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Yes, breathing wildfire smoke can harm your health

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 22:09:03 +0000

Yes, breathing wildfire smoke can harm your health Rachel Sauer Mon, 07/27/2026 - 16:09

Colleen E. Reid

Here’s what you can do to protect yourself

Wildfire smoke from fires burning in Canada and northern Minnesota has been pouring across the Great Lakes and northeastern U.S. states, turning skies an eerie shade of orange. In the West, smoke has also been spreading into communities in Colorado and neighboring states as more wildfires burn in hot, dry conditions in July 2026.

University of Colorado environmental health researcher Colleen Reid explains what’s in that smoke and why breathing it is a health concern everyone should be aware of.

Colleen Reid is a CU �鶹ӰԺ associate professor of geography and director of the public health program.

What is in wildfire smoke?

Wildfire smoke is a complex mixture that includes nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and particulate matter. When homes or buildings also burn, they can release an even more toxic stew of chemicals from burning electronics, furniture, plastics, paints and much more.

What you see when you see a smoke plume or when the air is hazy with wildfire smoke are the tiny particles that are too small to fall to the ground right away with gravity.

These particles, which scientists call particulate matter, are very small – we measure them in microns. When you breathe them in, they can harm your health. The smaller the particles, the deeper they can get into your lungs and body.

You may have heard the term PM2.5. It means particles that are 2.5 microns or smaller in diameter, many times smaller than the width of a human hair. High concentrations of these particles in the air during wildfire smoke episodes are what trigger air quality alerts.

Has wildfire smoke been increasing recently, and why?

Yes, wildfires have become more frequent and more intense just in the past couple of decades, and when wildfires become more frequent and intense, so does the smoke.

Scientists have found that wildfires are becoming more frequent due to a variety of factors that include increases in fire weather – hot, dry, windy conditions that fuel the spread of fires due to climate change – as well as other natural and human factors. The reasons for the increases in wildfires vary in different parts of the world.

Other studies have found that wildfire smoke makes up an increasing portion of the PM2.5 in the air in the U.S., and in many areas it is offsetting the decreases in air pollution that the U.S. has gained through regulations of industrial and vehicle emissions under the Clean Air Act.

How could wildfire smoke affect my health?

Some effects of breathing wildfire smoke include shortness of breath, coughing, itchy or watery eyes, headaches, rashes and itchiness. But smoke can cause more serious harm. Numerous epidemiological studies have shown that hospitalizations and emergency department visits for asthma and other respiratory diseases increase during wildfire smoke events.

After you breathe in the particles, they cause inflammation and oxidative stress, and they can move into the blood and spread throughout the body, affecting other organ systems.

Breathing wildfire smoke has been associated with higher risk of preterm births and other issues during pregnancy, and potentially cardiovascular problems such as heart attacks and strokes, although the evidence for these effects are more mixed.

The longer-term health effects of wildfire smoke are less clear, but it is a growing area of research.

New York City skyline shrouded in wildfire smoke from wildfires in 2023. (Photo: Ahmer Kalam/Unsplash)

Where can I learn more about wildfire smoke risks where I live?

The first thing to do to protect yourself from wildfire smoke is to know how bad the smoke is and how long it is going to last.

One great place to get information for where you live on current wildfire smoke is fire.airnow.gov. You can zoom in on the map to where you live and find color-coded circles reflecting data from both U.S. EPA air-quality monitors and PurpleAir sensors that people have put in their homes.

The colors show the level of PM2.5 at that location and suggest the associated health risk.

To find out how wildfire smoke is expected to change over time in North America, you can look at maps from FireSmoke Canada and the U.S. Interagency Wildland Fire Air Quality Response Program.

What can I do to protect myself and my family from wildfire smoke?

First of all, depending on the level of the air quality index where you are, there are different recommendations. When wildfire smoke reaches unhealthy levels, stay indoors as much as possible, with doors and windows shut to keep the wildfire smoke out.

If you have an air cleaner, use it, but check the filter, as filters can fill up quickly. Similarly, check the filter on your home HVAC system and replace it if needed.

If you have to go outside, consider wearing a well-fitting N95, KN95 or KF94 mask. These masks can protect you from inhaling particles in the air around you. Looser masks, such as surgical masks, mostly protect others from what you breathe out instead. They do not have a tight seal around your mouth, and when you breathe in, the air with all of the particles can find its way around the sides of the mask.

Having a tight fit of the mask to your face is important so that when you breathe, the air is going through the mask and capturing the smoke particles rather than letting them into your body where they cause harm.

If your home is leaky and you can see haze inside, consider going to a public space, such as a library or mall, with a good HVAC system. Some municipalities have designated clean air spaces where anyone can go.

Colleen E. Reid is an associate professor in the �鶹ӰԺ Department of Geography.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Top photo: Fachy Marín/Unsplash

'It is easy to get lost in this jungle of solar panels'

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 21:25:49 +0000

'It is easy to get lost in this jungle of solar panels' Rachel Sauer Mon, 07/27/2026 - 15:25

Yaks graze beneath solar farm panels on the Tibetan Plateau. (Photo: Sanggay Tashi)

Sanggay Tashi

How the development of solar and wind farms on the Tibetan Plateau is affecting local communities

China is building some of the world’s largest solar farms on the Tibetan Plateau, where nomadic people have grazed herds of animals for millennia.

It’s not the first time Tibetan regions have become a major source of renewable energy in China. Since the mid-1990s, many Tibetan communities have lived alongside hydropower stations.

Now, with vast open landscapes and high elevations that provide ideal conditions for harnessing solar and wind energy, many pastoral lands have become key sites for large-scale renewable energy projects.

Sanggay Tashi is a PhD candidate in the CU �鶹ӰԺ Department of Anthropology.

As part of my ethnographic research, I spoke to number of people in this area, offering a rare look at how large-scale energy development is affecting nomadic communities.

Herding yaks on solar farms

I spent time in a nomadic community located about 100 miles (161 km) southeast of Xining city, the capital of Qinghai province.

Beginning in 2017 and accelerating more recently, regional subsidiaries of energy companies such as PowerChina have built three solar panel power plants – enough to generate about 1 gigawatt of power – and a dozen wind turbines on the area’s open grasslands.

Sandy, desert-type land is well known to be suitable for solar and wind farms. Yet the grasslands and many other pastoral areas turned into solar farms are not sandy deserts. They are productive grazing land where Tibetans have herded yaks and sheep for generations.

Parts of what was once open fine alpine grassland, which Tibetans call pangtang where herders moved freely and gazed across the boundless horizon, are now covered by dense rows of solar panels. It remains unclear how these sites comply with China’s grassland conservation regulations. Other solar projects elsewhere in China have reportedly been investigated for environmental violations.

Walking through the sites feels like moving through a dense forest of iron pillars rising into the air. “It is easy to get lost in this jungle of solar panels,” Tsering, a local observer, told me as we walked between long rows of panels on a windy winter day in 2023.

That day, I also met Dolma, a local Dokpa, or nomad, herding yaks under solar panels. As we talked, she told me the solar farm had changed the experience of herding. She said, “I am used to herding on open grassland. So, herding under these glass panels feels like something is wrapping around my head. It feels very depressing.”

Individual and collective tensions

These energy projects in nomadic communities are presented as part of of national efforts to modernize rural areas, bring capital to local communities and promote renewable energy development as part of China’s clean energy and carbon reduction agenda.

But their implementation brings tensions and contradictions in the communities where they are located.

Tibetans walk through a solar farm in Tibet, while animals graze in the distance. (Photo: Sanggay Tashi)

Based on my conversations with more than 20 people in the community, some view them as good economic opportunities and are envious of those whose grazing lands were selected for lease. Others oppose them, saying they “open the gate” for outsiders to appropriate local land for short-term financial gain by a few.

As more outsiders move in and the landscape changes with these energy projects, the overall concern that I observed from talking to different people is that the land that generations have lived on and protected may not retain the same sense of home in the future.

Tsering, who guided me through the solar farms, is very critical of those who agreed to lease land to solar farms, saying, “I may sound pretentious, but these days people are like grass growing on a wall – easily swayed by the slightest breeze of money.”

Since the 1950s, all land in China has been either government-owned or collectively owned; private land ownership is not allowed. Individuals may hold fixed-term “land-use rights” that can be transferred, sold or leased. In the 2000s, the government allocated land to individual families in nomadic areas of Qinghai and granted them 50-year “grassland use certificates."This enables the locals to raise livestock on the land and lease it to others. Most certificates are set to expire in 2050.

Some holders of grassland use certificates have leased their land to energy farms. In the area I studied, those leases typically are for around 25 years, to align with the remaining term of local grassland use rights. What will happen when these land use rights expire remains unknown.

Yaks graze beneath solar farm panels on the Tibetan Plateau. (Photo: Sanggay Tashi)

Money matters

In practice, leasing is extremely complex. When I asked a dozen families about their official contracts with the energy companies, several people said they signed it without fully understanding what it said.

