Technology

MEMORY IS A LIAR:

Being a Doctor Will Never Be the Same After A.I. (Rachael Bedard, 9/25/26, The New York Times)

This summer, I used an A.I. tool — a platform called OpenEvidence, accessible only to health care providers — to help me choose antibiotics for one patient and to interpret unusual bloodwork for another. A.I. reminded me to consider migraines when a woman presented with dizziness. I chatted with the large language model about treatments for an older man with lung cancer. I have also consulted it about a rash on my father’s back, my son’s fever, a friend’s arm pain and my own difficulty sleeping.

I practice primary care, where every malady is my business. Almost every month, I’m confronted with a complaint or syndrome that I don’t recognize. I’m confident in my mastery over what doctors do — history-taking, reasoning, communicating. I’m less confident about my continued mastery of an ever-evolving universe of facts. Now, the chatbot in my pocket reassures me that I will always know enough, or have access to the cloud-based intelligence that generally does.

The wealthy and powerful tend to insist on seeing the most senior physician, who was also, hilariously, trained longest ago.

FAKE IT ‘TIL YOU MAKE IT…INTO A DIAGNOSTIC MANUAL:

Trauma Is Apparently Contagious: The rise of “secondary traumatic stress” shows how far the concept has stretched—and that’s a problem for the patients most in need of care. (Christina Buttons, 9/26/26, City Journal)

Once trauma no longer required direct exposure, it became possible to describe the person hearing about another’s trauma as traumatized, too. In that context, psychologists Lisa McCann and Laurie Anne Pearlman proposed the term “vicarious traumatization” in 1990 to describe changes in therapists who repeatedly encountered clients’ graphic stories of pain and stress.

From there, the number of people considered susceptible to secondary trauma expanded, and the concept has been invoked with increasing frequency. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network, a federally funded organization, now describes secondary traumatic stress as a “common occupational hazard” for professionals who work with traumatized children and warns that listening to their stories can compromise workers’ health and professional functioning.

The concept has also spread well beyond psychotherapists. Teachers can acquire secondary trauma from students. Journalists can experience vicarious trauma from reporting on suffering. In 2023, Time announced that “the whole world” was at risk of compassion fatigue because wars, mass shootings, disasters, and social media continually expose ordinary people to other people’s misery.

THE ice AGE WAS A MISTAKE:

Lead you absorbed as a child may cause dementia as you age (Michael J. Coren and Aaron Steckelberg, 9/14/26, Washington Post)

Growing up in the 1980s, I was the last generation to live through the highest period of lead exposure in U.S. history: Exhaust from cars fueled by leaded gasoline, as well as paint chips and lead pipes, added to the toxic burden in my body. Trillions of lead atoms are now part of my being.

For more than 90 percent of the population born between 1951 and 1980, blood lead levels exceeded 5 micrograms per deciliter, a level we now know is associated with lower IQ, attention and behavior problems, and smaller brain volume. In the late 1970s, the peak of the lead crisis, levels in children under 5 averaged 16 micrograms per deciliter, nearly five times higher than today’s threshold for triggering public health intervention. Before national monitoring began in 1976, lead levels were probably much higher.

That arguably makes lead exposure the largest quiet mass poisoning in human history, said Jennifer Weuve, an epidemiologist at Boston University’s School of Public Health.

WE NEED MORE GUINEA FOWL:

The Tick That Hunts Down Its Hosts—Including Us (Burkhard Bilger, June 29, 2026, The New Yorker)

“Everyone comes here and is afraid of Jaws,” he said. “That is not what you should be scared about. It’s the little things.” […]

Roden-Reynolds pointed to a row of stocky little bugs, each with a white dot on its back. These were lone-star ticks, first confirmed to be on the island in 2011. Most ticks are content to sit and wait for a meal to wander past; lone stars have no patience for that. “We see them actually pursuing hosts, which is really disconcerting,” one entomologist told me. Roden-Reynolds has found lone stars on walking trails and benches, in toolsheds, parking lots, and the yards of hundreds of local homes that he has surveyed. He has heard of them scrambling down dunes and across burning sand to feed on sunbathers. “Oh, they’re relentless,” he said.

AND THE LIVIN’ IS EASY:

A hike through the woods feels natural. It’s anything but.: The industrial revolution provided the impetus, the income and the time to do it. (Dominic Piro, 9/13/26, Washington Post)

Before the industrial revolution, the great outdoors was most people’s workplace. They were out there from dawn to dusk in all kinds of weather, doing grueling manual labor, or else they starved. It was only the richest of the rich who could stay inside and partake in such hedonistic extravagances as eating a varied diet or learning how to read. Today we can enjoy the great outdoors because we do it on our own terms.

But back then, wandering around outside could be dangerous. The medieval Norse word skóggangr, a formal punishment for very serious crimes, translates to “going to the woods.” People who received that sentence were cut off from Norse society, leaving them with nowhere to go but the forest, where they eventually died.

Fear of the woods is also evident in old fairy tales, where the forest was commonly portrayed as a scary place because the rules of society didn’t apply there. Now, with the professional management of park services and the aid of mass-produced gear, people can enjoy a break from society even with small children in tow.

As for walking, for most of human history, it wasn’t recreation. It was the primary mode of transportation.

We lead lives of unimaginable leisure.

A CLOSER WALK:

The spiritual power of walking (Simon Eder, 9/10/26, The Jewish Chronicle)

A 2024 umbrella review of multiple meta-analyses, published in Science Direct, found that a few thousand steps a day measurably changes the trajectory of a life. Modern medicine has, in its own idiom, rediscovered something Judaism has never forgotten: that the body in motion is not incidental to the soul’s condition, but bound up with it.

Judaism has long affirmed the power of walking and movement itself carries spiritual weight. The Three Regalim — Pesach, Shavuot and Succot are literally “foot festivals,” which historically demanded physical pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The Torah’s central narrative is itself a journey on foot, from Egyptian bondage through the wilderness toward the Promised Land.