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Forest Bathing Has Real Data and One Awkward Finding About Anticipation Bats Carry Viruses That Should Kill Them, and Science Just Found Another Piece of the Answer Chanting Calms People Down, and the Most Likely Reason Is Extremely Boring Detox Is a Word That Describes Two Real Things and Almost Nothing Sold Under Its Name Bitcoin Reclaimed 81,000 Dollars on a Rate Signal, Which Is Not What an Inflation Hedge Does Brahma Muhurta Says Rise Before Dawn, and Roughly Half Your Wake Time Was Decided by Your Genes

A monk in maroon robes sitting alone in the shade of a tree on open grass, seen from a distance

Meditation Has Adverse Effects, and the People Most Likely to Meet Them Are the Ones Told It Cannot Hurt

Sep 4, 2026/4 min read

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Just In

Sep 4, 2026

Lifestyle

Forest Bathing Has Real Data and One Awkward Finding About Anticipation

Sep 4, 2026

Health

Bats Carry Viruses That Should Kill Them, and Science Just Found Another Piece of the Answer

Sep 4, 2026

Health

Chanting Calms People Down, and the Most Likely Reason Is Extremely Boring

Sep 4, 2026

Health

Detox Is a Word That Describes Two Real Things and Almost Nothing Sold Under Its Name

The Latest

Business

The Federal Reserve Is Arguing About a Rate Rise, and a Shipping Lane Is Casting the Deciding Vote

Governor Christopher Waller said he is inclined to hold in September, and market odds on a rise fell about twelve points to 54.6 percent. With rates at 3.50 to 3.75 percent, the swing variable is how fast energy supply chains normalise.

Sep 4, 2026/3 min read

The Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve Board Building in Washington, headquarters of the Board of Governors, photographed head on from the lawn

Health

Turmeric Supplements Solved the Absorption Problem, and That Is Exactly Why They Damage Livers

Curcumin is barely absorbed, so manufacturers add piperine, which can raise bioavailability twentyfold. Liver injury reports have followed the formulations that work best, which is not a coincidence.

Sep 4, 2026/3 min read

Fresh turmeric rhizome, sliced to show the orange interior, beside a heap of the ground spice. The concern in this piece is with concentrated capsules rather than with the spice itself

Health

Ashwagandha Has Good Trial Data for Stress and a Growing File of Liver Injury Reports

The most popular Ayurvedic herb in the world looks reassuring in clinical trials and much less so in hepatology case series. A systematic review has identified thirty-seven cases of ashwagandha-associated liver injury.

Sep 4, 2026/3 min read

Dried ashwagandha roots, the part of Withania somnifera that is ground for supplements

Health

Oil Pulling and Tongue Scraping: One Has Modest Evidence, the Other Is Mostly Enthusiasm

Two Ayurvedic oral practices have gone mainstream on very different evidence bases. Neither replaces a toothbrush, and one of them has a Cochrane review that found two trials and forty people.

Sep 4, 2026/3 min read

A stainless steel tongue scraper, the curved blade drawn from the back of the tongue forwards

Health

Nasal Rinsing Works, and the Water You Use Can Kill You

Saline nasal irrigation has reasonable evidence behind it for sinus symptoms. It also has a rare, almost uniformly fatal complication, and avoiding it requires one specific instruction that most people have never been given.

Sep 4, 2026/3 min read

A blue ceramic neti pot with its measuring spoon, the shape used for pouring saline through one nostril and out of the other

Also in the Digest

A merchant tanker under way in the Arabian Gulf while a helicopter lowers a boarding party onto its deck. The photograph records the boarding of the MT Wila in August 2020 and is not from the current closure

Business

The Strait Reopens Every Few Weeks in the Headlines and Six Ships a Day in the Data

Sep 4, 2026

A plate of sabudana khichdi, the tapioca pearls translucent and separate rather than clumped, finished with coriander and lime

Recipes

Sabudana Khichdi Is Fasting Food, Which Is Why It Is Made of Almost Nothing but Starch

Sep 4, 2026

An Indian vegetarian thali of rice, dal, vegetable curry, chutney and flatbread on a steel plate. It is not a Jain meal, but it is the format one is served in

Recipes

Jain Cooking Removes the Roots As Well, and the Reasoning Is Stricter Than It Looks

Sep 4, 2026

Bunches of carrots piled at a market with their green tops still attached, which is how you have to buy them to make this

Recipes

Carrot Tops Are Not Poisonous, and the Rumour Seems to Trace to a Blog Post

Sep 4, 2026

A head of broccoli on a wooden board with a hand steadying it, the thick main stalk still attached below the florets

Recipes

The Broccoli Stalk Is the Best Part and You Have Been Throwing It Away

Sep 4, 2026

Hiyayakko, a block of cold silken tofu topped with sliced spring onion and fried aromatics, which is the Japanese version of this dish

Recipes

Silken Tofu With Ginger and Soy Takes Four Minutes and Requires No Cooking At All

Sep 4, 2026

A poached seitan log part sliced on a plate, showing the dense fibrous interior that wheat gluten develops

Recipes

Buddhist Monks Invented Mock Meat in the Sixth Century and Called It Mianjin

Sep 4, 2026

Appam, the fermented rice and coconut pancakes with lacy edges and a soft centre, which is what ishtu is traditionally eaten with

Recipes

Kerala Ishtu: The Coconut Stew That Was Vegan Before Anyone Needed the Word

Sep 4, 2026

In Pictures

Homemade ghee cooling in a steel pot, clear and deep gold, with the browned milk solids already strained out

Recipes

Ghee Takes Twenty Minutes and One Decision: When to Take It Off the Heat

Clarified butter cooked a little further until the milk solids brown. It keeps for months without refrigeration, has a smoke point around 250C, and is the one Ayurvedic staple whose usefulness needs no theory at all.

Sep 4, 2026