Today’s Big Story

Exercise Is the Way

It may be “the single most potent medical intervention ever known”

I feel better when I work out. And I can feel the difference in my body, and in my mood, when I don’t. Of course, we know that exercise does a body good, but fitness has been somewhat of a conundrum. As The Ringer puts it: “On the one hand, physical activity is clearly one of the best interventions for preventing physical disease and mental suffering. On the other hand, scientists don’t really understand how it works inside the body or what exactly running, jumping, lifting, and squatting does to our tissues and organs.”

That’s finally changing. Euan Ashley, a professor of genomics and cardiovascular medicine at Stanford, is a member of a new research consortium that studies rats and humans to understand the molecular changes induced by exercise. “I’m sure we could talk about diet, we could talk about sleep, we could talk about other things,” he says. “But I truly believe that nothing is more important among those than physical activity and exercise.”

Exercise is Medicine is another health initiative aimed at connecting fitness with measurable medical benefits. The initiative, managed by the American College of Sports Medicine, encourages health care providers to assess patients’ physical activity during visits, plus include regular exercise when designing care plans.

The philosophy behind the initiative is simple: Physical activity promotes optimal health. Regular movement also helps to prevent and even treat various medical conditions. Overwhelming evidence links physical inactivity to poor health and high health care costs, according to a 2020 article in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. The study concluded that health care and fitness programs should be merged.

Recently, Harvard Medical School published similar findings. They said that while we’ve long known that regular workouts preserve muscle strength, keeps your heart strong and maintains a healthy body weight; we now know that it’s a reliable way to stave off chronic diseases and cognitive decline too. “Exercise can also boost memory and thinking indirectly by improving mood and sleep, and by reducing stress and anxiety.” Problems in these areas frequently cause or contribute to cognitive impairment as we age. In order to prevent problems down the road, they suggest putting in the sweat equity today.

The Future of Self-Driving Cars

Robotaxis, machine learning and remote drivers hundreds of miles away

Tesla’s upcoming, long-promised, so-called robotaxi that has been teased for almost half a decade could finally be revealed next month, according to a new report from Bloomberg. It suggests the automaker has arranged for the new vehicle with full self-driving technology to be revealed at the Warner Bros. Discovery movie studio lot in California.

Will robotaxis deploying custom shared-ride vehicles fulfill the urban dream of motorists ditching their cars? Six hundred experts in the driverless mobility space, who converged at a conference in San Diego late this summer, seem to think so. They also think that cities should get more invloved. “When public money is involved, ride-sharing is fundamental (buses, trolleys, etc.), with the goal being to enhance personal mobility while reducing traffic congestion and greenhouse gas emissions.”

These cars will continue to get smarter, but for right now, they still sometimes need a copilot, even if they’re not in the car. According to the New York Times, few realize that autonomous vehicles are not completely autonomous. Zoox—a self-driving car company owned by Amazon—provides driving assistance to cars via human technicians sitting in a room about 500 miles away. So you’re not in a robot car, you’re in a big remote control car.

We’re Making Way More Plastic Than You Think

The world is also burning an alarming amount of plastic each year, too

For the last few years, the talk around plastic has been focused on micro plastics, which are showing up in all sorts of surprising places. But what about the regular, day-to-day plastics? We’re making and trashing way more of it than you probably realize.

The world creates 57 million tons of plastic pollution every year. It’s enough plastic—about 52 million metric tons—to fill New York City’s Central Park with plastic waste as high as the Empire State Building, according to researchers at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. They examined waste produced on the local level at more than 50,000 cities and towns across the world for a new study.

India leads the world in generating plastic pollution, producing 10.2 million tons a year (9.3 million metric tons), far more than double the next big-polluting nations, Nigeria and Indonesia. Researchers found that China has been making strides in reducing waste while the United States ranked 90th in plastic pollution with more than 52,500 tons a year. Unfortunately, researchers found that a large proportion of the plastic waste created across the world is burned in the open air—threatening human health and demonstrating the world’s ongoing struggle to manage all this unwanted plastic.

Spooky Season Started Early

Retailers (and the internet) are making Halloween plans already

Bring on the extra candy … because it seems that everyone has decided September is now officially a spooky month. Remember all those “Me on September 30/Me on October 1” memes? Well, now people are making them for September 1. Why? Is it all the pumpkin-flavored goodies already on offer?

Vulture says we should blame it on Christmas Creep. Or Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’s Venice premiere. Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘Taste’ music video is a factor. It’s possible Demure Autumn isn’t the comedown we really need from Brat Summer. “Or perhaps it all comes down to the increasingly distressing nature of the world at large. But for one reason or another, Halloween season is starting in September this year. Spooktober? Meet Spooktember, her creepy haunted doll of a little sister.”

And stores were already pushing it. Most major retailers like Target and Lowe’s announced spooky products as early as July as Halloween spending surges. According to the National Retail Federation, Halloween spending by Americans reached a record in 2023 of $12.2 billion, up from $10.6 billion the previous year. And theme park operators such as Six Flags, Disney and Universal Studios introduced a range of Halloween-themed attractions, live-performances, merchandise, food and beverages at the end of August in order to take advantage of the surging popularity of all things creepy.

The Long Read

We all want more time with our friends, but we’re spending more time alone

Turn it off every now and then.