"The only thing people made sure to know is how much money they are receiving,” one person said to me. The documents included long and complicated legal or technical language in Chinese, some of which was orally translated into Tibetan during the signing, because many nomads who are heads of households and more than 40 years old can’t read either Chinese or Tibetan.

Negotiations and leasing decisions are often carried out between company representatives and a small number of heads of households, brought together with the help of local officials. That leaves many residents uninformed about the terms and conditions of the agreements.

Households that lease grazing land to energy projects receive a one-time payment that depends on the amount of land involved and which company is seeking the lease. From 2017 to 2026, residents have told me they received offers between 3,000 and 4,000 yuan (US$440 to $587) for each mu, a unit of area equivalent to about 0.16 acres. Those rates have resulted in payments between 40,000 and 100,0000 yuan ($7,300 to $147,000) per household.

Human relations with the land

The energy companies’ contracts treat local households and land as individually owned properties in financial transactions. But local Indigenous communities have a different understanding and relationship to the environment.

Socially and historically, and regardless of the government policies on land ownership, Tibetans have perceived pastoral land as communal and experienced it as inhabited by all kinds of beings besides humans, including deities, animals, insects and other visible and invisible beings that are important in the Tibetan cosmological worldview. The energy planners often disregard these local ways of understanding and relating to the land.

During a dinner conversation, four local residents told me about one of these deeper spiritual concerns. During the construction of transmission lines to carry the solar power to users, they said, several transmission poles were placed very close to a labtse of a neighboring community. A labtse is a sacred site where an important mountain deity is believed to reside and where community members make regular offerings.

A solar farm under construction in eastern Tibet. (Photo: Sanggay Tashi)

When locals asked for the poles to be moved, the energy developers suggested they would cover the cost of relocating the labtse instead – which, culturally, cannot be done, and if it were would require direction from high-ranking religious figures.

For the local people, however, this was not a matter of compensation but of protecting the deity from being stabbed by the giant poles. Some residents were even willing to pay the planners to move the poles. After a series of negotiations, the poles were eventually moved a short distance from the labtse.

Living alongside energy farms

Herding on energy farms comes with new challenges.

When the solar panels were installed, excavation for support posts and underground cables disturbed the topsoil and destroyed the native grasses, which consist of a diverse species of grass. According to people involved in the work, the replacement grasses consisted of only one or two dominant species among the several that were common in the local ecosystem. And the seeds used for restoration came from beyond the local area, so residents are unsure whether the replanted grasses are exactly the same as the types that grow locally.

During winter, snow under the shade of solar panels takes a long time to melt, causing baby lambs to freeze in the cold. Dolma also told me, “The solar panels are making a fortune for the wild fox because it is hard to see them when they attack little lambs under the panels.”

Dolma told me that when the wind turbines were being built, their noise frightened her livestock and carried across the valley, disturbing neighbors during windy times.

The locals also told me that wind blowing through the posts and wires of solar farms produces persistent and unsettling noises that disturb both animals and people.

Future uncertainties

While these solar farms are generally considered “renewable” and part of “sustainable development,” their future remains uncertain. Locals told me they do not know whether the land-lease contracts will be renewed or abandoned when they expire in about 25 years. Solar panels also last around 25 years, and local people wonder how the waste will be disposed of.

As more Indigenous communities around the world become locations for climate mitigation projects, energy production and data centers, the stories of local people are essential to understand how their ways of life, culture and environment are affected by these new interventions.

Sanggay Tashi is a PhD candidate in the CU �鶹ӰԺ Department of Anthropology specializing in cultural anthropology.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How the development of solar and wind farms on the Tibetan Plateau is affecting local communities.

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Top photo: Livestock graze near solar panels in eastern Tibet (Photo: Sanggay Tashi)

Where did language come from?

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 21:02:23 +0000

Where did language come from? Rachel Sauer Mon, 07/27/2026 - 15:02

Karen Stollznow

Nobody really knows, but the theories are fascinating

Humans are the only species known to use fully symbolic language: a system capable of expressing abstract ideas, imaginary worlds and endless combinations of meaning. But how did we get there?

The origins of language have fascinated philosophers, scientists and storytellers for thousands of years. Despite all our advances in linguistics, archaeology and cognitive science, we still don’t know exactly how language began.

That uncertainty hasn’t stopped people from trying to solve the mystery. In fact, some of the earliest theories of language’s origins are among the strangest and most entertaining ideas in the history of science.

Karen Stollznow is a visiting scholar in the CU �鶹ӰԺ Department of Linguistics.

Bow wow, ding-dong

In the 19th century, scholars proposed a flurry of curious theories to explain how speech first emerged. Many of these theories were given playful nicknames by the German philologist Max Müller, who intended them partly as satire. Yet the theories were genuine attempts to tackle one of humanity’s biggest questions.

The most famous is probably the Bow-Wow Theory. This suggested language began through imitation of natural sounds. Early humans, according to this theory, copied the noises around them: animal cries, splashing water, thunderclaps and birdsong. Words such as “buzz”, “hiss”, “bang” and “splash” seem to support the idea because they sound like what they describe.

But there is a problem. Different languages hear the same sounds differently. English dogs go “woof” or “bow-wow”, but in Turkish they go “hev-hev”, while Indonesian dogs go “guk-guk”. Even animal noises, it turns out, are filtered through culture and language.

And onomatopoeic words (words that imitate sounds) make up only a tiny fraction of our vocabularies. Most words sound nothing like their meanings. For instance, there is nothing inherently tree-like about the word “tree”.

That brings us to the Ding-Dong Theory, which argued that sounds and meanings are naturally connected in some deeper, almost mystical way.

Some words do seem to fit their meanings uncannily well. “Mini”, “teeny” and “itsy-bitsy” feel small and delicate. “Lump”, “rump” and “plump” sound heavier and rounder.

Modern linguists call this sound symbolism. One famous experiment asked participants to match two nonsense words, “bouba” and “kiki”, to two shapes: one rounded and one jagged. Most people matched “bouba” with the soft shape and “kiki” with the sharp one.

The effect is real, but it is limited. Most language still appears to be arbitrary, which means there is no natural reason why a particular sound should mean a particular thing.

German philologist Max Müller gave playful nicknames to competing theories of language’s origins. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Pooh-pooh, la-la, ye-he-ho

Other theories focused less on imitation and more on emotion and social interaction.

The Pooh-Pooh Theory proposed that speech began with instinctive emotional cries such as “ouch”, “oh” or perhaps less publishable exclamations uttered after stubbing a toe. According to this idea, language evolved from spontaneous vocal reactions to pain, surprise, fear or joy.

Again, though, there are complications. Interjections vary widely across languages. English speakers say “ouch”. Greeks say “aou”. Czechs might exclaim “ach”. Emotional sounds are not nearly as universal as they seem.

Then there is the wonderfully named Yo-He-Ho Theory, which suggested language emerged from rhythmic chants used during collective labour, like sailors chanting “yo-heave-ho” while hauling ropes, or workers singing together to coordinate physical effort.

The theory may sound quaint, but modern researchers do think rhythm, cooperation and social bonding played important roles in human evolution. Language is, after all, deeply social.

Another proposal, the La-La Theory, linked language to music. Charles Darwin entertained the possibility that speech evolved from musical calls used in courtship and emotional expression. Before humans spoke, perhaps we sang?

Some modern theories echo this idea. One hypothesis suggests that, as early humans began walking upright, parents increasingly needed to soothe babies from a distance. Sing-song vocalisations, cooing and proto “baby talk” may have helped strengthen emotional bonds and eventually paved the way for speech.

Gestures, symbols and brains

Today, most scientists think no single theory fully explains language origins. Instead, language probably emerged gradually through a combination of gestures, vocalisations, facial expressions, social cooperation and increasing cognitive complexity.

Charles Darwin speculated that speech evolved from musical expression. (Photo: Julia Margaret Cameron/Wikimedia Commons)

Some researchers argue that language began with gestures before shifting to speech. Others believe language evolved as a tool for social bonding, allowing larger groups of humans to cooperate and share information. Still others see language as tied to the evolution of symbolic thought itself: our ability to imagine, plan, remember and communicate abstract ideas.

Biology is also a factor. Humans have developed unusually precise control over the tongue, lips and vocal tract. We have evolved specialised brain regions linked to language processing.

But anatomy alone cannot explain language. Parrots can mimic speech sounds. Many animals communicate. None, however, appear to possess grammar and symbolism on the human scale. And, frustratingly, early language leaves no evidence behind. Spoken words don’t fossilise.

That lack of evidence is one reason the topic became so controversial that, in 1866, the Société de Linguistique de Paris banned discussions about language origins altogether, dismissing the field as hopelessly speculative.

