Half of America can't afford groceries and gas / Gen X is quietly disappearing / Your brain speaks younger than you do

Walmart is the most American thing at the World Cup / 95 year old is still water skiing / Cannibalism is bad for you, and science can explain why

World Cup tourists have been going viral on TikTok for their reactions to Walmart — the chips aisle, the gallon jugs of ranch, the dog-kibble-sized bags of Fruity Pebbles — and Walmart just announced VIP guided store tours for the first 20 visitors in line at two fan events. Also: Bryan Murray of New Zealand started water skiing in 1955, competed in tournaments across his country, survived a hip replacement last month, and just been named the world's oldest water skier at 94 years and 318 days old. He plans to extend his record this summer. And a Polish-Czech research team published a paper in PNAS this month building a mathematical model to answer why cannibalism became one of humanity's strongest taboos — and the answer is prions. Plus the hostage negotiation robot, the naked garage fire hero, the insect protein bar, and the Freedom Fuel gas stations. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Half of America can't afford groceries and gas / Gen X is quietly disappearing / Your brain speaks younger than you do

An exclusive Guardian/pollster survey finds 95% of Americans believe the country is in an affordability crisis, with half struggling to afford groceries and gas — and the partisan gap on the economy has collapsed fastest among Republicans since the Iran war sent gas prices surging. Also: new Census Bureau data shows the 45-to-64 age group shrank by 2.68 million people between 2020 and 2025, and the Northeast lost 7.1% of its midlife workforce in five years. And researchers presenting at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies Forum found that multilingual people's brains appear 6 to 13 years younger than those who speak only one language — and the effect gets stronger with each additional language. Plus the serial plant thief, the man who slapped himself into a detached retina, the bail bond t-shirt, and the time traveler from 3700. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

A 9-year-old's distress call finally arrived / The man trying to live forever has an incurable disease / Killer robots and who gets to stop them

In 1973, 9-year-old Laurie Blair Brown threw a note in a bottle into the ocean at the Jersey Shore — a fake distress call from her family's vacation. It washed up 53 years later. Also: Bryan Johnson, who spends roughly $2 million a year on a 30-person medical team trying to live forever, just disclosed he has autoimmune gastritis — an incurable disease that was quietly destroying his stomach lining for over a decade while every biomarker looked fine. And the UN Secretary-General has declared that autonomous killer robots are "politically unacceptable and morally repugnant" and must be banned by international law — but the 2026 deadline he set is here, talks are stalled, and the US, Russia, and Israel have been quietly blocking a treaty for years. Plus a whale sinking a fire rescue ship, Frank's Hot Sauce across a highway, the Delaware falling camel, and a $3 Goodwill jacket worth $250,000. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Kelsey Pfendler rowed to Hawaii / America is getting lonelier by the numbers / Scientists just woke up sleeping cancer cells with light

On July 4th, 32-year-old Grand Canyon river guide Kelsey Pfendler rowed her 21-foot boat Lily into Honolulu harbor after 43 days, 17 hours, and 55 minutes at sea — shattering both the women's record of 86 days and the men's record of 52 days, and raising over $180,000 for the Whale Foundation along the way. Also: the American Time Use Survey just confirmed what a lot of people feel but nobody wants to say — average daily socialization time has fallen from 45 to 35 minutes over the last 20 years, with teenagers down nearly 50%. And ETH Zurich researchers just published a light-controlled molecular switch that wakes dormant cancer cells out of hibernation, potentially making previously untreatable tumors vulnerable again. Plus the Brooklyn Bridge catching fire, the Smokey Bear sign thief, rental swimming pools, and a Delta flight hit by a firework over Chicago. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

In the future you won't own anything / Fast walkers have much better brains / Even "good" lies aren't good

Sony just announced that physical disc production for new PlayStation games ends in January 2028 — and the deeper story is what this means for everyone who's watched a one-time purchase quietly become a monthly subscription. Also: a new Albert Einstein College of Medicine study published in Neurology finds that people in their 80s who walk unusually fast have about half the risk of cognitive impairment — and they maintain that advantage even when their brains show the same Alzheimer's-related pathology as everyone else. And new research from StudyFinds maps exactly how people lie to their partners — and finds that "good" lies damage relationships about as often as selfish ones. Plus shark attack alerts on your phone, Pokémon cards stolen from an arcade, an Empire State Building climbing arrest, and king cobras on Everest. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.