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In many years of covering health and wellness, I have often thought: why am I hearing about quantum physics so much? I wrote about "quantum woo" or "quantum flapdoodle," the (mis)use of quantum theories in New Age and alternative medicine. Gift link: theatlantic.com/health/archive…

Quantum flapdoodle is one of the fundamental forces behind contemporary Healing Culture. Glad to have contributed my two cents to this excellent piece — it is always important to recognize the real anxieties driving people to believe in weird things.

What if non-hallucinogenic psychedelics aren't as non-trippy as we thought? I wrote about how novel compounds, with all their potentially weird or subtle effects, will push us to define what a "trip" is at all. Gift link: theatlantic.com/health/archive…

I wrote about how figures like RFK Jr. and Elon Musk demonstrate that psychedelics don't exclusively belong, culturally or politically, to the left (and maybe they never did!). Gift link: theatlantic.com/health/archive…

On the death of a bad idea: that psychedelics have an intrinsic political slant Shayla Love on the horse-shoe theory, & a great Ido Hartogsohn quote: “The mainstreaming of psychedelics perhaps ironically signals the end of the psychedelic community.” theatlantic.com/health/archive…

Earlier this year, I went from Iowa to central Sardinia to write about the efforts to make American cities more like “blue zones,” the now-controversial longevity hot spots. In the The New Republic: newrepublic.com/article/188317…

RFK Jr. is remarkably similar to "wellness" figures of the mid-19th & early 20th centuries, like Sylvester Graham (of graham cracker fame) or Benedict Lust (father of naturopathy). I wrote about what the history of wellness reveals about Kennedy's appeal. theatlantic.com/health/archive…

Insects are small, they don’t scream or bleed red, and many are considered pests; we tend to kill or mutilate them without pause. For The New Yorker, I wrote about the investigations into whether insects feel pain 🐝🦗🪰 newyorker.com/culture/annals…

The latest issue of the New Yorker has a profile of the insect sentience squad, featuring Tilda Gibbons, Lars Chittka, Meghan Barrett, Sarah Skeels and me. (Link in reply.)

Maybe you're thinking "new year, new me!" Maybe you have plans to be a better person/friend/partner/citizen in 2025, to ~optimize~ your goodness? Well, today I've got a piece up on Vox on the perils of trying to optimize your morality: vox.com/the-highlight/…

“The Prisoner,” a British show about an intelligence agent who wakes up in a seemingly idyllic town, is the “perfect low-stakes, high-octane episodic mystery,” Shayla Love writes in The Atlantic Daily. theatlantic.com/newsletters/ar…

Jessica Grose on RFK and the return of charismatic wellness influencers to the centre of US healthcare. With reference to Shayla Love's Atlantic article on similar theme and my work on Bernarr MacFadden, John Kellogg and the 'religion of wellness' nytimes.com/2025/02/15/opi…

Last December, I went to the French Alps to write about a medical mystery: In a small village, more than a dozen people were diagnosed with ALS, 10x higher than expected. This is the result of a decade-long investigation to try to understand why. theatlantic.com/health/archive…