The Neurophysiology of Enchantment: How Music Casts Its Spell on Us

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The Neurophysiology of Enchantment: How Music Casts Its Spell on Us “Music,” the trailblazing composer Julia Perry wrote, “has a unifying effect on the peoples of the world, because they all understand and love it… And when they find themselves enjoying and loving the same music, they find themselves loving one another.” But there is something beyond humanistic ideology in this elemental truth — something woven into the very structure and sensorium of our bodies; as the great neurologist Oliver Sacks observed, “music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation.” Psychologist Dacher Keltner examines what that unmediated something is and how it pierces us in a portion of his altogether fascinating book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life (public library) — a taxonomy of wonder derived from his study of twenty-six cultures around the world, across which music, above all other forms of beauty and spirituality, emerges as the most universal of our creaturely portals into transcendence. After observing the virtuoso concert cellist Yumi Kendall respond bodily to the music she plays and cast an embodied enchantment upon those hearing it, Keltner writes: Continued here

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How Managers Can Address Their Own Biases Around Mental Health Discrimination against employees because of their health — including mental health — is illegal. While HR can make sure the right supports are in place, managers should also make sure that stigma isn’t impacting their day-to-day decisions about their teams. For example, how can a manager prevent their personal views on mental health from biasing their task assignment or performance reviews of an employee who’s disclosed a mental health challenge? To reduce the impact of stigma after a mental health disclosure, managers should acknowledge their biases, lead with curiosity, solve collaboratively, and promote a supportive work culture. Continued here

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How donkeys changed the course of human history They are best known for their remarkable ability to carry heavy loads and a tenacious – almost stoic – approach to toil. In some parts of the world, the donkey has become associated, perhaps unfairly, with terms of insult or mockery. But in a French village around 174 miles (280km) east of Paris, archaeologists have made a discovery that is helping to rewrite much of what we know about these under-appreciated beasts of burden. At the site of a Roman villa in the village of Boinville-en-Woëvre, a team unearthed the remains of several donkeys that would have dwarfed most of the species we are familiar with today. Continued here

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Microsoft alleges attacks on French magazine came from Iranian-backed group Microsoft said on Friday that an Iranian nation-state group already sanctioned by the US government was behind an attack last month that targeted the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo and thousands of its readers. Continued here

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10 Tips That Will Help You Overcome Moments of Leadership Self-Doubt The economic crisis poses leadership challenges that many leaders doubt they can overcome. But they can. Continued here

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How to Maximize Tax Savings When You Have Multiple Income Sources Understanding how each income stream is taxed can help unlock additional savings. Continued here

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How to Deal with a Jealous Manager At work, comparisons are commonplace. Sometimes we’re envious of a colleague’s great presentation or jealous that someone else got picked to work on project. Sometimes we face jealousy after our own successes. But what if the jealous person is your boss? You may need to manage their emotions to manage your career. Continued here

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Vikings Brought Horses and Dogs to England, Study Finds When Viking soldiers sailed to England in the ninth century, some may have brought dogs and horses with them on the journey—and the creatures likely had special significance.  “They were treated more like companion animals rather than just for economic purposes,” Tessi Löffelmann, an archaeologist from Durham University and Vrije Universiteit Brussels, tells BBC News’ Georgina Rannard. “I find it really touching, and it suggests we underestimate just how important animals were to Vikings.” Continued here

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Why would the Chinese government be flying a large stratospheric balloon? On Thursday, US officials confirmed that a high-altitude balloon, launched days ago by the Chinese government, has been flying over the northern United States. This has since become an international incident and led the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, to delay a high-profile visit to China to meet with the nation's president, Xi Jinping. Continued here

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Career Crush: What Is It Like to Be a Software Engineer? But honestly, I know almost nothing about how it works or how the people behind the code — software engineers — do what they do. To find out, I spoke with Lindsey Redd. Lindsey has coded for some of the coolest tech companies in the world: Slack, Lyft, and now Stripe. She shared with me the details about her journey — from wanting to be a doctor, to studying computer science at Stanford, to thriving in the top echelons of software engineering. We also talked about some common misconceptions about software engineers, what it’s like to work in a predominately white and male industry, and how to nail an interview for a job like hers. Continued here