Of course, theories about language origins also appear in religion and mythology. In Greek mythology, the messenger god Hermes was associated with language and communication. In the Hindu tradition, the goddess of knowledge and speech Saraswati bestowed Sanskrit upon humanity. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, language was a gift from God, who enabled Adam to name the animals in the Garden of Eden.

These stories reflect something deeply human: our urge to explain where language came from, because language itself feels almost magical. Every theory of language origins captures a small piece of the puzzle. Imitation, emotion, rhythm, music, gesture, cooperation and symbolic thought probably all played some role.

But none can provide a complete answer. The truth is that language evolved so long ago, and likely so gradually, that we will never pinpoint a single moment when it began, unless someone invents a time machine.

The birth of language will probably remain one of humanity’s greatest unsolved mysteries. Still, the theories themselves tell us something important. Humans are always trying to explain what makes us human. And language may be the most human thing of all.

Karen Stollznow is a visiting scholar in the CU �鶹ӰԺ Department of Linguistics specializing in the political and social history of modern Latin America.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Nobody really knows, but the theories are fascinating.

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Freedom deferred, freedom declared, freedom demanded: a Juneteenth playlist

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 21:30:59 +0000

Freedom deferred, freedom declared, freedom demanded: a Juneteenth playlist Rachel Sauer Wed, 06/17/2026 - 15:30

Reiland Rabaka

On a day of commemoration, African American music is a living record of struggle and survival

Reiland Rabaka is the founder and director of the Center for African and African American Studies and a professor of ethnic studies.

Juneteenth is not only a historical commemoration; it is also a musical archive. Long before freedom was legally recognized, it was imagined, sung, prayed, whispered, shouted and remembered in song.

Across the centuries, African American music has served as a living record of struggle and survival, preserving histories that official narratives often ignored or distorted. Spirituals carried coded messages of hope and liberation. The blues transformed sorrow into testimony. Jazz improvised new possibilities for freedom. Gospel joined personal faith to collective struggle. Soul and funk voiced demands for dignity and self-determination. Reggae internationalized the language of liberation, while rap chronicled the unfinished journey toward justice and democracy.

This playlist traces a long freedom tradition from enslavement and emancipation through Reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation, the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, and contemporary struggles for racial justice. Together, these songs remind us that music is more than entertainment. It is memory. It is protest. It is prophecy. It is a democratic practice through which ordinary people narrate their lives and imagine more just futures.

These selections illuminate the enduring significance of Juneteenth by revealing how artists across generations transformed suffering into creativity, resistance into rhythm and hope into collective action. They invite us to hear freedom not as a destination already reached, but as an ongoing journey carried forward in song.

“Go Down, Moses” – traditional spiritual

One of the most powerful spirituals to emerge from the era of enslavement, this song links the biblical Exodus story to Black aspirations for liberation. Enslaved Africans transformed sacred narrative into a coded language of resistance, making freedom both a spiritual promise and a political dream.

“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” – traditional spiritual

This beloved spiritual expresses both sorrow and hope, reflecting the emotional complexity of life under slavery. Its imagery of movement and deliverance resonates deeply with the long struggle that Juneteenth commemorates.

“Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” – traditional spiritual

A haunting meditation on separation, displacement and longing, the song reflects the devastating family disruptions produced by slavery. It reminds listeners that emancipation was also about restoring humanity, kinship and belonging.

“Lift Every Voice and Sing” – James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson (1900)

Often called the Black National Anthem, this enduring hymn links emancipation to citizenship, perseverance, faith and democratic aspiration. Its themes of remembrance and hope make it one of the most important musical expressions of African American historical memory.

“Strange Fruit” – Billie Holiday (1939)

This landmark recording confronts the racial terror that followed Reconstruction. By exposing the brutality of lynching, Holiday reminds us that emancipation did not immediately secure justice, equality or safety for African Americans.

“Come Sunday” – Duke Ellington (1943)

Part of Ellington’s monumental Black, Brown and Beige suite, this composition honors African American spiritual traditions and their role in sustaining dignity, faith and cultural survival through centuries of oppression and resistance.

“Move On Up a Little Higher” – Mahalia Jackson (1947)

A gospel masterpiece rooted in the Black sacred tradition, Jackson’s recording captures the spiritual determination that sustained generations from slavery through the modern freedom struggle. It expresses both earthly perseverance and transcendent hope.

“Oh, Freedom” – Odetta (1956)

Rooted in the experiences of formerly enslaved African Americans after emancipation, this freedom song bridges Juneteenth and the Civil Rights Movement. Odetta’s powerful interpretation preserves the moral courage and democratic aspirations of those who struggled to transform freedom declared into freedom lived.

“A Change Is Gonna Come” – Sam Cooke (1964)

One of the defining freedom songs of modern America, Cooke’s masterpiece captures both suffering and hope. Its emotional depth echoes the aspirations of generations who struggled to transform emancipation into full citizenship and democratic inclusion.

“Mississippi Goddam” – Nina Simone (1964)

Simone’s searing protest song reminds listeners that legal freedom alone does not guarantee justice. Her music links the long history of Black resistance to the continuing demand for democratic transformation and human dignity.

“Freedom Highway” – The Staple Singers (1965)

Written during the Civil Rights Movement, this song connects 19th-century emancipation struggles to 20th-century movements for voting rights and equality. It celebrates collective action, courage and democratic participation.

“Say It Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud” – James Brown (1968)

This anthem of Black self-determination and cultural affirmation reflects the legacy of emancipation in a later era. Brown’s declaration of dignity, self-respect and collective pride helped redefine freedom for a new generation.

“Freedom” – Richie Havens (1969)

Made famous through Havens’s unforgettable Woodstock performance, this song transforms a spiritual refrain into a universal anthem of liberation. It stands at the crossroads of the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power Movement, antiwar activism and global freedom struggles.

“What’s Going On?” – Marvin Gaye (1971)

Marvin Gaye expands the meaning of freedom beyond emancipation alone, addressing war, poverty, racial inequality and social fragmentation. The song asks what democratic responsibility requires in a nation still struggling to fulfill its ideals.

“Living for the City” – Stevie Wonder (1973)

One of the most powerful musical narratives of post-Civil Rights Black America, Wonder’s song traces the effects of structural racism, economic inequality and urban hardship. It reminds listeners that emancipation was the beginning—not the end—of the struggle for justice.

“Redemption Song” – Bob Marley and the Wailers (1980)

Marley’s meditation on liberation connects African diasporic struggles across national boundaries. The song underscores the global significance of freedom movements and the continuing work of emancipation throughout the African world.

“Fight the Power” – Public Enemy (1989)

A defining statement of rap political consciousness, this track challenges dominant narratives and demands historical accountability. It extends the democratic critiques voiced by Frederick Douglass into the late 20th century.

“Keep Ya Head Up” – Tupac Shakur (1993)

This song broadens discussions of freedom by emphasizing dignity, resilience, care and community responsibility. It reflects the continuing struggle to realize justice not only in institutions but also in everyday life.

“Glory” – Common and John Legend (2014)

Created for the film Selma, this song bridges historical and contemporary freedom movements. It demonstrates how the memory of emancipation and the Civil Rights Movement continues to inspire new generations of activists and artists.

“Alright” – Kendrick Lamar (2015)

Widely embraced as a contemporary anthem of resilience and hope, the song speaks to the persistence of racial inequality while affirming collective endurance. It echoes Juneteenth’s central lesson that hope survives even amid hardship and struggle.

“Freedom” – Beyoncé featuring Kendrick Lamar (2016)

Drawing upon spiritual, blues, gospel and contemporary Black musical traditions, this powerful anthem embodies the continuing quest for freedom, self-determination and collective empowerment. It links historical memory to present-day movements for justice.

“Letter to the Free” – Common (2016)

Written for the documentary 13th, the song explores the relationship between slavery, incarceration and contemporary systems of inequality. It encourages listeners to think critically about freedom’s unfinished work in the twenty-first century.

“This Is America” – Childish Gambino (2018)

A provocative reflection on race, violence, spectacle and national identity, this song challenges listeners to confront contradictions within American democracy. It underscores why historical memory remains essential to civic life and democratic renewal.

“Not Like Us” – Kendrick Lamar (2024)

More than a rap battle anthem, “Not Like Us” became a cultural event that sparked conversations about authenticity, accountability, community and cultural ownership. Within the broader tradition of African American public critique, the song can be understood as a contemporary expression of self-definition and communal responsibility, themes that have long animated Black democratic thought.

Taken together, these songs tell a story that parallels the history of Juneteenth itself. They begin in the fields, cabins, churches and hidden gathering places of enslaved Africans. They move through emancipation, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow segregation era, the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power Movement and contemporary movements for racial justice.

They remind us that freedom has never been merely a legal proclamation. Freedom is a practice of memory. Freedom is a culture of resistance. Freedom is a song passed from generation to generation.

To listen to this playlist is to hear the soundtrack of a people who transformed suffering into art, exclusion into creativity and deferred dreams into democratic possibilities. It is to hear the long, unfinished journey from freedom declared to freedom realized.

