Whenever someone ‘swears by’ an obscure vegetable or exercise practice for longevity or [shudder] ‘wellness’, I assume it occupies a ritualistic place in their lives. Magical thinking is a powerful phenomenon, and just as placebo effects are stronger when the ‘treatment’ involves something invasive like a sham surgery (as opposed to a sugar pill), health […]

For reasons I didn’t fully understand myself (marriage? the cat? surely someone or something else was to blame), I was feeling more than usually lazy, or maybe just unwilling to tolerate the discomfort of writing. It felt like a dangerous malaise, and the only remedy I could think of was to try to soak up some […]

I go to a lot of natural history museums. Something about all those pretty rocks and dead animals, and the chance that I might see something I’ve never seen before or learn something new—I can’t resist it. In the last three years, I’ve been to at least 15 natural history museums on two continents. Here’s […]

These thoughts on sneezing first ran back in October 2015, and I loved the responses. Feel free to share more examples of achoo styles from friends and family! It’s always a good time for a robust sneeze. —— When we were kids, my brother was the sneezer of all sneezers. There was never just one, […]

I arrived under a cloud. The arrival was at Punta Tombo, a colony of Magellanic penguins on the coast of Argentina. It was the 2nd of October. Hundreds of thousands of penguins, most of them males, had been coming ashore for about two weeks, marking the start of the breeding season. While they waited for […]

It’s fall, otherwise known as the beginning of cold and flu season. So what better time to revisit the potential hazards of manual nasal aspiration? I first wrote this in 2018. These days I use an automatic aspirator. No mouth suction required! Three weeks ago I came down with the flu. I was sicker than […]