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Making Performance Reviews Fairer in a Hybrid Workplace Creative approaches to performance evaluation are necessary at hybrid workplaces to make sure that all employees are evaluated and developed according to their merit, regardless of where they do most of their work. Workplaces that have successfully managed the evaluations of hybrid employees do three things. First, they define performance in terms of customer satisfaction, company values, core activities, and project completion. Second, they incorporate regular goal-setting and feedback sessions. Finally, they encourage collaboration and team building by sharing performance assessment responsibilities across the workforce. With these requirements in mind, any company can develop their own system for performance evaluations, helping their employees grow and improve regardless of where they are located. Continued here

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How saliva changes the flavor of food At first glance, saliva seems like pretty boring stuff, merely a convenient way to moisten our food. But the reality is quite different, as scientists are beginning to understand. The fluid interacts with everything that enters the mouth, and even though it is 99 percent water, it has a profound influence on the flavors — and our enjoyment — of what we eat and drink. “It is a liquid, but it’s not just a liquid,” says oral biologist Guy Carpenter of King’s College London. Continued here

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Maya Angelou on Writing and Our Responsibility to Our Creative Gifts “Be a good steward of your gifts,” the poet Jane Kenyon urged in what remains some of the finest advice on writing and life ever committed to words. Our gifts come unbidden — that is what makes them gifts — but with them also comes a certain responsibility, a duty to live up to and live into our creative potential as human beings. “Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins,” James Baldwin admonished in his advice on writing. “Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.” That durational willingness to work at our gifts, to steward them with disciplined devotion, is our fundamental responsibility to them — our fundamental responsibility to ourselves. Maya Angelou (April 4, 1928–May 28, 2014) considers what that means and what it takes in a wonderful 1983 interview, included in Black Women Writers at Work (public library). I try to live what I consider a “poetic existence.” That means I take responsibility for the air I breathe and the space I take up. I try to be immediate, to be totally present for all my work. Continued here

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Iranian Director Jafar Panahi Released From Prison After Declaring Hunger Strike The renowned filmmaker had been arrested in July when authorities reactivated a 2010 sentence Jafar Panahi, the celebrated Iranian filmmaker behind No Bears, was released from Iran’s Evin prison on Friday, two days after he began a hunger strike to protest his ongoing incarceration, according to an Instagram post shared by his wife, Tahereh Saeedi. Continued here

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Chinese Spy Balloon Has Unexpected Maneuverability An expert explains why it’s so odd that the suspected Chinese spy balloon can change course Pentagon officials announced on Thursday that they had detected a Chinese “surveillance balloon” flying over Montana. On Friday the Pentagon’s press secretary said that the balloon is now over the central U.S. and moving eastward at an altitude of about 60,000 feet. Observers on the ground have been able to snap photographs and videos of the object, and the incident has prompted Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel a planned trip to China. Continued here

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The Most Important Thing to Remember About Your Mother One of the hardest realizations in life, and one of the most liberating, is that our mothers are neither saints nor saviors — they are just people who, however messy or painful our childhood may have been, and however complicated the adult relationship, have loved us the best way they knew how, with the cards they were dealt and the tools they had. It is a whole life’s work to accept this elemental fact, and a life’s triumph to accept it not with bitterness but with love. How to make that liberating shift of perspective is what the playwright, suffragist, and psychologist Florida Scott-Maxwell (September 14, 1883–March 6, 1979) considers in a passage from her 1968 autobiography The Measure of My Days (public library). Continued here

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David Andrew Quist: Could fungi actually be the key to humanity's survival? After a billion years of evolution, fungi are masters of invention and resilience. What wisdom can we draw from their long, remarkable existence? Mycologist David Andrew Quist explores how fungi's innate biointelligence, penchant for collaboration and incredible regeneration abilities can show us new ways to think about complex problems -- and may hold the secret to humanity's survival on Earth. Continued here

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Congress Has a Lo-Fi Plan to Fix the Classified Documents Mess Congress is coming for the nation’s intelligence community. Bipartisan anger at mounting scandals over the mishandling of classified material by two presidents and a vice president is now palpable. The catch is, lawmakers don’t entirely know where the problem lies. Based on what they know so far, US lawmakers are exploring lo-fi fixes to prevent another of these high-stakes scandals. At the top of their minds is requiring White House protocols to mirror those governing the handling of classified material on Capitol Hill. But they’re hampered by a lack of information about how so many secrets ended up in insecure locations. Continued here