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On a day of commemoration, African American music is a living record of struggle and survival.

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What began in ancient Greece is headed for the White House lawn

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 19:10:10 +0000

What began in ancient Greece is headed for the White House lawn Rachel Sauer Thu, 06/11/2026 - 13:10

Jared Bahir Browsh

UFC Freedom 250, the MMA event planned for the White House lawn June 14, represents a decades-long relationship between President Donald Trump and UFC

The White House has been a construction site since late October, when the East Wing was suddenly demolished to build a controversial ballroom. In the shadows of cranes, another temporary structure is being built on the South Lawn of the White House: a 5,000-seat outdoor stadium that will host UFC Freedom 250, a special mixed martial arts (MMA) event that will occur on June 14, President Trump’s 80th birthday, as part of the lead-up to the 250th birthday of the United States.

The unique competition has faced criticism—seen as desecrating the lawn of the President’s residence and what many people see as the people’s house. A deeper examination of the history of MMA and the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) reveals why this event is not merely a sporting event, but representative of an ideological connection between the brutal combat sport and the current state of MAGA conservatism.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the CU �鶹ӰԺ Department of Ethnic Studies.

What is now considered MMA dates back to the ancient Olympics and an event called pankration, a combat sport that combined boxing and wrestling. Although it did not feature the mix of martial art disciplines we see today, it did function very similarly to modern MMA. Like many ancient Olympic sports, pankration was tied to military service, allowing soldiers who were the most prepared for battle. Although formal competitions banned eye-gouging and biting, training often included these since a similar fight on the battlefield would have no rules. The fight would continue until one competitor gave up, lost consciousness or died. Ancient China also had a similar sport, Lei Tai, which was formally competed on a stage, with challengers fighting until one competitor was declared champion.

Fighting competitions continued in the succeeding centuries throughout the world, including in colonial America, where the sport rough and tumble was often used to settle disputes in the rural backcountry, especially in the South. Also known as gouging, the brutal and disfiguring sport fell out of favor with the growing popularity of the Bowie knife and revolver in the 19th century, which led to more lethal methods of solving disputes on the frontier.

Other forms of fighting and martial arts continued to emerge in the 19th century, including the French sport of savate, similar to kickboxing, and Lancashire, or catch wrestling, a less-restrictive version of the sport that emerged from Britain and was included in several Olympic Games between 1904 and 1936.

The globalization of sport in the 20th century through cultural exchange events like the Olympics led to further competitions in forms of combat including jiu-jitsu from Brazil and judo from Japan. Judo was introduced as an Olympic sport at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, the first martial art from Asia in the Games.

In Brazil, Vale Tudo, a no-holds-barred martial art, grew in popularity throughout the 20th century after early matches pitted local forms of martial arts against fighting styles from other continents. The Gracie Challenge, which was an open invitation from the Gracie family—a Brazilian family considered the first family of jiu-jitsu—to prove their version of jiu-jitsu was superior, helped expand the popularity of Vale Tudo. This martial art, along with Japanese shoot wrestling, a hybrid sport that mixed wrestling and combat sports like kickboxing and emerged in the 1970s, provided the framework for what would become modern MMA.

Interest in martial arts grew through popular culture, including the movies of Bruce Lee, in the 1970s. Though boxing was still the dominant combat sport, curiosity grew regarding the effectiveness of each form of combat. Muhammad Ali issued a million-dollar open challenge to the president of Japanese Amateur Wrestling for a fighter to take him on. Antonio Inoki accepted the challenge and on June 26, 1976, Ali and Inoki fought in Tokyo; although it ended in a draw, many see the match as a precursor to the popularity of MMA.

Renzo Gracie (white trunks) kicks Eugenio Tadeu (black trunks) during the "Pentagon Combat" Vale Tudo event in 1997. (Photo: Marcelo Alonso/Wikimedia Commons)

UFC 1

The seeds of the MMA were further planted when businessman Art Davie, filmmaker John Milius and Rorion Gracie of the Gracie Challenge collaborated to organize an eight-competitor tournament originally named War of the Worlds. Later renamed the Ultimate Fighting Championship, what is now known as UFC 1 took place in Denver on November 12, 1993. Gracie won the first tournament, and the organizers soon planned a second Denver event—what is now known as UFC 2—four months after the first. In 1994, two more UFC events followed in North Carolina and Oklahoma, as the no-holds-barred style of fighting grew in popularity.

UFC 5 in 1995 featured the first singles match. Billed as a Superfight, it was meant to declare a champion, but the match ended in a draw after 36 minutes. The fight represented a move away from the tournament format and into a card of single matches similar to a boxing event. The UFC also earned a reputation for its extreme violence and the absurdity of some of the matches, one of which—between a mixed martial artist and a sumo wrestler—featured nine-inch height and a 400-pound weight difference.

Living up to its early tagline “there are no rules,” UFC promotion gained a reputation for being especially violent and was still known as “no-holds-barred fighting” in many states through the late 1990s. In 1996, Arizona Senator John McCain called the sport “human cockfighting” and sent letters to every state urging them to ban it. Thirty-six states did so, largely relegating the UFC’s events to the southeast United States and other countries. The president of the National Cable Television Association also warned cable companies that airing UFC fights could lead to scrutiny from the federal government, and a number of top cable providers blacked out the promotion on TV.

For several years in the late 1990s, the UFC languished as a regional niche sport until it was thrown a lifeline by Donald Trump. In September 2000, the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board (NJSACB) established a probationary period allowing MMA events to take place in the state so the board could create a unified set of rules to regulate the sport. In November, Trump Plaza hosted UFC 28 in Atlantic City, the first UFC event in New Jersey.

Atlantic City had become a hub for boxing after casino gambling was legalized in New Jersey in 1977 and regularly hosted boxing matches; however, most big prize fights still occurred in larger cities like New York or in Las Vegas. Looking to grow the profile of his casinos—and in turn Atlantic City—Trump began bringing major events to the beachside resort. In 1988, Trump outbid several Las Vegas casinos to bring Mike Tyson’s heavyweight title bouts to Atlantic City. Tyson took on Larry Holmes in January that year and Michael Spinks in June. Trump looked to sports to expand his profile even after pushing the United States Football League out of business in 1985 by convincing other owners to move to a fall schedule while he was suing the NFL.

In between the two Tyson title fights, Trump Plaza hosted Wrestlemania IV, forging a relationship between Trump and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), which is now a sister company to the UFC under TKO Holdings after a 2023 merger. Trump grew his partnership with WWE, hosting Wrestlemania V in 1989 and was later included in storylines for the professional wrestling promotion; he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013. Linda McMahon, the current U.S. secretary of education, previously served as president and CEO of WWE.

Fighters Clay Guida and Marcus Aurelio compete in UFC 74: Respect in Las Vegas in 2007. (Photo: Lee Brimelow/Wikimedia Commons)

After UFC 29 took place in Japan in December 2000, U.S. businessman Dana White worked with casino executives Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta to create Zuffa, LLC and buy the UFC for $2 million. At the time, White had been working as a promoter for fighters in Las Vegas and saw an opportunity to grow the combat sport. A month after the sale was finalized in January 2001, UFC 30 returned to Atlantic City with Trump Plaza hosting the first event under Zufa ownership, followed by UFC 31 five months later, forging a relationship between White and Trump.

At the same time, boxing was undergoing significant changes following passage of the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act in 2000, which increased regulations that protected fighters from being exploited. However, MMA is not covered in the Act, and White and his partners saw an opportunity to control the entire sport—and its fighters. Unlike in boxing, the UFC signs fighters to exclusive contracts and they are considered independent contractors, excusing the company from providing fighters with employee benefits, while also barring them from negotiating or fighting for other promotions. Over time, UFC pushed out or bought competitors, allowing UFC to essentially monopolize MMA in the US.

A true turning point was the premiere of the reality show The Ultimate Fighter, which debuted after WWE Raw in January 2005, exactly a year after another reality show, The Apprentice, boosted the business of Donald Trump. As The Apprentice did for Trump, The Ultimate Fighter significantly boosted visibility for White and the UFC.

Misogyny and politics

As the UFC grew, it faced a number of controversies that both invited criticism while fortifying its mostly male, conservative fanbase. Women have largely been ignored, if not unwelcome, in combat sports, with women’s judo not debuting as an official Olympic sport until 1992; women’s boxing followed 20 years later. Dana White famously said in 2011 that women would never fight in the UFC, but two months later UFC parent company Zuffa bought competing MMA promotion Strikeforce, which did have a women’s division. Two years later, when Strikeforce was fully merged with UFC, the first women’s fight occurred, pitting Ronda Rousey against Liz Carmouche.

Even with the introduction of women’s divisions, the locker room culture in the UFC and many training gyms continues to be toxic and misogynistic, with male fighters regularly making sexist comments, including some directed at fellow fighters. There is also significantly less coverage of and support for women fighters, with only three fighting divisions for women compared to eight for men.

