more time in a ‘repair and clean up’ state. This may help improve how the body uses energy and reduce cellular stress, which may have longevity and metabolism-boosting effects,” Routhenstein explained.
The review specifically identifies three Essential Amino Acids (EAAs) — isoleucine, valine, and methionine — that may bring benefits when restricted in one’s diet. Reducing nonessential amino acids such as tyrosine and cysteine may also provide health benefits, according to the authors. (All these animoacids are easily obtained from food sources, both animal and plant [soybeans, nuts])
However, the review also stresses that reducing the intake of all amino acids may not be beneficial and lists three that may provide greater benefit when supplemented: glycine, serine, and proline. (Oriana: Does this paragraph contradict the one above? Yes, and I can't explain it. Cysteine is essential for the production of glutathione, so why should we restrict it? How little we ultimately know. What a mess.)
“The goal is not to avoid protein; it is about finding the right amount to support muscle strength while also promoting long-term metabolic health,” Routhenstein pointed out.
THE STUDY ISN’T SAYING “EAT LESS PROTEIN”
“First, this study is really examining protein intake beyond muscle health and focusing on the biology on longevity, health span, healthy aging, etc.,” said Kirkpatrick, speaking to MNT.
“This study is not saying not to consume protein; it is looking more at aging biology and metabolic pathways rather than muscle preservation,” Routhenstein clarified.
“What [the study is] examining is more about reducing certain amino acids (isoleucine and methionine) for healthy aging and the importance of balancing the message that ‘more is better’ without looking at other lifestyle changes and/or specific types of protein,” Kirkpatrick explained.
Kirkpatrick underscored that current calls for higher protein intake have largely been driven by research showing health benefits linked to muscle maintenance, improved muscle recovery, increased strength, and a reduced risk of sarcopenia (muscle wasting) associated with aging.
“These recommendations remain well supported by human research, so just having less is not the message; it’s to look deeper into types of protein as well as other factors associated with aging,” she explained.
Although the study does promote that low protein intake can support metabolic health in early and middle age, it makes an important point: age matters.
The study notes that reduced protein intake may adversely affect certain groups. It states that adults older than age 65 can have protein insufficiency, be at risk of frailty, and experience sarcopenia, which means protein restriction could be contraindicated.
“If there is anything overlooked [in the study], perhaps it’s that this has the potential to underemphasize the well-studied role that protein plays in preserving muscle,” Kirkpatrick said.
“The study also does not fully account for the importance of maintaining muscle, resistance training, or the overall dietary pattern,” Routhenstein said.This review also focuses on cellular longevity, which is the process of keeping individual cells in the body healthy and young at the molecular level.
The point of confusion and potential contention with previous research comes from the fact that most of them focus on functional longevity, which is about staying strong, mobile, and reducing frailty that comes with age.
And while functional longevity is important for operating independently and healthily throughout life, even in older age, cellular longevity is the driving factor.
Protein still very important for health
An important point the study makes is that it argues for restricting specific essential amino acids, rather than all proteins.
“The biggest surprise wasn’t that lower protein looked beneficial — it was that specific amino acids may matter more than total protein,” Kirkpatrick said, adding: “But we need more human studies to continue exploring this concept.”
The study also distinguishes between the type of protein consumed and its purported health benefits. The researchers emphasize that, compared with animal protein, plant protein has been associated with a lower risk of frailty.
“The biggest limitation is that much of the research comes from animal studies, and we still need more long-term human data,” Routhenstein said.
What all this research so far shows us is that our protein needs evolve and change over our life span,
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/why-reducing-protein-intake-could-promote-healthy-aging-new-research#Why-the-study-isn-t-saying-just-consume-less-protein
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STAY AWAY FROM SUGARY DRINKS
Consuming a sugary drink a day may significantly raise the risk of developing stomach cancer, according to new research from Mass General Brigham.
After accounting for other risk factors, the researchers found that one or more sugary drinks per day was linked to nearly triple the risk of gastric cancer compared with fewer than one serving per month.
Roughly two-thirds (63%) of U.S. adults report consuming sugar-sweetened beverages at least once a day, CDC data states.
