David Marchese in the New York Times:

For more than 50 years, Daniel C. Dennett has been right in the thick of some of humankind’s most meaningful arguments: the nature and function of consciousness and religion, the development and dangers of artificial intelligence and the relationship between science and philosophy, to name a few. For Dennett, an éminence grise of American philosophy who is nonetheless perhaps best known as one of the “four horsemen” of modern atheism alongside Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, there are no metaphysical mysteries at the heart of human existence, no magic nor God that makes us who we are. Instead, it’s science and Darwinian evolution all the way down. In his new memoir, “I’ve Been Thinking,” Dennett, a professor emeritus at Tufts University and author of multiple books for popular audiences, traces the development of his worldview, which he is keen to point out is no less full of awe or gratitude than that of those more inclined to the supernatural. “I want people to see what a meaningful, happy life I’ve had with these beliefs,” says Dennett, who is 81. “I don’t need mystery.”

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Laith Al-Shawaf at Areo:

If you infect a rabbit with a virus or a bacterium, it’ll start to run a fever. Why? The surprising answer is that fever is not a disease; it’s a defence: a useful evolved mechanism that animals use to kill invading pathogens. Studies show that if you give fever-suppressing drugs to infected rabbits, they’re more likely to die.

It’s not just rabbits—all warm-blooded creatures use fever to kill invasive parasites. Animals that can’t regulate their body temperature internally take a different approach. For example, infected lizards seek a hot rock on which to sunbathe, raising their body temperature and killing the invaders that way—and research shows that disrupting their ability to do this increases their likelihood of death. Infected fish and reptiles exhibit this kind of “behavioural fever,” too. In humans, some studies find that administering fever-suppressing drugs to children may worsen outcomes and prolong the period of illness.

These findings suggest that fever is not a symptom of a disease; it’s an evolved defence that our bodies use to kill harmful invaders. Discoveries like this represent one small part of a larger picture emerging from the new science of evolutionary medicine. There’s a scientific revolution brewing, catalysed by the idea that considering how our bodies evolved will help us better understand and treat disease.

More here.

Moeen Farrokhi at Literary Hub:

I have never told this story in its entirety to anyone: not to my therapist, not to my closest friends, and not even to my family. I’ve divulged bits and pieces of it to different people. When my friends back home in Iran asked me why I was leaving, I made up a thousand different reasons. When my friends in Istanbul asked me what happened and why I came, I said that a part of me had died, that my ambition, courage, and hope for the future had dried up. But I didn’t explain why. I couldn’t connect the single moments into a coherent narrative.

More here.

Sarah Nicole Prickett at Bookforum:

WHEN A DEER, A DOE, STEPPED INTO THE ROAD perhaps a hundred and twenty feet ahead of the car I was driving, it seemed for a moment that she would die, even though, during the same moment, I did not feel afraid that I would hit her. I was calm; I returned my smoking hand to the steering wheel; I braked. The deer seemed to be looking at me. There was a chance she might actually run toward me. I switched off the high-beams. All of this happened in two and a half seconds, before the deer continued across the road, safely to the other side, in a single bound. It was then that, exhaling, I realized the extent to which I had felt for—on behalf of—the animal, and for days after I dwelled on the feeling.

Why, in my memory of the moment, was my thought so precisely that the deer would die? Without being afraid, I had made a leap. I had ascribed to her something like a death wish, or, in more properly psychoanalytic terms, a death instinct.

more here.

Barbara Spindel in The Christian Science Monitor:

Drew Gilpin Faust’s memoir is both a moving personal narrative and an enlightening account of the transformative political and social forces that impacted her as she came of age in the 1950s and ’60s. It’s an apt combination from an acclaimed historian who’s also a powerful storyteller.

“Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury” describes Dr. Faust’s upbringing as a privileged white girl in segregated Virginia, where she chafed at constraints placed on her because of her gender and was outraged by the racial discrimination she saw around her. (The book opens with a copy of her handwritten letter to President Dwight Eisenhower, penned at age 9, asking him to end school segregation.)

By the time “Necessary Trouble” concludes in 1968, with Dr. Faust’s graduation from Bryn Mawr College, she had rejected the culture in which she was raised, embracing the civil rights and anti-war movements and daring to imagine a different future for herself. She went on to become a scholar of the American South and, later, the first woman president of Harvard University, a position she held from 2007 to 2018. She recently spoke with the Monitor.

More here.

Mitch Leslie in Science:

When the diabetes treatments known as GLP-1 analogs reached the market in 2005, doctors advised patients taking the drugs that they might lose a small amount of weight. Talk about an understatement. Obese people can drop more than 15% of their body weight, studies have found, and two of the medications are now approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for weight reduction. A surge in demand for the drugs as slimming treatments has led to shortages. “This class of drugs is exploding in popularity,” says clinical psychologist Joseph Schacht of the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

But patient reports and animal studies have yielded tantalizing signs that the drugs may spur another unexpected and welcome effect: fighting addiction. Most early trials were disappointing, but they used less potent versions of the drugs. Now, at least nine phase 2 clinical trials are underway or being planned to test whether the more powerful compound semaglutide and its chemical cousins can help patients curb their use of cigarettes, alcohol, opioids, or cocaine. Hopes are high. Semaglutide (sold under the trade names Wegovy, Ozempic, and Rybelsus) “is truly the most exciting drug for the last few decades,” says neuropharmacologist Leandro Vendruscolo of the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse.

If the results of the new trials are positive, addiction science could have its own “Prozac moment,” says clinical neuroscientist W. Kyle Simmons of the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences. In the 1980s, that drug brought a sea change to psychiatry, becoming part of popular culture and leading to the wider use of antidepressants.

More here.

Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

by Mary Oliver
from Poetic Outlaws

Geoffrey Hiller at Saigoneer:

In 1995, there weren’t many foreign tourists in the country. It was a year after the United States normalized relations with Hanoi and lifted sanctions. Most of the passengers on the flight to Hồ Chí Minh City were Việt kiều, visiting their country for the first time since they left. The tension they felt as they cleared customs was obvious.

I stayed for close to a month and mainly traveled overland by train on the Reunification Express from Saigon to Hanoi. I stopped over for a few days each in Nha Trang, Đà Nẵng, Huế and Hanoi, and made overland trips to Đà Lạt and Hội An. Passing through the rice fields of Central Vietnam as the sun was rising felt like a dream; the landscape out the window had so many variations of the color green.

more here.