Ultra-processed Foods & Bandits

Featured Articles

Why Is the American Diet So Deadly?

The New Yorker • 4 Jan 2025 • ~6400 words • Archive Link

A scientist tried to discredit the theory that ultra-processed foods are killing us. Instead, he overturned his own understanding of obesity.

Evolution trained us to like sweet, salty, and rich foods because, on the most basic level, they help us survive. Hyper-palatable foods—combinations of fat and sugar, or fat and salt, or salt and carbs—cater to these tastes but are rare in nature. A grape is high in sugar but low in fat, and I can stop eating after one. A slice of cheesecake is high in sugar and fat. I must eat it all.

The Twin Bandits Who (Nearly) Outsmarted Australian Police

The Atavist Magazine • 4 Jan 2025 • ~13000 words

Police couldn’t figure out how the thief kept hitting small-town Australian banks. Until they realized there wasn’t one robber, but two: identical twin brothers.

After a job, the tradition was to drive to Melbourne and eat at an all-night burger joint. They’d pick up the latest paper, which sometimes included news of their crime. Peter remembered one headline declaring that the police had the bandit surrounded and were expecting an early arrest. The twins laughed as they scarfed down hamburgers several towns away.

Recommended Articles

The Militia and the Mole

ProPublica • 4 Jan 2025 • ~8800 words

A wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover, climbing the ranks of right-wing militias. He didn’t tell police or the FBI. He didn’t tell his family or friends. He penetrated a new generation of militia leaders, which included doctors and government attorneys. Experts say that militias could have a renaissance under Donald Trump.

The documents laid out a remarkable odyssey. Posing as an ideological compatriot, Williams had penetrated the top ranks of two of the most prominent right-wing militias in the country. He’d slept in the home of the man who claims to be the new head of the Oath Keepers, rifling through his files in the middle of the night. He’d devised elaborate ruses to gather evidence of militias’ ties to high-ranking law enforcement officials. He’d uncovered secret operations like the surveillance of a young journalist, then improvised ways to sabotage the militants’ schemes. In one group, his ploys were so successful that he became the militia’s top commander in the state of Utah.

Parent shaming is natural

Wood from Eden • 5 Jan 2025 • ~2650 words

Only societies that manage to dampen natural resentment against parents can survive.

The operations of child protection services are based on assumptions, not science. As far as I know, no one with scientific ambitions, in no Western country, has dared to assert that the foster care system actually makes life better for most of the children it cares for.

Edwin Cohn and the Harvard Blood Factory

Asimov Press • 5 Jan 2025 • ~9300 words

How a chemistry “purist” built one of World War II’s greatest applied R&D laboratories.

Cohn’s work ought to be iconic amongst those interested in scientific progress and metascience. Before the war, his lab's work was characterized by one funder as "painstaking, abstruse, and likely only slowly to come to widespread recognition for its essential importance." But in just a few short years, this same lab became one of the great translational R&D groups of all time. While Cohn’s methods are outdated, the wisdom of his approach is evergreen.

Time to talk about the Panama Canal

Material World • 3 Jan 2025 • ~2350 words

Following Donald Trump's recent comments about taking back control of the Panama Canal, Ed Conway writes about the canal's history and a potential alternative to it.

If the Panamanians didn’t agree then America might turn back to the Colombians. The independence movement would be over - a few weeks after it began. It was blackmail of the highest order. As far as anyone can work out, this threat came not from the White House but from Bunau-Varilla himself.

Can Famo Music Survive Lesotho’s Gang Wars?

Rolling Stone • 3 Jan 2025 • ~5350 words

In this remote African country, famo songs have been a storytelling tool for more than a century. Today, they’re used as a weapon and some groups are banned.

In Lesotho, people knew Kholopo Khuluoe by his stage name, Lisuoa, which means “Spitefulness.” He was among the brightest and most controversial stars in the famo music scene — a genre of music indigenous to Lesotho, characterized by rap-like chanting, frantic accordion playing, and rhythmic drumming. In recent years, organized crime and violence have plagued it.

Scent Makes a Place

Nautilus • 3 Jan 2025 • ~2850 words

Katy Kelleher writes about the often-overlooked importance of smells in understanding our environment.

We’ve also numbed our noses into oblivion, dulling our most primal sense with the overwhelming presence of synthetic musks and so-called “clean” compounds, used to scent everything from candies to detergents. So when I go outside and try to smell the air, identify the plant, find the source of aromatic joy, I’m engaging in an uphill battle, fighting both my culture and my exhausted, chemical-addled olfactory bulbs.

Do You Believe in Life After Death? These Scientists Study It.

New York Times • 3 Jan 2025 • ~4000 words • Archive Link

Is reincarnation real? Is communication from the “beyond” possible? A small set of academics are trying to find out, case by case.

This last conundrum — the survival of consciousness after death — continues to be at the forefront of the division’s research. The team has logged hundreds of cases of children who claim to remember past lives from all continents except Antarctica. “And that’s only because we haven’t looked for cases there,” said Dr. Jim Tucker, who has been investigating claims of past lives for more than two decades. He recently retired after having been the director of DOPS since 2015.