UFC’s controversies extend beyond sexism. Like Trump, Dana White has had a contentious relationship with much of the media. He pulled credentials from several MMA reporters after they broke the story that fighter Brock Lesnar was returning to the UFC before the official announcement. White also recently called media members and journalists “nobodies,” bristling at what he considers critical coverage of the UFC regarding its response to sexism in the sport and treatment of fighters.

President Donald Trump (seated) with UFC fighters in the Oval Office on Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (Photo: Molly Riley/White House)

White strengthened his relationship with Trump by endorsing him for president in 2016. At that time, more political content was included in UFC broadcasts, deepening the connection between UFC promotion and conservative media and leveraging that connection to increase Trump’s appeal with young men through the UFC and podcast environment known as the “manosphere.” Top podcaster Joe Rogan has been a commentator for the UFC since 1997, and its fighters often appear on podcasts and conservative media, with several also endorsing Trump.

White and Trump maintained their relationship through his first presidency and the legal issues that followed his loss to Joe Biden in 2020. The UFC was integral in helping Trump revitalize his public image after the January 6 riots and the legal controversies that followed him in between his presidential terms. Trump’s attendance at UFC events were among his first public appearances after the tumultuous end to his first term and were often celebrated on UFC broadcasts. This relationship continued through his 2024 campaign, during which Dana White introduced Trump as the 2024 Republican nominee for president at the Republican National Convention.

Fewer than two weeks after the 2024 election, Trump attended UFC 309 at Madison Square Garden, where he allegedly broached the topic of a White House UFC event to Dana White. Trump announced the event on July 3, 2025, and White officially confirmed it would take place.

Combat sports have historically been leveraged for political gain, so the relationship between UFC and Trump is not unusual, even if the upcoming White House event is a dramatic break from convention. Matches between rival ethnic or racial groups continue to be a huge draw in combat sports, a trend that dates back centuries and includes fights between Joe Louis and Nazi-backed Max Schmeling and later the Rumble in the Jungle and Thrilla in Manila, which dictators in Zaire and the Phillipines, respectively, leveraged to sportwash their authoritarian regimes.

White has leveraged his relationship with Trump both economically and politically as he looks to expand his empire. In 2025, with the backing of the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund’s subsidiary Sola, White launched Zuffa Boxing to bring the UFC exclusivity model to boxing. White is currently lobbying congress to pass the Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act, which does guarantee minimum pay and health insurance for boxers, but would eliminate other protections against organizations acting as promoters, organizers and ranking entities—a move that could ultimately lead to similar exploitation and monopolistic practices that have been claimed by UFC fighters.

The Saudis’ involvement in sports, which includes WWE events, LIV Golf, and the 2034 World Cup, is seen as an effort by the Saudi monarchy to sportwash the country’s image. The Public Investment Fund is providing financing for Paramount’s bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, as Paramount aggressively pursues WBD under David Ellison’s ownership.

�鶹ӰԺ a month before Paramount began its pursuit of WBD, and a few days after the Ellisons’ purchase of Paramount was finalized, UFC signed a lucrative media rights deal with Paramount for 7 years, $7.7 billion with UFC Freedom 250, preceded by the Friday night weigh-in at the Lincoln Memorial, streaming on Paramount+.

For the casual observer, a UFC fight on the White House lawn might seem random, if not ridiculous, but for those familiar with Trump’s relationships and his love of spectacles, it is clear why the event was organized. Rather than an isolated event, it is the culmination of relationships Trump has formed with supporters, including White, whom he has known for more than a quarter century.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the CU �鶹ӰԺ Department of Ethnic Studies.

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UFC Freedom 250, the MMA event planned for the White House lawn June 14, represents a decades-long relationship between President Donald Trump and UFC.

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Top image: Fighting cage being built on the White House lawn for UFC Freedom 250 on June 14. (Photo: G. Edward Johnson/Wikimedia Commons)

Think all that plastic is being recycled? Think again

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 21:19:22 +0000

Think all that plastic is being recycled? Think again Rachel Sauer Thu, 06/04/2026 - 15:19

A man walking amid plastic waste on the Maldivian island of Thilafushi. (Photo: Dying Regime/Wikimedia Commons)

Ellen Considine

A lot of ‘recycled’ plastic is being burned overseas—and causing widespread pollution linked to health problems

Picture a pile of trash the size of Manhattan and taller than one and a half Empire State Buildings. That’s how much plastic waste the world is predicted to be generating every year by 2050 if nothing is done to change course.

It’s easy to think of recycling as the solution, but the vast majority of plastic waste now ends up in landfills, or worse.

A large amount of plastic waste gets shipped overseas. In a new study, my colleague and I analyzed what happens when plastic waste is shipped to lower- and middle-income countries, where open burning is a common way of dealing with excess waste. The result, we found, is pronounced increases in toxic air pollution.

Ellen Considine is a CU �鶹ӰԺ assistant professor of geography and fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES).

Plastic waste burning and health impacts

Between 40% and 65% of total municipal solid waste is openly burned in low- and middle-income countries, largely as a result of 2 billion people around the world having no municipal solid waste collection.

Open burning occurs both intentionally and unintentionally, the latter when open dump sites containing organic waste spontaneously combust due to heat generated as the waste degrades.

When plastic burns, it releases particularly toxic air pollutants. Fine particles can penetrate deep into people’s bodies, along with gases that include carbon monoxide, styrene gas and hydrogen cyanide. It also releases persistent organic pollutants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and dioxins. These particles and gases have been linked to health risks ranging from respiratory and cardiovascular disease to cancer and reproductive and neurological disorders.

The ash from open burning can also contaminate soil and groundwater with persistent organic pollutants, heavy metals and other toxicants, creating more chances for people to be exposed to them through food and water.

The global plastic waste trade

Large amounts of plastic waste are shipped around the world – some to be recycled and much to simply be disposed of in landfills or incinerated. In 2024, 9.34 million metric tons of plastic waste imports were reported, according to the United Nations.

Where this exported plastic waste ends up has been shifting.

In 2018, China stopped importing plastic waste, causing the total amount of plastic waste moving among countries – at least through official channels – to drop dramatically. Between 1992 and 2016, China’s plastic waste imports made up 45% of global imports.

In 2018, the flow moved to other countries, largely in Southeast Asia but also other locations, including Turkey. In 2018, Indonesia became a net importer of plastic waste. The majority of this waste came from Western Europe, Australia and North America.

What happened to Indonesia’s air quality

We harnessed data from multiple monitoring systems, including satellite observations and cargo ship tracking signals, to understand where these plastic waste imports went and how much air pollution was released by openly burning this waste.

As of 2020, the World Economic Forum and Indonesia’s government estimated that 48% of Indonesia’s plastic waste is openly burned.

We found that particulate matter air pollution – of great concern for health – increased an average of 3.3% at the locations of large open waste dump sites in Indonesia after China’s ban in 2018-19 relative to expected business as usual, based on data from 2012-17. We found increases up to 1.68 micrograms per cubic meter.

Based on risk estimates from a global study of mortality associated with long-term exposure to outdoor fine particulate matter, this corresponds to an approximate 1.5%, 1.9% and 3.5% increase in mortality risk from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer and lower respiratory infections, respectively.

New constraints on the plastic waste trade

In 2021, Indonesia restricted the import of nonhazardous waste to 15 specific ports and in 2025 banned the import of plastic waste altogether.

A man walking amid plastic waste on the Maldivian island of Thilafushi. (Photo: Dying Regime/Wikimedia Commons)

In mid-2025, Malaysia followed suit, allowing plastic waste only from countries that have ratified the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal – a treaty that the U.S. has never ratified.

For these bans to be effective, these countries must also find ways to contend with illegal plastic waste shipments and paper imports contaminated by plastic waste.

Meanwhile, negotiations for an international, legally binding treaty on plastic waste, started in 2022, have stalled. In mid-2024 the European Union did pass a new regulation on waste shipments, prohibiting exporting plastic waste to countries outside the group of wealthy countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development from November 2026 to at least May 2029.

The effectiveness of these and future policies at reducing air pollution – and other kinds of environmental degradation – can be evaluated using methods like ours.

Ways to reduce plastic waste

As of 2021, only 5% to 6% of U.S. domestic plastic waste was recycled, according to estimates from the advocacy group Beyond Plastics and Bennington College. It is now even harder to export plastic waste to other countries that could “recycle” it.

Part of the problem is lack of capacity: The Association of Plastic Recyclers estimates that current plastic reclamation facilities in the U.S. and Canada could at most increase their plastic recycling by 35% to 44%, depending on the type of plastic, leading to a total recycling rate of 7% to 9%.

Ultimately, both decreasing plastic use and increasing recycling will likely be needed to solve the problem. Beyond consumer choices, packaging reuse – creating packaging and return systems that put the same materials back to work – can reduce the need for new plastics.