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Want to Go Viral? How the Hit Movie 'M3GAN' Conquered Social-Media Marketing These viral marketing lessons from the horror film 'M3GAN' can be applied to small businesses across industries. Continued here

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The mystery of North America's missing eastern dinosaurs It was a typically warm, humid day in the Late Cretaceous. A strange, pallid mass was floating in the cobalt-blue waters of a shallow sea, above what is now New Jersey. It was a dead dinosaur, the bloated carcass of a monstrous, 6.4m (21ft)-long distant relative of Tyrannosaurus rex. With an athletic frame and jaws full of flesh-ripping teeth, Dryptosaurus aquilunguis looked remarkably like its cousin, but with a bloodcurdling twist: on the ends of its stubby little arms were great, grasping "hands", complete with an array of unwieldy eight-inch (20cm) talons. Its fingers were meat hooks, its teeth like piercing bananas. This ancient beast could wrap its hands around you while it bit your head off. Continued here

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Animals at the Dallas Zoo Keep Mysteriously Disappearing In just a few weeks, the zoo has had enclosures tampered with, a clouded leopard escape, two stolen monkeys and a suspicious vulture death First, a clouded leopard escaped from her habitat. Next, a gash appeared in the langur monkey enclosure. A week later, an endangered vulture mysteriously died. Then, two emperor tamarin monkeys were stolen.  Continued here

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Donkey Kong cheating case rocked by photos of illicit joystick modification Over the years, King of Kong star Billy Mitchell has seen his world-record Donkey Kong scores stripped, partially reinstated, and endlessly litigated, both in actual court and the court of public opinion. Through it all, Mitchell has insisted that every one of his records was set on unmodified Donkey Kong arcade hardware, despite some convincing technical evidence to the contrary. Continued here

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Stop Telling Young Women of Color to Accept a Broken System Graduation season is a time of transitions, celebration, possibility, and well-meaning advice. While much of the advice is time tested and prudent (don’t burn bridges, cultivate transferable skills, exercise grit, etc.), and most is harmless, some is not only outdated, but downright harmful, especially for women of color. If new women of color graduates want to truly thrive in the workplace, they need to know how to push back on microaggressions and racism, how to stay true to their values when they face pressure to conform, and how to find others to combat the isolation they may feel as they rise.  To do that they need to: Continued here

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The January Jobs Report Showed a Hiring Surge and Unemployment Drop. Here's What it Means for Small Businesses The labor market is, somehow, even tighter in January and could spell concern for small business leaders. Continued here

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Scientists Have Created a New Type of Ice Researchers have created a new form of ice with a density very similar to that of water, according to a study published Thursday in Science. By shaking a jar of ice and metal balls at extremely cold temperatures, the team created a white powdery ice with different properties than any kind previously known. The new ice has an amorphous structure—instead of its molecules forming a neat and ordered crystalline pattern, like ice you might make in your kitchen, its molecules are disorganized, like those of liquid water. Continued here

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Research: How Losing a High-Paying Job Affects Family Relationships Layoffs and other job losses not only affect people’s career prospects and finances; they affect people’s relationships with family, too. But these affects are quite different depending on the gender of the person out of work. Research on well-off, heterosexual couples with children found that, while men’s job losses were seen as both urgent and shameful, women’s job losses were more often framed as a way for mothers to spend more time with their children. Both of these reactions can be harmful for both the people who lost a job and for their loved ones. To better support families with a person out of work, society needs to start destigmatizing unemployment and decoupling gender with paid and unpaid work. Continued here

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MDMA and Psilocybin Are Approved as Medicines for the First Time In a world-first, Australia has announced it will officially recognize MDMA and psilocybin as medicines.  On February 3, Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA)—the government authority responsible for regulating medicines—announced that starting July 1, 2023, authorized psychiatrists will be able to prescribe MDMA for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, for ​​treatment-resistant depression. Because the TGA has yet to approve any actual medicines that contain MDMA or psilocybin, patients will initially be receiving “unapproved” medicines containing the substances. Continued here

