The Curious About Everything Newsletter #52

The many interesting things I read in June 2025

Welcome back to the Curious About Everything Newsletter. CAE 51 is here, if you missed it. The most popular link from last month was Lifehacker’s post on what to hoard before tariffs kick in.

My updates

• My fundraiser for spinal CSF leak awareness and education raised over $4,000 this year, and the Spinal CSF Leak Foundation raised over $20,000 total in support of their mission. A big thank you to all who donated!

• CAE 51 overflow links are up on my Patreon here.

Featured art for CAE 52

CAE 52’s featured artist isn’t a person, but a powerful new telescope. The first images from the Vera C Rubin Observatory in Chile were released in June, and the photo below of swirling, colourful gas and dust clouds from the the Trifid and Lagoon nebulae 9,000 light years away is a stunner. The observatory is located on private land near La Serena, on a mountain called Cerro Pachón in the Chilean Andes. More about this amazing telescope and its 3,200 megapixel digital camera, the largest in the world, below.

The most interesting things I read this month

These links are once again formatted into hyperlinks thanks to the help of my friend Mike.

Start here:

Start here for my faves, then fill up your browser tabs with the pieces below.

📝 The Talented Ms. Highsmith. The subhead draws you in pretty quickly: “I worked for the novelist in her final months. I thought she wanted to kill me.” I’m sold. The piece, about what it was like to work for Patricia Highsmith, author of The Talented Mr. Ripley and other works, near the end of her life. It’s an unusual snapshot into the tail end of domestic life of a formidable author, one who spent her last weeks writing about how to get away with murder. But also perplexing, as Highsmith has been isolated for so long, yet can write so well about human nature. The piece is a fascinating juxtaposition of a talented, vivid writer and the life she lived, seemingly drained of the colour her writing held. Her characters were “written by the light of her darkness”, and while writing itself is often quite solitary, it’s hard not to see the result in binary terms, as if her characters ‘took’ that life-force from her. Alternatively, though, what if her writing gave her the outlet to communicate and weave connection that life itself never afforded her? The Yale Review

💀 The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull, a disputed femur and a bitter feud over humanity’s origins. A deep dive into an archaeological niche, one about fossilised remains from the Djurab desert, in Chad. “Most of the fighting in palaeoanthropology is simply a function of the wild imbalance between the number of palaeoanthropologists, which is large, and the number of objects available for them to study, which is very much not.” A very entertaining read on two decades professional feuding, egos, and ethics in a field I’m not very familiar with. The Guardian

😶‍🌫️ Pirates of the Ayahuasca. Sarah Miller on a (harrowing) ayahuasca journey, as told with acerbic wit and pulling no punches. Some quotes: “Why is everyone else solving family trauma or doing the two-step with purple jaguars and every night I just see *that*?” and “I thought about how most of my experience of going to Peru to drink ayahuasca had been about working through the shame of having done such a thing in the first place.” This piece made the rounds last month, but I didn’t have a chance to read it until now. It’s entertaining, self-deprecating, and well-written. It stood up to its hype. n+1

🦇 The Wild Within the Walls. I stumbled on bioGraphic several CAEs ago, when I learned that the fabulous Hakai Magazine team was joining their ranks when Hakai unfortunately shut down. This piece, about the different species of wild animals who “creep, slither, scurry, and nest” among the architectural ruins and palaces of Rome, is one of many great reads on their site. Beautiful writing, and accompanied by the photos of those animals in situ, too. bioGraphic

🏆 The Big Picture 2025. Also on the bioGraphic site, the winners of 2025’s California Academy of Sciences’ BigPicture Photography Competition, now in its 12th year. I’ve shared earlier years’ winners here on CAE. The competition celebrates some of the world’s best photographers and the year’s most striking images. bioGraphic

🍄‍🟫 Out of the Ashes. ‪There’s a lot in CAEs past about mushrooms, whether psychedelic or otherwise. Though I’ve never enjoyed eating them, I’ve long been fascinated by their resilient nature, adapting to wherever they grow and serving as a beautiful example of connection in ecosystems. “What lessons might they offer us about when to hide and when to burst forth?” asks Meera Subramanian in this lovely, inquisitive piece. Orion Magazine

📷 Probe lenses and focus stacking: the secrets to incredible photos taken inside instruments. CAE 50’s Featured Artist was Charles Brooks, who takes breathtaking photos inside musical instruments. DP Review did a great interview with him about his camera set up and process for getting the pictures that wow us each and every time. DP Review

🦋 How Two 19th-Century Teenage Sisters’ Forgotten Paintings Sparked a Triumph of Modern Conservation. During a time when women had no access to formal education in art or in science, two Australian teenaged sisters drew precise and beautiful paintings of butterflies that sparked a ‘butterfly effect’ of their own: increased conservation efforts and protection for the area of Ash Island that they so lovely illustrated. Their artwork is featured in this post. The Marginalian