Recycling experts call for harmonized design standards to help streamline processing and deliver higher-quality recycled plastics, as well as extended producer responsibility fees or taxes to raise the cost of producing products that aren’t recyclable. The fees can provide needed funding to scale up recycling and other programs to reduce generation of plastic waste.

Since 2021, seven states have enacted extended producer responsibility laws focused on packaging: Maine, Oregon, California, Colorado, Minnesota, Washington and Maryland. However, it will take time to see the effects. Colorado’s final implementation plan, authorized in 2022, was approved only in late 2025. The first payment of extended producer responsibility fees to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment are scheduled to begin in mid-2026.

Ultimately, reducing and better managing our nation’s plastic waste can help prevent global health harms.

Ellen Considine is an assistant professor in the CU �鶹ӰԺ Department of Geography whose research lies at the intersection of environmental change, health and wellbeing and data science.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A lot of ‘recycled’ plastic is being burned overseas—and causing widespread pollution linked to health problems.

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Fly agaric has a long association with fairies and humans

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 20 May 2026 19:01:01 +0000

Fly agaric has a long association with fairies and humans Rachel Sauer Wed, 05/20/2026 - 13:01

A red cap dotted with the dried crumbles of the egg sac make fly agaric easy to find and identify. (Photo: Jeff Mitton)

Jeff Mitton

Since the Renaissance, fly agaric has appeared in art and literature, frequently associated with fairies, trolls, wizards, witches and other mystical creatures

The most iconic and easily identified mushroom in the world is Amanita muscaria, or fly agaric. It grows around the world at northern latitudes in association with spruces, pines, birches and aspens, with its roots forming mutually beneficial mycorrhizal associations to exchange water and nutrients. It is easy to recognize, for it has a bright red cap, and all else white: stipe (stem), gills (underside of cap) and crumbles of the egg sac on the cap. These bright, contrasting colors make it easy to find and identify in a forest.

Fly agaric's bright, contrasting colors evolved to advertise their molecular defenses, muscimol and ibotenic acid. Unless an herbivore has evolved a way to combat activities of these compounds, these defenses are toxic and hallucinogenic, triggering severe and prolonged vomiting and loss of coordination and balance.

These colorful mushrooms and their psychoactive compounds have been associated with mankind for about 10,000 years. The association started with shamans in northern Europe and Siberia, who used the mushrooms during religious ceremonies to imagine communication with gods, ancestors and spirits. Similarly, they could be an ecstatic inebriant to enliven celebrations of winter solstice and the return of sunlight.

From the 13th through the 19th centuries, fly agaric was commonly used to kill flies in European homes and buildings. Flies were abundant before the invention of screens on windows and doors, and they were dreaded, thanks to a rumor that they get into the head and cause insanity. The practice came about after it was discovered that dried crumbs of fly agaric dropped into milk attracted flies, and when the flies sipped the milk, the ibotenic acid paralyzed and ultimately killed them. The common name fly agaric stems from this practice—agaric is the name for the familiar toadstool-shaped mushroom. Its formal name is Amanita muscaria: Amanita is the genus of mushrooms, and muscaria is a reference to the common housefly, Musca domestica.

Since the Renaissance, fly agaric has appeared in art and literature, frequently associated with fairies, trolls, wizards, witches and other mystical creatures in fairy tales and books for children. Recent examples will be most familiar. Dancing red-and-white mushrooms appear in Fantasia. In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Alice converses with a hookah-smoking caterpillar sitting on a gigantic red-and-white mushroom. Fly agaric also appears in Snow White and the Seven Dwarf. Smurfs are small, blue, humanoid creatures living in red-and-white, hollowed-out mushrooms.

Laplanders, who use reindeer as work animals, saw their reindeer eat fly agaric and subsequently romp and stagger. Laplander herdsmen believed that reindeer sought fly agaric for its psychoactive reward. The Laplanders also used fly agaric to achieve an ecstatic and imaginative state, and it is possible that they were at the root of the Christmas story of flying reindeer led by a jolly man dressed in the colors of the mushroom who enters a dwelling via its chimney. Perhaps this entry recalled shamans who would enter a dwelling through the smoke hole in the roof, delivering sacks of colorful mushrooms to fuel a celebration. The Christmas Story appeared in 1823 in a poem referred to as "A Visit from St. Nicholas” by Clement Clarke Moore.

A red cap dotted with the dried crumbles of the egg sac make fly agaric easy to find and identify. (Photo: Jeff Mitton)

More than 600 described species in the genus Amanita occupy the full range from deadly (death cap, A. phalloides; destroying angel, A. bisporigera) to delicious (blusher, A. rubescens; Caesar's mushroom, A. caesarea). With so many species and such dire consequences for a mistaken identification, you should be trained before collecting fly agarics from the forest for personal use.

While hiking at the University of Colorado's Mountain Research Station, I came across a cluster of fly agaric mushrooms. I was surprised to find several divots in the cap—something small, the size of a bird or chipmunk, had taken bites. Who was eating fly agaric?

Reindeer have four chambered stomachs with microbial fermentation, which allows them to digest the cellulose in plant cell walls. All ruminants—including cattle, sheep, goats and bison, eat fly agaric without discomfort.

Another group of animals that can enjoy fly agaric with impunity is squirrels (family Sciuridae), and every squirrel species that I checked (pine, grey, fox, golden mantled ground squirrel, rocks squirrels, chipmunks) eat fly agaric and use a unique method to safely pass the toxin. Squirrels have a novel glycoprotein lining in their intestines that immediately binds the toxins, inactivating them, and escorting them the rest of the way through the digestive tract.

Photographers have amply documented foxes gulping down hunks of fly agaric, but they suffer the agony of severe, prolonged vomiting and staggering that omnivores generally experience. Foxes may be sly, but not when it comes to choosing ingredients for a salad.

Meanwhile, turkeys, grouse, crows, ravens and jays eat fly agaric without distress, but many birds suffer both gastrointestinal distress and severe neurological symptoms.

It is thought provoking to discover an area here in Colorado where the bright mushrooms are popping up, for the association of humans and fly agaric has multiple facets and reaches far back into time. Aposematic coloration reliably warns of the defensive substances (muscimol and ibotenic acid), foreshadowing gastrointestinal misery and eruption for some species. Like all other molecular defenses, one or more species have evolved a way around the defenses and evolved to use them either as food or as an intoxicant.

Ten thousand years ago shamans used the same molecules to produce altered states in their followers for ceremonies and celebrations. Artists and writers brought back inspiration from altered states, and today we have enchanting fairy tales and numerous imaginary creatures to entertain and stimulate imaginations. Each year, families drape festive lights and children listen for the sound of hooves on the roof and a cheerful voice encouraging his reindeer.

For scientists, the chemistries of muscimol and ibotenic acid provide insight into chemical ecology of natural populations and enhance the pleasures of a walk in the woods.

Jeff Mitton is a professor emeritus in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the �鶹ӰԺ. His column, "Natural Selections," is also printed in the �鶹ӰԺ Daily Camera.

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Since the Renaissance, fly agaric has appeared in art and literature, frequently associated with fairies, trolls, wizards, witches and other mystical creatures.

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Top photo: A cluster of fly agaric mushrooms show variation of size, shape and color (Photo: Jeff Mitton)

Sramcbled wrods: the real reason you can still read jumbled text

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 22:19:38 +0000

Sramcbled wrods: the real reason you can still read jumbled text Rachel Sauer Thu, 04/30/2026 - 16:19

When we read, we typically don’t painstakingly process each letter in sequence. Instead, skilled readers recognize words rapidly by drawing on multiple cues at once. Psycholinguistic research shows that we process words as patterns rather than as sequences of individual sounds.

Karen Stollznow

"Typoglycemia" is often shared online as a quirky insight into how our brains work, but this viral claim is only part of the story

You’ve probably seen it on social media before: a paragraph of scrambled text that looks like nonsense at first glance, yet somehow you can read it with surprising ease.

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteers be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

This effect, often playfully referred to as "typoglycemia," is frequently shared online as a quirky insight into how our brains work.

Karen Stollznow is a visiting scholar in the CU �鶹ӰԺ Department of Linguistics.

But this viral claim is only part of the story. To understand why it works, we need to look at how the brain actually processes written language.

There is no magical ‘rule’

The claim that usually accompanies this snippet is that as long as the first and last letters of a word are in the right place, the order of the middle letters doesn’t matter.

At first glance, the claim seems plausible.

But while there is a kernel of truth here, the explanation is misleading.

Reading scrambled words has much less to do with a magical “rule” about first and last letters, and much more to do with how our brains use context, pattern recognition and prediction.

We don’t read letter by letter

These include familiar letter patterns, the overall shape of the word and, crucially, the context of the sentence. Our brains are constantly predicting what is likely to come next, then checking those predictions against the visual input.

This is why we often miss typos in our own writing. We don’t see what’s actually on the page, we see what we expect to be there.

