Free for ALL Friday!

It's Free for All Friday!

When a Historian Saw This Haunting Photograph of a Nameless Native Girl, She Decided She Had to Identify Her

In 1868, Sophie Mousseau was photographed at Fort Laramie alongside six white Army officers. But her identity—and her life story—remained unknown for more than a century.

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A Global Flourishing Study Finds That Young Adults, Well, Aren’t

New data collected from more than 200,000 people across the world shows that young people aren’t as happy as they used to be.

The happiness curve is collapsing.

For decades, research showed that the way people experienced happiness across their lifetimes looked like a U-shaped curve. Happiness tended to be high when they were young, then dipped in midlife, only to rise again as they grew old.

But recent surveys suggest that young adults aren’t as happy as they used to be, and that U-shaped curve is starting to flatten.

This pattern has shown up yet again in a new study, one of a collection of papers published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Mental Health. They are the first publications based on the inaugural wave of data from the Global Flourishing Study, a collaboration between researchers at Harvard and Baylor University.

“It is a pretty stark picture,” said Tyler J. VanderWeele, the lead author of the study and director of Harvard’s Human Flourishing Program. The findings raise an important question, he said: “Are we sufficiently investing in the well-being of youth?”

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Amateur Athletes Are Turning to Ozempic to Raise Their Game

Runners, cyclists and other fitness enthusiasts say weight-loss drugs give them a performance edge, despite potential risks.

Amanda Rodriguez felt exceptionally proud as she ran the Chicago Marathon last fall. She also felt a touch weighed down.

With other races on the horizon, she decided to go back on tirzepatide, the active ingredient in popular diabetes and weight-loss drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound. She had used it before to take off some excess weight. Now she wanted to lose more to improve her running performance.

“My body just feels stronger,” says Rodriguez, 30, who has since lost 20 pounds while maintaining her diet and training schedule. She has also shaved a minute from her 5-kilometer time and completed her first ultramarathon.

Since Ozempic burst into the culture, medical researchers have discovered the drug and its cousins might offer wide-ranging health benefits, including curbing addictions and battling the aging process.

Now a burgeoning community of runners, cyclists and other sports and exercise enthusiasts are taking the weight-loss drugs in the hopes of gaining a performance edge. For members who are on the medications, gym operator Equinox has even created a personalized “GLP-1 protocol” training program that focuses on muscle-building and retention.

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Call Me A Luddite, But These Modern Features Only Seem To Make Cars Worse

We were promised flying cars by now, and even though our generation is used to disappointment, lackluster feelings about the cars-of-future-present have been magnified by an overabundance of modern car features that often feel like bugs in disguise. Why does my car beep furiously if I take my hand off the wheel? Why do I have to scroll through a touchscreen menu to turn on my rear defroster when a simple button used to do the job instantly?

We're not anti-progress — we grew up alongside it. My generation is the one that witnessed the rise of the internet, saw phones go from indestructible bricks to pocket-sized supercomputers, and embraced streaming over Saturday morning cartoons. We know the value of innovation. That said, we also remember when things were built to last and when technology felt like an upgrade instead of an obstacle.

So yes, while we appreciate smart technology, we also know when it's making life harder instead of easier. In my opinion, and I'm sure several will agree, here are a few modern car features that have overpromised and underdelivered in a big way.

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The Children of the Vietnam War’s ‘Operation Babylift’ Have Turned 50. A Look at the Lives They Built.

The first plane to fly children out of Vietnam crashed, killing dozens. Survivors found homes across the United States.

They are turning 50 now, the babies laid out on airplane seats, six to a row, held and fed by strangers who took turns caring for them as they took artillery fire and fled the bombs and booms of Saigon.

They were part of Operation Babylift, an effort led by the American military to rescue babies from Vietnamese orphanages ahead of the fall of Saigon 50 years ago this month.

“This is the least we can do, and we will do much, much more,” President Gerald Ford said on April 3, 1975.

The operation came after 10 grueling years of U.S. involvement in the 20-year-long Vietnam War, a conflict that took millions of Vietnamese lives, more than 58,000 American lives and divided the country. As the North Vietnamese closed in on Saigon in April 1975, American civilians were evacuated en masse.

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The Unabomber’s Brother Turned Him In. Then Spent 27 Years Trying to Win Him Back.

Ted Kaczynski, whose anti-tech rants are finding a new generation of readers, shunned the brother who called the F.B.I. in an effort to halt his campaign of violence.

It was May 1996, and David Kaczynski, a counselor for troubled youth in upstate New York, sat down to write a letter to his brother Ted. A month earlier, his brother had been shockingly unmasked as the shadowy Unabomber, responsible for a 17-year campaign of bombings that had killed and maimed people across the country.

Ted Kaczynski, a brilliant but mentally troubled mathematician who had retreated years earlier to a remote hovel in Montana, had been arrested based on information from a tipster to the F.B.I., ending one of the longest and most expensive manhunts in American history. He was now in custody and facing what would almost certainly be a lifetime behind bars, if not a death sentence.

The tipster was David.

Sitting in his home in Schenectady, N.Y., David began writing the letter. He used a pencil, knowing he might have to erase before he got it right.

“I could only imagine how much Ted resented me,” he recalled in an interview. Would Ted consider allowing him to visit, he wrote, and try to explain? “I wanted to tell him in person that we morally felt an obligation to stop the violence,” he said.

Ted declined to put David on his visitors list, and when he wrote back, it was to turn the fury of his resentment on his brother.

“You will go to hell because, for you, seeing yourself as you really are will truly be hell,” he wrote.

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In Paris, Jogging Is No Longer a Faux Pas

Running in the French capital has finally become a popular sport and pastime, and brands are cashing in.

Springtime in Paris isn’t just cafe terraces coming to life, and cherry blossoms and magnolias turning the city pink. It now also means locals jogging beside the Seine River, on the gravelly paths of the Tuileries and Luxembourg gardens and up and down the stairs and hills of Montmartre. At dusk, there are so many runners that it can look like an official race is happening.

In a surprising turn, Paris has become a running city. Last year’s Schneider Electric Marathon de Paris set a worldwide record for the most participants in a marathon at the time, and this year’s race to be held Sunday sold out six months in advance, another record. The city last year even had a second marathon, when it opened the Olympics course to the public.

“We have a big change in Paris,” said Thomas Delpeuch, director of mass events for Amaury Sport Organisation, organizer of the Paris Marathon. “All my colleagues now are running every [day at] lunch time.” The fitness app Strava has seen a more than fivefold increase in the number of athletes uploading runs in Paris since 2019. Paris run clubs are flourishing and global sportswear companies are opening flagships on the Champs-Élysées.

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