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Moving the Needle on Sustainability Many sustainability initiatives focus on improving the sustainability of products and operations in legacy or adjacent markets or on achieving sustainability gains by exploring new markets with a more diverse set of products. This is a variation on the classic “where to play/how to win” strategy familiar to most executives. Fewer leaders, however, are exploring an important new frontier in sustainability, in which brands actively partner with customers to achieve ongoing impact. Continued here

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How Did It Come to This? On Sunday morning, the Reverend Earle Fisher was trying to keep his sermon toned down. He’s the pastor at Abyssinian Baptist, but he was guest-preaching at the more buttoned-down Trinity Christian Methodist Episcopal. The thing is that low-energy Earle Fisher still outpaces most ministers at their most fervid, and this was no typical Sunday. Fisher, one of Memphis’s most prominent criminal-justice activists, was preaching just two days after the release of video footage of the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols by five police officers. In conversation, Fisher speaks calmly and with precise control, but in the pulpit, he was animated as he connected a short passage in the Gospel of Mark where Jesus heals a blind man to the present day with the help of thunderous crescendos and subito pianos. Continued here

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21 Tips for Entrepreneurs to Survive Creative Highs and Lows Turning ideas into products is an emotional and financial roller coaster. Continued here

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How to live after your soulmate has died Grief is a haunting and powerful psychological force. It struck astronomer Dr. Michelle Thaller in 2020 when her husband died of cancer. She was left feeling utterly disconnected from the people and places around her, as if the fundamental nature of reality had shifted and Earth was no longer her home. She still lives with the pain. But as she told Big Think, she has found that the pursuits that make us feel connected to the Universe — science, poetry, art, literature — can serve as tools that help us continue pushing forward and living enriching lives. Continued here

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SEC gets $35 million settlement in Activision misconduct disclosure case In an administrative order, the SEC said that complaints of workplace misconduct at Activision Blizzard "were not collected or analyzed for disclosure purposes" since at least 2018. This left Activision Blizzard management "lacking sufficient information to understand the volume and substance of employee complaints of workplace misconduct," and therefore unable to warn investors of any potential business risks those complaints entailed. Continued here

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9 Pieces of Corporate Jargon To Avoid With Gen Z Don't waste others' time -- just say what you mean. Continued here

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Society Needs Scary Computer Games This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Computer games, like movies, music, and television, are part of our culture and often reflect our fears and worries—especially about the end of the world. And I’ve been playing them for years. Continued here

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Earth has an eerie "sodium glow," and astronomers use it to image stars Adaptive optics (AO) are required for giant telescopes on Earth’s surface. (For a brief intro on the topic, see our previous article.) Their enormous curved mirrors collect a great amount of light which is blurred by transit through the atmosphere. World-class 300″ to 400” telescopes such as Keck, Subaru, Gran Telescopio Canarias, the Very Large Telescope, and the upcoming Great Magellan Telescope all use AO. These systems analyze the telescope’s image in real-time and then actively warp their mirrors to counteract its blurring. The computer that controls these systems has to find a reference point that is not distorted, against which to compare the blurred image. But how? The answer lies in the twinkle and shimmer of the stars that we can see with our naked eyes because behind every twinkling, slightly blurry speck is a nearly perfect stationary light source.  Continued here

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Photos of the Week: Salmon Blessing, Masquerade Games, Polar Night A figure-skating championship in Finland, a rugby tournament in Afghanistan, the Magh Mela festival in India, a soldier’s funeral in Ukraine, an ice storm in Texas, a winding river in Brazil, a luge championship in Germany, and much more A green comet named C/2022 E3 (ZTF), which last passed by our planet about 50,000 years ago and is expected to be most visible to stargazers this week, is seen tens of millions of miles away from Earth in this telescope image made in January 2023. # Continued here

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A Secret Weapon in Preventing the Next Pandemic: Fruit Bats More than four dozen Jamaican fruit bats destined for a lab in Bozeman, Montana, are set to become part of an experiment with an ambitious goal: predicting the next global pandemic. Bats worldwide are primary vectors for virus transmission from animals to humans. Those viruses often are harmless to bats but can be deadly to humans. Horseshoe bats in China, for example, are cited as a likely cause of the covid-19 outbreak. And researchers believe pressure put on bats by climate change and encroachment from human development have increased the frequency of viruses jumping from bats to people, causing what are known as zoonotic diseases. Continued here

