Yesterday, 7 million people gathered to make it clear: America has no kings. 🇺🇸

It's going up to $40 billion. USAID's budget last year was $28 billion.

My colleagues & I have taken a huge gamble to set up @thenerve.news We’re trying to build a new independent publication from the ground up. Social media is our only distribution for now. Sharing this article in your networks would make a huge difference. Thank you! 🙏🙏🙏

Funny, not funny. Speaks to the heart of the curiosity collective salon I curated recently on what makes us human in the age of AI: www.instagram.com/reel/DPeshTA...

I was there during the apagón/blackout in Spain. I was guessing cyberattack, but apparently not. It was super interesting to see how it shut down every aspect of life (funny for someone who's lived thru blackouts in Cuba, Afghanistan, etc www.npr.org/2025/10/08/n...

Very important article and worth the read - Opinion | 6 U.S. surgeons general: RFK Jr. threatens the health of Americans - The Washington Post

Over the weekend ICE abducted an NIH contractor when he showed up to a courthouse for his green card hearing. He is documented. His wife is a citizen. He is also member of the skeleton crew of animal care staff that works through a shutdown, to ensure the health and wellbeing of research animals.

Promising science, still early stages, but hopeful

100% this: wapo.st/3VTALll proud of the 6 surgeon generals, including my friend Vivek Murthy, who united to help eject this anti-science conspiracy theorist who is badly damaging our nation’s health.

So proud of my friend @lisaborders.bsky.social

Schlafly's mother supported the family during the Great Depression when her father was out of work. She herself worked in a factory and then did a BA, MA and law degree. She talked traditional but acted like a feminist

The last three government shutdowns have happened while Donald Trump was President. This shutdown, like all recent shutdowns, is a REPUBLICAN SHUTDOWN. Enough with the chaos. Time for Republican leadership to work with Democrats to reopen government and save your health care.

As a novelist I appreciate this piece of evidence about the persistence of human character across time.

What a joy to find Gabrielle Zevin's novel Tomorrow + Tomorrow + Tomorrow in a Marjane in Rabat. The protagonists are gamers (a subject that doesn't really interest me and yet I devoured the 480 pages of the novel in less than a day!). Brilliant characters in a long, complex, intimate friendship.

My husband was detained by ICE today Juan Muñoz, an American citizen, father of 2, and local government official, was peacefully protesting w. other elected officials. He was assaulted and taken away I have had zero contact or updates since #SOS @duckworth.senate.gov @durbin.senate.gov

I am sickened by today’s attack in Manchester. Antisemitism is on the rise around the world, and we must do all we can to stomp it out. I am grateful to first responders and congregants who showed incredible bravery, and I am praying for those who were killed.

Shero!

Super proud of ace producer, Baktash Ahadi, for signing on Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai + Succession actor Arian Moyaed as Execs for his award-winning doc--about ski racing in Bamiyan, Afghanistan. It's been a joy working with Baktash on my forthcoming film. variety.com/2025/film/ne...

Critical work by Alliance for Middle East Peace on whether Israelis will accept a Two State Solution (and what their conditions are around that): blogs.timesofisrael.com/most-israeli... also, Trump's 21 point plant for peace is much better than I thought: www.timesofisrael.com/revealed-us-...

Wondrous new children's book to order: Maria Popova's The Coziest Place on the Moon. www.themarginalian.org/2025/09/12/t...

Must listen episode of TED Radio Hour with the ever-wonderful Manoush Zamorodi. The astonishing story of world-class cellist (+ my dear friend) Joshua Roman's near erasure from LongCovid, how he transforms himself and his music. www.npr.org/2025/09/26/n...

The scientific and legal insanity of cutting DEI programs in health/medicine and research in the @nejm.org written by the amazing scholars and health policy advocates, Drs. Nancy Krieger and Mary Bassett. www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

How AI fails low-resourced, culturally distinct (from Western) contexts. Brilliant article about how AI misreads the Persian art of ingrained politesse ("taarof"). arstechnica.com/ai/2025/09/w... TY @susannepari.bsky.social for this. I often wonder if Iranian diplomats are misunderstood this way.

brilliant PSA on what we're doing when we give our kids a smartphone without parental controls: www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_xw...

Excellent piece by Dr. Dhruv Khullar from my perspective as a clinician and AI clinical trainer who interacts with AI daily and also sees its flaws. It's all about the prompting and what details you know to highlight.

A month ago, the famine in Gaza, deliberately created by the Israeli government, was officially confirmed by UN agencies. Since then, there has been an eerie silence in the media here, with far fewer reports than there were before. But it hasn't ended. On the contrary, it has intensified.

