BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM For years, the conversation about children and screens has been aimed squarely at children. How much time, what content, and at what age? Sweden’s public health agency has now turned the question around. This past Monday, the agency issued new guidelines urging parents to put their phones away when…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Chances are you’ve probably already had this conversation with someone. Maybe more than once. Morning shower people and night shower people tend to hold their positions, and nobody really changes anyone else’s mind. But when you actually ask the experts, the answer is less about winning the debate and…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Street trees reduce urban heat. That much is established. What’s less settled is whether they’re enough on their own, or whether the way a city plants matters as much as how much it plants. New field research from Melbourne, Munich, and Hong Kong, led by Mohammad A. Rahman at…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM In 2014, researchers placed exercise wheels in two natural outdoor settings and left them there. Wild mice found the wheels and ran on them, sometimes for up to 18 minutes at a stretch, with no training and no food reward. The running continued long after all the bait was…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM In a 500-patient trial at American Society of Clinical Oncology’s (ASCO) annual meeting in Chicago, a daily pill called daraxonrasib doubled average survival time in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. Those on the drug lived for an average of 13.2 months. Those on standard chemotherapy lived for 6.6 to…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Zebra striping, the practice of alternating each alcoholic drink with a non-alcoholic one, is catching on: 34 percent of UK adults reported trying it in 2025. The strategy does help. Just not quite in the way people think it does. The actual mechanism: total consumption The body processes alcohol…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Something happens when you follow a physical book with its audiobook running in your ears at the same time. The distractions fall away, and you’re inside the story. The technique has a name now: immersive reading. TikTok’s own data shows it spread fast in early 2026, with searches rising…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Levels of some of the most toxic PFAS compounds have fallen sharply in Canadian seabird eggs, and the reason isn’t complicated. Regulation worked. A peer-reviewed study tracked PFAS concentrations in the eggs of northern gannets on Bonaventure Island, in the St. Lawrence Seaway basin, over 55 years. PFOS, one…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM A clinical trial published May 28 in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that a new drug called bepirovirsen achieved a functional cure in approximately one in five patients with chronic hepatitis B. That number matters. The current standard of care achieves a functional cure in around three…
BY THE OPITMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM You know the feeling: you’re staring at a sponge that’s clearly past its kitchen prime, and something makes you pause before dropping it in the bin. Good instinct. Old sponges, especially natural ones made from cellulose or other plant-based materials, have more life in them than most people realize….
Episode Description: Sir David Attenborough just turned 100! Arielle and Karissa cover his 10-minute secret to a long life along with seven other solutions this week — belugas who prove that their species is capable of recognizing themselves, hemp plastic that survives boiling water, and an ocean sanctuary that might make fishermen richer by protecting…