🌌 Ever-changing Universe Revealed in First Imagery From NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory More about that shiny new telescope in Chile, responsible for CAE 52’s featured image. In its first 10 hours of observations, the observatory “discovered 2104 never-before-seen asteroids in our Solar System, including seven near-Earth asteroids”. Amazing work to come, no doubt! Rubin Observatory

💵 My money story. A short, raw post from market professional Callie Cox, confessing how she what she calls ‘money dysmorphia’. No matter how much money she makes, the panic of it being insufficient persists. She discusses how early financial trauma can profoundly shape anyone’s relationship with money, causing long term financial insecurity. While some people flee their traumas, she did the opposite and leaned “into her wounds” by becoming personally and professionally obsessed and intertwined with money and markets. OptimistCallie

🇳🇿 Citadel of the Giants. I spent quite a few months in New Zealand years ago, very excited to soak up all I could about the country. I went for a friend’s wedding, then stayed for the landscape and extraordinary evolution of their various bird species. This piece is about something I didn’t learn about: their insects. The piece deep dives into the wētā, or Deinacrida, whose name translates to “terrible grasshopper”. The insect reclaimed the country as the land slowly rose from the sea, splintering into 11 different species over time. Some adapted to colder parts of the country by “turning into icy slurry” during winter months, where they dropped into hibernation as ice crystals formed in their cells. Really interesting read about a species now at risk. Warning: lots of ‘terrible grasshopper’ pics inside. New Zealand Geographic

🔥 Why Canada is riddled with wildfires that burn year-round. This piece is from 2024, but I found it when Ottawa was yet again engulfed in smoke early this summer. I was trying to understand how the fires started, since historically smoke rarely wafted this way. This piece explains that many of the fires actually live and breath through the winter, smouldering under the snow. Called “zombie fires”, they can’t be waterbombed because they’re not out in the open, but as snow melts they flare up again. BBC Earth

⚓️ Gold coins confirm ‘world’s richest shipwreck’ is 18th century Spanish galleon. An analysis of gold coins that were found scattered across the seafloor off the coast of Colombia has confirmed that they belong to a nearby shipwreck that was previously unidentified. This analysis, published in a new study, postulates that the ship is the San José, an “ill-fated Spanish treasure galleon that sank over 300 years ago during a battle with British warships”. In June of 1708, the San José and a fleet of 17 other vessels departed Colombia for Europe laden with gold, silver, and uncut gems. How much treasure are we talking about here? Per this piece, the modern value is estimated at $17 billion (!). To sleuth which ship sunk, scientists used high-definition photography and determined that the coins had etchings that indicated they were minted in Lima, Peru in 1707. The question is: who gets to claim the coins? Both Spain and Columbia assert ownership, and no doubt a heated battle will follow. Popular Science

💊 Poison Pill. In September 1982, seven people died from cyanide poisonings in tampered Tylenol bottles, with ransom notes sent to Johnson & Johnson headquarters. A killer was never charged, and the FBI still considers the Tylenol mystery an open, active case. But the effects on the medication packaging were profound; tamper-free packaging followed. At a time when regulations around food and medication safety in the US are being loosened, this piece is something to think about. Truly Adventurous

🇫🇷 The Email of Paris Recommendations I Send to Everyone. A curated list of lunch and dinners spots and patisseries and cafes, as well as parks to wander in and sites you may want to explore. For those who are gluten-free, my food list for Paris is in here. Franchement

🧪 Landmark test for coeliac disease promises to take away the pain of diagnosis. Determining whether you have celiac disease isn’t as simple as non-celiacs may assume. Yes, there’s a genetic test to show if you have one of the genes correlated with the disease, but the gold standard for diagnosis is a blood test to identify elevated levels of certain antibodies, most commonly tTG-IgA (tissue transglutaminase IgA), and then an upper endoscopy with biopsy to look for villous atrophy in the small intestine. The latter wasn’t very fun, but the part that is challenging is that you have to be eating gluten to measure the damage — if you’re not, the antibodies may not be present. A new test out of Australia measures T cell reactivity (interleukin-2 release, or WBAIL-2) for detecting gluten-specific T cells. The study on this biomarker shows high sensitivity (90%) and specificity (95%) in detecting celiac disease, even in patients following a strict gluten-free diet. The new test could boost rates of diagnosis, identify patients at risk of severe reactions to gluten, and detect silent celiac disease in people who are asymptomatic. The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research And for the celiacs out there, my free GF guides are here.