The same principle helps us make sense of jumbled words. Even when letters are out of order, enough of the structure remains for the brain to make an educated guess.

Word shape and structure matter

The viral meme suggests that only the first and last letters matter.

But this oversimplifies what’s really going on. We are sensitive to how letters relate to each other within a word. Common spelling patterns and familiar combinations make words easier to recognize, even when slightly distorted.

This is also why certain visual disruptions make reading harder. Text in alternating caps, such as “AlTeRnAtInG CaPs”, is difficult to process because it disrupts the usual visual contour of words. The same goes for “ransom note” lettering made from mismatched fonts, which interferes with pattern recognition.

In other words, readability depends on preserving enough of a word’s internal structure, not just its outer letters.

Not all scrambled text is readable

If the meme were true, any sentence with intact first and last letters should be easy to read. But that’s not what we find.

Take this example:

Salhal I cmorape tehe to a srmmeus day

It follows the supposed “rules”, yet it is much harder to decipher. In fact, this is the opening of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

So why is the viral paragraph so much easier to read? Because it has been carefully (if unconsciously) engineered to be readable.

The hidden tricks behind the meme

Several factors make the famous example easier to process than it appears.

First, many of the words are short, which limits how many possible combinations the letters could form. Words like “you” and “can” are often left unchanged.

Second, function words such as “the”, “and” and “is” are usually intact. These small, common words provide the grammatical scaffolding of the sentence, making it easier to predict what comes next.

Third, when longer words are scrambled, the changes are often minimal. Adjacent letters are swapped (“wrod” for “word”), which is much easier to process than more extreme rearrangements.

Finally, the passage itself is highly predictable. Once you recognize the topic and rhythm, your brain fills in the gaps automatically, much as it does when listening to speech in a noisy environment.

The key to understanding this phenomenon is context. Words are not processed in isolation. Each word is interpreted in relation to the others around it, and within a broader framework of meaning.

This allows us to compensate for missing or distorted information.

But there are limits. As scrambling becomes more extreme, or as words become less predictable, comprehension quickly breaks down. Reading speed also slows noticeably, even when we can still make sense of the text.

Humans and machines

Interestingly, computers can now unscramble jumbled words with remarkable accuracy. By analyzing probabilities and patterns across large datasets, algorithms can determine the most likely original form of a word or sentence.

In this sense, machines and humans rely on similar principles. Not rigid rules about letter position, but flexible systems that weigh patterns and probabilities. This highlights why the “typoglycemia” claim is an oversimplification, rather than a scientific rule.

The idea persists because it captures a genuine insight in a catchy way. It reveals that reading is not a simple, letter-by-letter process, but a dynamic interaction between perception and expectation.

At the same time, it’s a reminder of how easily scientific ideas can be distorted as they spread online.

So yes, we can often read scrambled words. But not because the order of letters doesn’t matter. It’s because our brains are remarkably good at making sense of imperfect information. So good, in fact, that they can turn a mess into meaning.

Karen Stollznow is a visiting scholar in the CU �鶹ӰԺ Department of Linguistics specializing in the political and social history of modern Latin America.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

"Typoglycemia" is often shared online as a quirky insight into how our brains work, but this viral claim is only part of the story.

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A century later, a liberating education is still our mission

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 20:59:36 +0000

A century later, a liberating education is still our mission Rachel Sauer Mon, 04/20/2026 - 14:59

Daryl Maeda

A century ago, we needed informed citizens and clear thinkers; today, as the pace of change grows exponentially, we need them even more

Picture the scene when the Hellems Arts and Sciences building first opened as the hub of the humanities at the University of Colorado:

It was 1921, and the world was recovering from a deadly pandemic, Americans were isolationist, suspicious of immigration and deeply divided on issues of race. Also, economic uncertainty fueled doubts about the value of a traditional, liberal-arts education.

History might not repeat itself, but it sometimes rhymes.

This month, 105 years after Hellems opened, CU �鶹ӰԺ officials celebrated its recently completed renovation, heralding the place as a nucleus of campus life, a common bond among most students and, still, the home to key disciplines in the humanities.

Today, we’re in the wake of a pandemic, with rising isolationism and contentious debates on immigration, race and a liberal-arts education.

Let’s discuss, starting with a definition of the “liberal arts,” which is important, given modern connotations of the term “liberal.” The ancient Greeks and Romans believed that a good education—one that prepared citizens to steer the ship of state—was the foundation of democracy.

Cicero argued that autonomous individuals who earn the respect of others must learn skills or practices to be effective citizens and stewards of democracy. He called these skills the artes liberales, which translates to the “arts of free people,” those with liberty—hence “liberal arts.” Cicero focused on rhetoric, literature, poetry, ethics, civics, logic, geometry, music, astronomy and natural science.

History has a home in Hellems Arts and Sciences, as does philosophy, English, linguistics, the Anderson Language and Technology Center and the Colorado Shakespeare Festival.

He described arts and sciences, essentially.

The fields we count as liberal arts have grown in the 2,000 years since then, but the gist—the idea citizens need all these skills to better participate in democracy and in life—is unchanged.

Today in the College of Arts and Sciences, the liberal arts—now with more subjects!—remain central to the education of all students. Across the nation, however, students and their families sometimes question the return on investment in a liberal-arts education.

As I’ve noted previously, it is true that those who earn degrees in engineering and business tend to command higher starting salaries than those who hold degrees in English or sociology. However, those with a liberal-arts degrees often enjoy mid-career earnings growth that can rival that of their friends in technical disciplines.

The monetary “return on investment” is compelling. But that’s not the only benefit, and this is not the first time we’ve had this debate.

George Norlin was president of CU �鶹ӰԺ in 1921, when Hellems opened. He, too, responded to critics of a liberal-arts education, including Henry Ford, who famously said, “History is more or less bunk.”

Norlin penned an essay in which he argued that knowing only the present day was a kind of “prison” that kept a person from fully participating in civic and personal life. At the time, a liberal-arts education was called a “liberal education,” and he said this:

“A liberal education, or what we might better call a liberating education, has for its purpose … ‘a breaking of prison walls which leaves us standing, of course, in the present but in a present so enlarged and enfranchised that it is become, not a prison, but a free world.’”

Norlin rejected the “war-cry of charlatans” who demand that universities neglect liberal education and “become places of apprenticeship for jobs.”

He added: “Let there be more schools for the training of artisans—the more the better—but let the colleges and universities remember that, whatever else they may be called upon to do, their first business is to keep civilization alive and moving from vitality to vitality in each generation.”

Norlin, after whom the university’s libraries are named, paraphrased Cicero in the inscription above the main library’s entrance: ‘Who knows only his own generation remains always a child.’”

Were we to update that statement today, we’d use gender-neutral language. But I hope, as Norlin did, that it will reflect the university’s core purpose as long as they remain etched in stone.

History has a home in Hellems Arts and Sciences, as does philosophy, English, linguistics, the Anderson Language and Technology Center and the Colorado Shakespeare Festival.

As he celebrated Hellems’ reopening this month, CU �鶹ӰԺ Chancellor Justin Schwartz hailed the place as “where the ideas of the university take root, where perspectives are challenged and where intellectual confidence begins to take shape.”

The scholars in Hellems grapple with profound questions and promote critical thinking. The questions explored there have never been more important:

How do we apply the lessons of yesterday as we stride toward tomorrow? How do we find common cause across cultures and languages? How do we reason thoughtfully about what is right, true and ethical?

These are the questions the world must address, and our investment in Hellems demonstrates that the university honors this prime imperative.

A century ago, we needed informed citizens and clear thinkers. Today, as the pace of change grows exponentially, we need them even more. Embracing the wisdom of the past can drive us toward a better future.

Daryl Maeda is dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the �鶹ӰԺ.

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Should we want to die?

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 22:54:23 +0000

Should we want to die? Rachel Sauer Fri, 04/17/2026 - 16:54

Iskra Fileva

The human condition ends in death, but is there anything to do besides simply accepting it?

We are mortal. We are all going to die. What is one to do about it? Nothing, according to the dominant position: One must accept the human lot, and if possible, accept it with equanimity.

Premature death is viewed as a tragedy, of course, and we sympathize with fear of the inevitable even on behalf of centenarians, yet attempts to extend human life significantly are viewed with suspicion. What kind of person, the thought appears to be, would attempt to overcome biological limitations on lifespan? Someone exceedingly greedy, surely. Or worse, someone forgetting himself, like the character Braddock from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s story “A Diamond as Big as Ritz,” who tries to bribe the Almighty with a very large diamond. Ultra-wealthy anti-aging champions such as Bryan Johnson seem to fit this schema and may provide support for it in the popular imagination, if unwittingly.

Iskra Fileva is a CU �鶹ӰԺ associate professor of philosophy who specializes in moral psychology and issues at the intersection of philosophy, psychology and psychiatry.