Drinking at least one sugar-sweetened beverage daily was associated with a 2.45-times higher risk of developing gastric cancer compared to drinking less than one per month.
DIRTY SODA DRINKS ARE EVERYWHERE, BUT DOCTORS WARN OF HEALTH RISKS: 'METABOLIC DISASTER'
It's definitely a concern because we are seeing an increase in cancers of the gastrointestinal tract, particularly in young people [under] 50," senior author Andrew T. Chan, a gastroenterologist and epidemiologist with the Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute in Boston, told Fox News Digital.
"Our increasing consumption of sugary drinks and also ultra-processed foods is likely to be contributing to some of these cancer trends," he added.
Gastric cancer is heavily linked to Helicobacter pylori bacteria, a type of bacteria that lives in the stomach lining.
In a subset of study participants, there was no connection found between sugary drink intake and H. pylori, strengthening the hypothesis that sugar (fructose) plays a role.
The researchers defined sugar-sweetened drinks as regular sodas, fruit punches, lemonade and sports beverages, in which fructose is the main sweetener. Higher fructose consumption was associated with greater stomach cancer risk.
Artificially sweetened drinks [no sugar, only artificial sweeteners], including diet sodas and other low-calorie carbonated drinks, were not linked to an increased risk of gastric cancer among more than 100,000 subjects.
While earlier studies linked sugary drinks to higher rates of liver, breast and colorectal malignancies, their specific impact on gastric tissue remained unclear until now.
The new study analyzed data from more than 100,000 participants in the Nurses' Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-Up Study.
"The study is unable to really prove cause and effect," Chan said. "What we did see was an association. We certainly need to do more research to understand whether this association between sugary-sweetened beverages and stomach cancer is truly causal.”
The study was published in the journal Gastro Hep Advances.
https://www.foxnews.com/health/popular-daily-drinking-habit-nearly-triple-risk-deadly-cancer-major-study-finds
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BEER, WINE OR LIQUOR? MASSIVE STUDY REVEALS WHICH WAS LINKED TO LOWER DEATH RISK
Heavy drinking has been shown to raise mortality risk, but, at lower levels, what’s in your glass may also matter, a new study suggests.
In recent research of data from 340,924 participants in the UK Biobank, wine was linked to lower mortality, while beer and spirits were tied to higher death risk.
Data were collected between 2006 and 2022, with more than 13 years of average follow-up. The findings were presented at the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Session in New Orleans.
WINE EXPERT SAYS ONE COMMON HABIT COULD BE SABOTAGING EVERY SIP
In the study, participants reported their alcohol intake as never/occasional, low, moderate or high.
High consumption was defined as more than 40 grams per day for men (about three standard drinks) and more than 20 grams per day for women (about 1.4 standard drinks).
Participants with high alcohol consumption had a 24% higher risk of all-cause death, 36% higher risk of cancer death and 14% higher risk of cardiovascular death when compared to people who never or occasionally drank, according to the study findings.
***With low or moderate alcohol consumption, however, the mortality risk appeared to differ according to the type of beverage.***
**Spirits, beer and cider were associated with significantly higher mortality, the researchers found, while the same amount of wine intake was linked to significantly lower mortality. **
Moderate wine drinkers had a 21% lower risk of cardiovascular death than those who never or occasionally drank.
Conversely, those who drank low amounts of spirits, beer or cider were found to have a 9% higher risk of cardiovascular death.
"These results come from the general population, and in certain high-risk groups, such as people with chronic diseases or cardiovascular conditions, the risks could be even higher," Dr. Zhangling Chen, a professor at the Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University in China and the study's senior author, said in a press release.
"These findings can help refine guidance, emphasizing that the health risks of alcohol depend not only on the amount of alcohol consumed but also on the type of beverage."
One potential reason for wine’s lower mortality association could be that it contains compounds such as polyphenols and antioxidants, which could have beneficial effects on blood vessels, inflammation and cardiovascular health, the researchers noted.
Jessica Steinman, a Los Angeles addiction specialist and chief clinical officer for No Matter What Recovery, said the study’s information is "helpful" but cautioned against broadly applying the findings to individuals, particularly those with a history of substance misuse.