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Another Putin Foe Meets a Grim Soviet-Era Fate As former President Mikheil Saakashvili’s health worsens in prison, so do prospects for democracy in Georgia. Sixteen months after his arrest, Mikheil Saakashvili has lost more than 90 pounds and needs a walker to move around his prison hospital. The former Georgian president was for a time, on a hunger strike, which helps explain his weight loss and his exhaustion. But it does not explain the traces of arsenic, mercury, and other toxins that a doctor found in his hair and nail clippings. It does not explain the beatings he has described to his lawyer. It does not explain the constant pain in his left shoulder, neck, and spine. Continued here

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Freak infection with an eradicated form of polio shows virus' craftiness An eradicated form of wild polio surfaced in routine wastewater monitoring in the Netherlands last year, offering a cautionary tale on the importance of monitoring for the tenacious virus, researchers report this week in the journal Eurosurveilance. Continued here

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Musk beats fraud charges; jury rejects investor claims in "funding secured" case Update at 6:15 pm ET: The jury sided with Elon Musk in a ruling issued about two hours after closing arguments on Friday. Continued here

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Former Trump official led feds to Telegram group livestreaming child abuse New details have been revealed through recently unsealed Cook County court documents, showing how federal investigators in 2020 gained access to encrypted Telegram messages to uncover “a cross-country network of people sexually exploiting children.” Continued here

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Manhattan's Mini-Bean Is Finally Complete After years of delays, New York City finally has a shiny silver bean of its own. A new sculpture by Anish Kapoor—modeled after his famous Cloud Gate, known as the Bean, in Chicago—was officially unveiled this week.  Sometimes called the “mini-Bean,” the new 19-foot-tall, 48-foot-long work sits at 56 Leonard Street in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood. Like Cloud Gate, it has a mirrored surface that reflects the surrounding cityscape back at the viewer. Continued here

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'The Last of Us' Is All I Want to Talk About Right Now The Monitor is a weekly column devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to Twitter. Around the WIRED offices I’m not necessarily a “told ya so” kind of person. Frankly, in a workplace this smart, I’m more of a “no, no, you’re right” team player. But on Monday morning, when my colleagues hopped on Slack to talk about last Sunday’s episode of The Last of Us, all I could think was, “I warned you.”  Continued here

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35 of the Best Shows on Disney+ Right Now Disney+ isn’t just for kids. With its ownership of the Star Wars brand and all Marvel titles, the streaming service offers plenty of grown-up shows in its bid to compete with Netflix and Amazon. And we’re not just talking movies. Since launching the service, Disney has used the name recognition of Star Wars and Marvel to launch scores of TV shows, from The Mandalorian to Loki. In the list below, we’ve collected the ones we think are the best to watch, from those franchises and beyond. Continued here

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Treasury decides Model Y, Lyriq, ID.4, are SUVs after all, not sedans On Friday the US Treasury Department published an update to the way it implements the new clean vehicle tax credit. Introduced in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the new rules restrict the number of EVs that qualify for a federal tax credit of up to $7,500 with income and price caps, as well as a requirement for final assembly in North America and, once the Treasury has written some more guidance, a requirement for domestic content and value in the EV battery. Continued here

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Samsung Pro SSD reliability questioned as longtime partner shifts to Sabrent Samsung has earned a strong reputation among PC enthusiasts when it comes to solid-state storage. Its Pro series of SSDs are often among reviewers' top recommendations for users seeking high-speed storage for large work files, apps, and boot drives. Over the past year, though, reliability concerns around Samsung's 980 Pro and most recent 990 Pro have marred this reputation. It has become so notable that custom PC-maker Puget Systems, a top proponent of Samsung SSDs since the SATA days, has pulled 1TB and 2TB Samsung drives from its lineup. Continued here

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The Chinese Spy Balloon Shows the Downsides of Spy Balloons On Friday, United States secretary of state Antony Blinken said he was canceling a high-profile diplomatic visit to Beijing following the discovery of a large, high-altitude Chinese balloon that has been drifting over the US this week. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Friday that the airship is an off-course weather balloon and has denied that it is an espionage tool. A senior US Department of Defense official told reporters on Thursday, though, that “clearly the intent of this balloon is for surveillance.” Spy balloons are a historic technology and were widely utilized before the development of low-Earth and geosynchronous satellites, including extensive use in the 1950s by the US during the Cold War. But these days, their use has largely fallen out of favor. Spy balloons have some advantages over satellites. They are cheap to deploy, fly relatively close to their targets, and can continuously monitor a location for longer stints. But balloons have weight restrictions, which also limit how powerful and diverse their onboard sensors can be. And unlike satellites, which are out of sight and out of mind for people on Earth, the situation currently playing out with the Chinese balloon illustrates the biggest limitation of surveillance balloons.  Continued here