Virtuous people, we think, may hope for immortality through their deeds or yearn for eternal bliss as an immaterial soul in heaven, but a desire for a much longer life in the literal sense is deemed unseemly. Research on life extension has, for many, the flavor of a Faustian bargain: We suspect that only those without scruples would try to cheat their way out of the human condition and avoid death.

On the other hand, we don’t want anyone to get too cozy with death either. While we may, if grudgingly, accept behaviors that increase the risk of death—think car racing or climbing the Himalayas—we don’t think it quite proper to assume control over the end of our lives, especially when that end isn’t otherwise imminent. I suspect, in fact, that widespread qualms about physician-assisted suicide have less to do with alleged worries about murderous doctors or relatives and more with the background assumption that death must come for us when it will and not when we choose.

To be sure, support for the two directives is not univocal—both life-extension research and the “right to die” movement have advocates—but it is very widespread. We thus seem to embrace two injunctions that pull in opposite directions: “Accept mortality” and “Don’t choose death.” Should we or shouldn’t we want to die?

Natural human lifespan

Perhaps the two directives can be reconciled by appealing to the idea of a natural human lifespan. We can say that a mature and virtuous person aims to live out roughly the span characteristic of our species and then die a natural death. On this view, one should accept temporal finitude without ever seeking to bring death about; open the door when the Grim Reaper comes knocking but stop short of trying to lure him in; face the inevitable without claiming authority over the schedule.

A crude version of this position can be easily shown implausible: After all, medicine can seem, in some ways, unnatural. But the proponent of the natural-lifespan view need not bite this particular bullet—she can argue, instead, that the proper role of medicine is restorative, not transformative. Medicine ought to ensure we get the number of years we are “owed” by correcting genetic errors or counteracting the effects of harmful environments without feeding fantasies of living for thousands of years.

But just what is so good, never mind normatively choice-worthy, about a natural lifespan and a natural death? I will take the first question first.

It has been suggested that a much longer life would get tedious or meaningless or both. Philosopher Bernard Williams, in “The Makropulos Case,” adduces considerations to that effect. The title of Williams’s essay is a reference to Elina Makropulos, a fictional character courtesy of writer Karel Čapek. Čapek’s Makropulos acquires the gift of life extension and initially takes advantage of it, but after living for several centuries, becomes apathetic, as if frozen in boredom. She continues to fear death, but at 300 plus, she is so jaded that she laughs when another character burns the document containing the secret of life extension.

Williams’ argument appeals to self-interest, not virtue, so even if it succeeded, it would not show anything untoward or Faustian about the desire for radical life extension, but let’s set this point aside. I suspect that Williams’ view, and Čapek’s, likely expresses what is sometimes called “an adaptive preference”: that is, a tendency to see the attainable as better than the unattainable, whatever the alternatives’ underlying characteristics. We don’t have life-extension methods, so we might as well tell ourselves that human lifespan is best as is. Moreover, barring the possibility of a dystopia in which anti-aging treatments are obligatory, no one in a world with life-extension techniques would be forced to live longer than they wished, so there is no need whatsoever to browbeat each other into adopting a preference for current lifespans.

I must note here that I don’t know how many believe the prudential argument anyhow. For it is also sometimes suggested that were anti-aging treatments to become available, their price would be prohibitive for most people. Yet, if a significantly longer life was not an attractive prospect, the potentially high price tag of life extension treatment would bother no one. As for the price argument considered independently, the obvious response is that we should work to make the treatments affordable rather than try to persuade ourselves that we’d have no use for them anyway.

The unborn

Another argument put forward has to do with morality rather than with self-interest: What about the unborn? When do they get to live? If we slow down aging by a lot, we’d need to drastically reduce the number of births as well.

This argument is well intentioned, but I don’t think it is good enough. No merely possible person is owed a chance to be born. A merely possible person is not a person at all, so there isn’t anyone that such a chance may be owed to. (Think of all your merely possible siblings or children. Who are they? How many of them are there?) The people who die every day due to old age, by contrast, are quite real.

But the most important point I wish to make in response to the pro natural lifespans position is this: Our intuitions of what lifespans are “fair” for us to expect are anchored in current lifespans, which are an accident. We could have evolved to live for thousands of years, like bristlecone pine trees, in which case we’d think it perfectly fine and not greedy at all to live that long. Or we could have evolved to live for several months, like many mice, and then wishing to live for 80 years may have seemed to us terribly selfish, nay Faustian.

That may be, my opponent may say, but we haven’t evolved that way. Granted, our intuitions are thoroughly shaped by the contingencies of our evolutionary history. Still, we mustn’t discard them for all that: We mustn’t because we don’t know what life would be like if we did live much longer. Forget fairness to the unborn and consider self-interest again. Had we evolved to live for many more years, one might say, we’d probably have psychological features that allow for good longer lives, but we haven’t. Given that, extending life is a risky business, a leap into the unknown. What if anti-aging techniques turn out to be a Pandora’s box, and we end up saddling ourselves with greatly extended but very miserable lives?

Gauging what is good for us

A cynic may quip that it’s not as though we are all currently thriving, but let’s bracket that retort. The argument from deeply ingrained features of human psychology should not be dismissed lightly. There is a certain wisdom in taking naturalness as a heuristic that helps us gauge what is good for us.

While there is no normative reason to prefer natural human lifespans, virtue does require that we desire mortality.

That's an argument for proceeding with caution, not against proceeding at all.

To be clear, I do not intend to propose a different optimal lifespan. It may well be that even were we to live for thousands of years, many would desire more. (This is the main theme in what may be the first sci-fi novel, Voltaire’s Micromegas. Elsewhere, I call this the blessing and curse of imagination.) My point here is simply that having a choice to live longer is better than not having that choice.

I conclude from here that there is no normative reason to prefer natural human lifespans. Virtue does not require that we desire mortality.

But does it prohibit desiring death on a given day?

It is difficult to see why. Note that a heroic self-sacrifice is seen as not only compatible with but also exemplifying virtue, so the question would have to be whether one may choose death for self-interested reasons.

The idea tends to make us squeamish. Since death is irreversible, the squeamishness is all well and good, but ought we moralize it?

No one argues that a virtuous person cannot prefer mortality in general, and some, as we saw, claim that she must prefer it. So why can’t one choose death on a particular day? What is so virtuous about dying only when you don’t want to?

There is a much longer discussion to be had about this than I can offer in this essay, but for present purposes, I wish to say the following: In opting to die, a person may hurt loved ones, of course. This is not a trivial matter. However, loved ones, in turn, must consider the person’s own preferences. (Entrepreneur Salim Ismail reports that his father chose euthanasia and spent the last days of his life in a blissful state. Ismail asked the attending physician about this, and she said that 20,000 people had had the procedure and that most of them spent their final days in a similarly happy state, adding, “We think it is because they have agency.”[1])

Or is the thought that it would be somehow terrible for society as a whole if someone were to choose death for private reasons?

A character named “Mr. Tredegar” in Edith Wharton’s novel The Fruit of the Tree adopts some such view in the course of an argument with a nurse named Justine Brent. Wharton writes:

“Human life is sacred,” he said sententiously.

“Ah, that must have been decreed by someone who had never suffered!” Justine exclaimed.

Mr. Tredegar smiled compassionately: he evidently knew how to make allowances for the fact that she was overwrought by the sight of her friend's suffering: "Society decreed it—not one person," he corrected.

“Society—science—religion!” she murmured, as if to herself.

“Precisely. It’s the universal consensus—the result of the world’s accumulated experience. Cruel in individual instances—necessary for the general welfare.”

Yet the appeal to general welfare is unpersuasive. We cannot impose on each other a day full of experiences that the recipient does not wish to have. The prolongation of life of a person unwilling to live is but many such days.

What, then, explains the Tredegars of the world?

My strong suspicion is that the answer, once again, lies in the naturalness heuristic. It seems to us against nature’s injunctions for a person to end her life. But an otherwise healthy and helpful heuristic, when too rigidly held, may become a superstition. I suspect, in fact, that it is precisely an awareness that we are in the grips of something like that superstition which partly explains why we tend to oppose life-extension: We fear the motivational grip of “naturalness” intuitions and worry that in a world with life extension, we might end up accidentally saddling ourselves with very long undesirable lives.

It is quite possible that if radical life extension became possible, there would be some who don’t wish to live any longer but who, having opted for another several hundred years, would be unable to end it all, a bit like a person unable to walk away from a cult or a very bad job. The problem may be exacerbated by the fact that in the alternative world, people in this position may appear and biologically be thirty-five even if they have already lived for three and a half centuries.

Still, we successfully combat instincts (including the survival instinct, if doing so could help save a loved one’s life) and rethink heuristics. At any rate, the question is whether this is what we should try to do or whether, instead, we must continue to maintain that a mature and virtuous person would always choose mortality but somehow never, on any given day, choose death.

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The human condition ends in death, but is there anything to do besides simply accepting it?

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