While certain ingredients or substances might help someone with a specific issue, she expressed her concern when it comes to mental health issues and addiction.
"When we hear these stories or get this research, it becomes a ‘black and white’ larger generalization for the population, and we want to be careful with that," Steinman, who was not involved in the research, told Fox News Digital.
"Not everybody should have daily consumption of an alcoholic substance, whether it's wine, beer or certain liquors. … If there's someone who’s struggling with substances, then they really shouldn't be having it at all."
Different substances have different levels of alcohol in them, and each person metabolizes alcohol uniquely, the expert noted.
"All those kinds of things are so specific to one person or a small sect of people," she said. "So, we want to make sure anytime there's research given about something, that we're not taking it as a society and saying, ‘Let's do this,’ and not keeping it as black and white.
"Overall, more is not better, but also the higher potency of alcohol and higher percentages of alcohol is going to affect people negatively as well."
Steinman recommended consulting with a medical professional for individual guidance.
The researchers acknowledged some limitations of the study. Because it was observational in design, the study could not prove that drinking wine led to lower mortality or that other alcoholic beverages directly caused higher mortality.
Also, the participants reported their baseline alcohol intake at the start of the study, which means any changes in drinking patterns during the follow-up period were not recorded.
There was also the chance that wine drinkers may have different dietary or other lifestyle habits that could affect their health outcomes, the researchers noted.
The UK Biobank participants also tend to be healthier than the overall population, which could limit the ability for the finding to be generalized to wider populations.
The authors called for high-quality randomized studies to confirm the differences in how drinking habits reflect mortality risk.
https://www.foxnews.com/health/beer-wine-liquor-massive-study-reveals-linked-lower-death-risk
Oriana:
It seems that the amount of drinking and the type of alcohol consumed depends on a lot on the person’s income, which is in turn related to health and life expectancy. Even genetic factors are involved, and the degree of tolerance that daily drinkers develop. Thus, this seemingly simple problem is actually quite complex.
It is much too early to recommend "medicinal" doses of red wine to people who don't normally drink, even though we know this was a common medicinal practice in the 19th century.
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IS IT TRUE THAT IF A PATIENT IS BETWEEN 70 AND 100, DOCTORS HAVE NO INCENTIVE TO AGGRESSIVELY TREAT A PATIENT WHO IS ILL?
My father was a very strong-willed physician with very strong opinions. When his mother-in-law (my stepmother’s parent) got old and sick, he didn’t hesitate to criticize her for multiple physician visits and treatment for age-related conditions. He thought it was a waste of Medicare dollars and a drain on medical resources. This was his opinion until…
He became old. By the time he was in his late 80’s, he had required a stay in ICU for a major bowel obstruction and was in renal (kidney) failure requiring dialysis. He demanded to remain at home with a full-time caretaker and per his will, anyone who put him into a nursing home would be disinherited.
It was quite amazing, at this point we heard nothing from him about how the elderly did not deserve ongoing and expensive health care. Guess it’s all perspective.
~ Susan Chastain, retired nurse, Quora
John Merriman:
My late mother, at age 90, had a nasty fall {while pegging out a bed sheet - silly woman!) breaking both wrists and cracking an eye socket. Within weeks she was offered corrective surgery on the wrists and a five hour operation by a maxillo-facial surgeon, all of which she refused. (This was all on the NHS. I was amazed at such non-ageism in a hard-pressed public health service.)
Seven years later, even more amazingly, she was offered surgery for a bladder tumour (possibly malignant). She declined that too. That was more explicable. By then she was very frail. She didn't quite make her 98th birthday.
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ending on beauty:
AZURE
We stood on the cliffs.
She was eighty then. The spray leapt
in shimmering prayer.
The ocean was showing off
its best blue. She turned to me
in triumph. Azure, she said
like a child at the beginning of language.
Azure, she repeated
like a scientist, having classified
the precise degree
of this infinity. Luminous
from the sea, she handed it to me,
that marine mother hue,
that blue syllable of love –
The miracle mothers perform,
giving us the world
and the word. And the flaming
wheel passes on.
~ Oriana