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Ask Ethan: What are white holes, and do they really exist? In our Universe, the laws of physics tell us all the possibilities for what’s allowed to conceivably exist, but only by actually observing, measuring, and experimenting with our Universe itself can we determine what’s truly real. In Einstein’s General Relativity, one of the very first possibilities that was ever discovered was for a black hole: a region of space with so much matter-and-energy in one place that from within that volume, nothing, not even light, could ever escape. The flip side of that is an equally possible mathematical solution that’s the reverse of a black hole: a white hole, from which matter and energy will spontaneously emerge. Black holes have been demonstrated, through many different types of observations, to not only be physically real, but to be quite abundant all throughout the Universe. What about white holes? What are they, and are they physically real, too? That’s what Kristin Houser wants to know, as she asks: Continued here

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It sounds like Google will unveil its ChatGPT clone February 8 Everybody panic! Next week Google is hosting what can only be described as an "emergency" event. According to an invite sent to The Verge, the event will revolve around "using the power of AI to reimagine how people search for, explore and interact with information, making it more natural and intuitive than ever before to find what you need"—in other words, Google's going to fire up its photocopier and stick OpenAI's ChatGPT onto the platen. The 40-minute event will, of course, be live on YouTube on February 8. Continued here

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Why are flood myths so common in stories from ancient cultures around the world? As the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss notes in “The Structural Study of Myth,” there is an “astounding similarity between myths collected in widely different regions.” From the city-states of ancient Greece to the hunter-gatherer tribes of the Amazon rainforest, cultures everywhere have preserved suspiciously similar stories about heroes slaying monsters, talking animals playing tricks on each other, and jealous (usually male) siblings fighting to the death. Especially common in world mythologies are stories about world-ending floods and the chosen individuals that managed to survive them, like the biblical Noah and Utnapishtim, the ark builder in the Epic of Gilgamesh, a text thought to be even older than the Abrahamic religions. In Aztec mythology, a man named Tata and his wife Nena carve out a cypress tree after being warned of a coming deluge by the god Tezcatlipoca, while Manu, the first man in Hindu folklore, was visited by a fish that guided his boat to the peak of a mountain. The list goes on. Continued here

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Eliminate These 5 Roadblocks to Build a Winning Culture in Your Business Culture is the way leaders at every level build their organizations for speed, impact, and excellence. Continued here

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Mystery Portrait May Be a Raphael, Artificial Intelligence Suggests A mysterious portrait of the Virgin Mary and Jesus may have been painted by the master Raphael, facial recognition finds. But many art historians reject the claim In a meeting of high art and state-of-the-art facial recognition, researchers say they’ve used artificial intelligence to determine that a circular painting of the Virgin Mary and the child Jesus, known as the de Brécy Tondo, or the Tondo for short, was likely painted by the Italian master Raphael. Continued here

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No Need to Pop This Balloon The Chinese spy balloon observed over Montana is not a new departure. It is a provocative measure because countries claim more rights over the lower atmosphere above their territory than they do over the space beyond that. But the balloon’s presence is not exactly a step on the road to World War III. In fact, this type of surveillance is much more likely to prevent, rather than provoke, conflict. The Chinese operate the second-most-sophisticated satellite program on Earth, next only to that of the United States. As of last September, some 562 Chinese satellites were orbiting the Earth. Not all of these are surveillance systems, but many are. They send home information on U.S. military capabilities and on the American economy—the status of grain crops, for example. They are probably intercepting a lot of U.S. data traffic too; and the latest models are thought to have radar-based systems that can collect images through cloud cover and at night. Continued here

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Cognitive Biases About Leadership and How to Survive Them When we put our leaders on a pedestal, we do them a disservice - and when we make them into heroes, we tend to forget that they are actually human beings. By Hafiz Sikder • Apr 29, 2022 Continued here