This hits too close to home given my work examining refugees seeking political asylum who have been survivors of torture. A must listen of the disintegration of the US justice system.

Sooo good.

Amazing discussion between Rob Malley and Hussein Agha w/ @newyorker.com: www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-... I get that Bibi/Hamas have never wanted 2-state solution, but most Israelis + even MAGA-supporting Americans do according to hopeful new survey data: www.timesofisrael.com/most-america...

Read this amazing, hopeful, refreshing piece inspired by ALLMEP research about US and Israeli attitudes toward the 2-state solution, West Bank annexation, peacebuilding, ceasefire, and regional normalization. www.timesofisrael.com/most-america... contrasts so much with the polarization we hear today

This is an amazing podcast that speaks volumes about what Cuba is like (a country I love). The beautiful (protection of vulnerable) and the terrible (what some will go to escape their situation there). Thank you, @radiolab.bsky.social Brilliant work with Radioambulante. radiolab.org/podcast/los-...

Gaza West Bank Lebanon Yemen Syria Iran Iraq Tunisia Qatar All attacked and bombed by Israel in the past year. Insane. Rogue state.

SHEROES

For us ID doctors, the CDC has been a rock. Data, guidelines, surveillance, travel advice -- all there, vetted by experts, referenced, reliable. Perfect? No. But watching its dismantling now breaks my heart. Some thoughts: blogs.jwatch.org/hiv-id-obser...

mRNA vaccines are one of if not the most studied human inventions in history at this point. It's madness to say that they are somehow not well-understood!

New Mexico has issued a public health order that removes federal restrictions to COVID-19 vaccine access so that pharmacies in New Mexico can vaccinate people of all ages and risk profiles. Every state need to do this!

Eternally grateful to @drjengunter.bsky.social for pursuing these women's health rabbit holes so we don't have to. Voila, here you have the origins of the "natural medicine" term "bio-identical" when it comes to menopausal hormone therapy. TLDR more marketing bs. vajenda.substack.com/p/the-birth-...

This podcast about the injustices of the West Bank on @thisamericanlife.org is distressing and enraging and vividly illustrative of the right wing Israeli government’s plan to wipe out Palestinians and make them flee podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

loved this conversation so much. Summarizes (in far more eloquent form) my thoughts on migration (with evidence-backed claims and historic perspective) and how our mental models about creatures on the move must shift. PS read the brill Sonia Shah’s book on migration called The Next Great Migration.

rich trove of thought provoking essays.

Gorgeous essay on secular homelessness or home-loose-ness. With contrasts of exile from Edward Said. I plan to revisit this essay and discuss it with friends. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v3...

Most interesting scientific paper I've read in ages: on mitochondria. Fascinating learning from evolutionary biology, understanding chronic diseases, mechanisms of inflammation, to even psychedelic states. By Prof + Director Mitochondrial Psycho-Biology at Columbia U: archive.today/2025.05.20-2...

This summary on content production and distribution by the amazing @kevinkelly.bsky.social of 1,000 true fans and other culture shaping ideas is gold. Thanks, Tim Ferriss for the find. Thanks, KK, for the generative gift of your wisdom. kk.org/thetechnium/...

Famine confirmed for first time in #Gaza @fao.org @unicef.org @wfp.org & @who.int call for an immediate & full-scale humanitarian response given the escalating hunger-related deaths, rapidly worsening levels of acute malnutrition & plummeting levels of food consumption. www.fao.org/newsroom/det...

This situation in Gaza is chilling and grotesque. This teenage Gazan girl tells it as it is. I'm grateful to work with an excellent NGO devoted to peace ( @tmrwswomen.bsky.social) that shares the work of girls like this one + arms them for the day after. But our intl govts must stop this war now.

An intriguing piece on the Islamic Revolution in Iran--did it happen to take place because of an editorial or did it result from inevitable geopolitical forces? And how did Khomeini seize power when feminists, communists, students were equally involved in the rev? www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

This is an authoritarian takeover, plain and simple. Trump is grabbing power like a dictator, and he won’t stop with DC — your state or city will be next. DC deserves autonomy and statehood. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/08...

A beautiful piece about brokenness, empathy, and Japanese art concepts by entrepreneur, leader, and friend Maryam Mohit. medium.com/age-of-empat...

Recommendation: Off the Radar, an extraordinary memoir by Cyrus Copeland, an Iranian-American writer + tree evangelist, raised in Iran until his American father (an Iranian scholar) was tried as a CIA spy. It's a thriller, beautiful in its portrait of the soul of Iran and one man's search to fit in.