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The Case of the Unknowable Human Dorothy Sayers’s most famous character is a detective who solves crimes with elegance—but he finds the deeper enigmas of human beings always out of reach. World War I is over. Humanity has gone through hell and emerged strung between merry, hectic giddiness and entrenched, unspeakable grief. And Lord Peter Wimsey—scion of the aristocracy; military hero; buoyant connoisseur of wine, rare books, piano music, and women—is on the hunt for his next beguiling case. Continued here

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The Chinese Balloon and the Disappointing Reality of UFOs Residents of Billings, Montana, encountered a rather strange sight this week: A giant white ball hovering in the sky in broad daylight. The ball drifted between clouds and shimmered in the sun. It looked almost like a second moon. American military officials suspect that the floating mystery object is a Chinese spy balloon. The high-altitude object, they say, traveled from China to Alaska and then Canada before crossing into the continental United States. The U.S. government considered shooting down the balloon before determining that the resulting debris could endanger those on the ground. China has insisted that the aerial interloper isn’t a surveillance system, but a weather balloon that was unfortunately blown off course. The White House said that the balloon isn’t a threat to anyone on the ground, but the U.S. secretary of state has postponed a scheduled trip to Beijing, reportedly because of the situation. Continued here

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A Climate Scientist Is Evaluating the U.S.'s Spy Programs President Joe Biden named an expert on paleoclimatology to a White House intelligence panel Biden recently announced the appointment of Kim Cobb, an earth sciences professor at Brown University and a lead author of the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, released in 2021, to the White House council that's tasked with evaluating the effectiveness of the nation's intelligence community. Continued here

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Neanderthals Hunted and Butchered Massive Elephants 125,000 Years Ago Meat from the gigantic animals could have fed hundreds of hominids, according to a new analysis of bones found in central Germany Neanderthals hunted and butchered gigantic prehistoric elephants, garnering massive amounts of meat that could feed hundreds of people, according to a new analysis of 125,000-year-old animal bones. Continued here

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Strange life forms create an "alien" ecosystem in an abandoned uranium mine Above ground, the picturesque Elbe Sandstone Mountains of southeastern Germany feature remarkable mesas, snaking river canyons, and time-carved rock pillars. An impressive medieval fortress stands tall along the Elbe River. Below ground, the mountains conceal a raw material from which extraordinary power can be unlocked: uranium. In the 1960s, one pocket of uranium hidden within the mountains was transformed into a productive mine, and the massive element used as fuel for nuclear fission was extracted to the tune of more than 1,000 tonnes per year. But by 1990, the Königstein mine‘s production had fallen off, and much of the mine was flooded as part of a remediation effort to clean up the acidic chemicals used to free the uranium from its earthly prison, as well as to quench any associated radioactive runoff. Continued here

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The Good News About Vaccine Hesitancy America can’t shake the feeling that vaccination rates are about to plummet. The facts say otherwise. The world has just seen the largest vaccination campaign in history. At least 13 billion COVID shots have been administered—more injections, by a sweeping margin, than there are human beings on the Earth. In the U.S. alone, millions of lives have been saved by a rollout of extraordinary scope. More than three-fifths of the population elected to receive the medicine even before it got its full approval from the FDA. Continued here

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Why the U.S. Isn’t Shooting Down the Chinese Spy Balloon Montana balloon crisis sounds a lot less dramatic than its Cuban-missile counterpart, and not just because the Chinese surveillance balloon spotted over Big Sky Country last night is inherently less threatening than Soviet weaponry just off the coast of Florida in 1962. This situation isn’t a crisis. It isn’t even close. Although the U.S. government had to acknowledge the presence of the balloon because regular citizens were posting pictures online, the Biden administration’s best option wasn’t to panic and respond with what the military calls a “kinetic action”—or what normal people call shooting the sucker out of the sky. It was to play for time. The revelation immediately produced a chorus of armchair analysts and GOP politicians insisting that President Joe Biden was weak in the face of a clearly aggressive action by the Chinese. Some insisted that former President Donald Trump would never have allowed such a violation of American borders. Many commentators wanted the U.S. to do something—anything. Continued here

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You Can Travel in a Vintage 1940s Train Along the Hudson River In its heyday, the 20th Century Limited was advertised as “the most famous train in the world” If you thought the term “red-carpet treatment” came from Hollywood, think again. The phrase actually began with railroads in the early 1900s, when the New York Central used crimson carpets to direct people boarding its luxurious 20th Century Limited, which it eventually advertised as “the most famous train in the world.” Continued here

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How mud boosts your immune system "Don't get dirty!" was once a constant family refrain, as parents despairingly watched their children spoil their best clothes. Whether they were running through farmers' fields, climbing trees or catching tadpoles, it was inevitable that children's whites would turn brown before the day was over. Today, many parents may secretly wish their children had the chance to pick up a bit of grime. With the rise of urbanism, and the allure of video games and social media, contact with nature is much rarer than in the past. For many, there is simply no opportunity to get muddy. Continued here

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What Is It About Pamela Anderson? This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.       When the subject of Pamela Anderson comes up, understatement likely isn’t the first word that comes to mind. And yet, as her entirely self-authored memoir, Love, Pamela, makes clear, it is actually her preternatural calling. She can virtually murder a man with a simple declarative sentence. Continued here

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The Economy Is Still Very, Very Weird It’s the most important economic lesson of the decade: What goes up must come down (and what’s gone down will probably go up again). This is Work in Progress, a newsletter by Derek Thompson about work, technology, and how to solve some of America’s biggest problems. Sign up here to get it every week. Continued here

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The 15 Indie Films to Put on Your 2023 Watch List After two years of virtual screenings, the Sundance Film Festival debuted a hybrid event for the first time, welcoming both in-person and online attendees to enjoy a fresh helping of titles. As ever, the festival, which The Atlantic tuned in to from home, set the stage for the year to come in indie movies: Veteran directors debuted their latest work, newcomers hit the ground with impressive ideas, and distributors entered a frenzy of dealmaking with hopes of scoring the next CODA, Minari, or Promising Young Woman—just to name a few recent Sundance premieres that went on to become major awards contenders. The festival yielded plenty of noteworthy features; below are our favorites from 10 days of pressing “Play.” The first fiction feature from the Oscar-winning documentarian Roger Ross Williams, Cassandro is a zesty peek into a world that might be unfamiliar to many: the luchadores of Mexican wrestling. Gael García Bernal plays Saúl Armendáriz, a real-life figure who helped transform the sport in the 1980s and ’90s. His onstage character, Cassandro, was flamboyant and wore drag, a persona known as an exótico in the scripted world of wrestling. Exóticos usually lose their fights, but Armendáriz turned Cassandro into a beloved champion. Bernal gives one of his richest performances ever, lending energy to the biopic, a genre that can often feel staid and repetitive.  — David Sims Continued here

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Sports Offer More Than Winning Female athletes have been subject to harmful expectations for years. They want to bring back the joy. A certain amount of discomfort is required for growth. That’s, in part, where expressions such as no pain, no gain come from—but in sports, that pain is frequently literal. Athletes push their body in order to shave a few seconds off a race time, or gain a point on a routine. In her memoir, Good for a Girl, the accomplished runner Lauren Fleshman shows how this demand for perfection is detrimental to athletes, especially women. The writer Amanda Parrish Morgan is also familiar with the high costs of this culture; in her review, she recalls the glamorization of disordered eating and collapsing on the track. When she and Fleshman were running in the 1990s, women were expected to be not only fast and strong, but also thin, no matter what it took. Continued here

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I Bought a CO2 Monitor, and It Broke Me A few weeks ago, a three-inch square of plastic and metal began, slowly and steadily, to upend my life. The culprit was my new portable carbon-dioxide monitor, a device that had been sitting in my Amazon cart for months. I’d first eyed the product around the height of the coronavirus pandemic, figuring it could help me identify unventilated public spaces where exhaled breath was left to linger and the risk for virus transmission was high. But I didn’t shell out the $250 until January 2023, when a different set of worries, over the health risks of gas stoves and indoor air pollution, reached a boiling point. It was as good a time as any to get savvy to the air in my home. Continued here

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Who Will Replace Dianne Feinstein? California Democrats haven’t seen a Senate primary as energetic as the one now developing since 1992. Senator Dianne Feinstein hasn’t yet announced whether she’s retiring, but the race to replace her has already begun. The 2024 contest will be the first wide-open Democratic Senate primary in California since 1992, when Feinstein, who is now 89 years old, was first elected to the seat. Continued here