The rest of the most interesting things I read this month:

☀️ The Unseen Fury Of Solar Storms. Some of us associate solar storms with dazzling auroras lighting up unexpected corners of the Earth. But in this piece, Henry Wismayer explores a quieter, more ominous “what if”: the threat of a solar storm so massive it rivals the Carrington Event of 1859, the most intense geomagnetic storm ever recorded. We usually think of “the big one” in earthquake terms, but here it’s the sun that could wreak havoc, affecting our electrical grids, satellites, aviation systems, and undersea cables with geomagnetically induced currents, and potentially plunging us into widescale blackouts and digital chaos. Dramatic, yes, and made even more so by the spectacular NASA imagery of CMEs that accompanies the piece. As if we don’t have enough to worry about, eh? Noema

🚀 How a fake astronaut fooled the world, broke women's hearts, and landed in jail. Speaking of space, this is one eye-raising read. From aviation events in the 1980s to glamorous globe-trotting travels, Robert J. Hunt convinced countless people he was a NASA astronaut. He even had a proper Navy flight suit, “scorched” shuttle tiles, and wild war stories from his supposed time in service. Except he never held a military rank, nor had a pilot’s license. His many woven cons of inventions, careers — even a fake wife! — worked until he went too far and people began to suspect he wasn’t all that he seemed. Hunt was eventually arrested for larceny and impersonation. Space.com

☢️ The hunt for Marie Curie's radioactive fingerprints in Paris. I was assigned a biographical type project on Marie Curie in elementary school, long before internet research was possible. I imagine my presentation would have been far more in depth had I had access to pieces like this, about the lingering traces of Curie's work in the radioactive fingerprints she left behind. BBC Future

😋 The Expansive, Absurdist Canvas of Tiramisu. At Onda Pasta Bar in Manchester, tiramisu has been reimagined as a towering slab stored in a refrigerated drawer. What started as a “space hack” became a viral sensation with over 10 million views and celebrity buy-in, sparking a cult fad of serving tiramisu in bizarre places, from bike baskets to tractor beds. The result catapulted a delicious classic and creamy, espresso-soaked dessert into an absurdist spectacle, including unconventional Tiramisu vessels (like, uh, toilets). Anything for a click, right? Tiramisu’s simplicity and customizability (limoncello or chai versions abound) paired with its social media “vibe” make it a tabula rasa, a blank canvas for creativity and shock. For better or worse, this performative eating reflects broader trends around food that don’t seem to be ebbing anytime soon. I hate to be metaphorically yelling, ‘get off my lawn!’ but honestly I just prefer a simple Tiramisu, not served in a toilet or a drawer. Taste

🍄 Your psychedelic link of the month: I Tried Magic Mushrooms for My Mental Health. Here’s What Happened. Robert Sanchez on psilocybin, the mushroom compound with hallucinogenic and serotonergic effects that, he notes, “can upend how we view ourselves,” nudging negative thought patterns to the side “creating space for new insights”. A hands-on piece, Sanchez not only visits scientists at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus who are studying as a potential palliative treatment for terminal conditions, but also Colorado’s first psilocybin wellness clinic. And then he documented his own microdosing for the article. This isn’t a navel-gazing piece; it’s written with tenderness and vulnerability, woven together with history and science about the compound. 5280

🪶 Wild cockatoos are learning how to use water fountains. Cockatoos: also adaptable. And thirsty. And smart enough to learn how to use a water fountain. (There is somehow no cockatoo emoji! Sorry for the incorrect feather for this bird!) Popular Science

🚹 Jeremy Spoke in Class Today. Like many people who came of age in the 1990s, Pearl Jam’s “Ten” was playing on repeat. This essay, the title of which is pulled from a song on Ten, looks at guns and MTV and Stephen King’s books to answer the question of why so many American men willing to hurt themselves and others. “We’re all scarred and broken,” writes Paul Crenshaw, “and it isn’t from the stories we’ve read or music we’ve heard, but from what we see on the nightly news. Art imitates life, which makes me wonder what kind of lives we lead.” The American Scholar

🎵 Postwar Dreams, Pop Symphonies, and the Genius of Brian Wilson. RIP Brian Wilson. “And it’s worth pausing here—because genius is a word we toss around too easily. But Brian Wilson was a genius. If he’d been born in the 1700s, he’d have been writing court music for kings. Instead, he gave his symphonies to the surf, and his psalms to the suburbs.” Mark McInerney’s lovely piece on his passing. Smoke Signals

📻 The Wet History of Media in the Bathroom. This article is an excerpt from Rachel Plotnick’s book “License to Spill”, about the “wet history” of media in the bathroom: how we went from reading magazines or books on the toilet to bringing our electronics into the washroom, shower and all. Having any electronics in the bathroom used to be a luxury, available to upper classes. But by 1985, Adweek forecasted $1.5mm sales of shower radios for that that year. The type of media, and use in our water closets, has only grown since then. The MIT Press Reader

💆🏻 Facial Stimulation Clears Brain Waste and Boosts Aging Minds. Study finds that a device that massages the face and neck can help the body clear waste from brain. While this is a mice study, it offers a new, less invasive approach mechanically stimulating lymphatic vessels just beneath the facial skin, improving CSF drainage. This drainage declines as we age (or, you know, when you have a hole in your dura mater, I’d imagine?), and scientists believe that the decline also contributes to cognitive disorders like Alzheimer’s. Neuroscience News

🐋 Humpback Whales Blow Bubble ‘Smoke’ Rings to Communicate With Humans. A new study found that humpback whales don’t blow bubbles to each other, or to other species. Only to us, when humans were around. Yet again, we have chronically underestimated the intelligence — and playfulness — of an animal species. The crow, raven, or octopus also come to mind. KQED

🧠 Shadow of a Doubt. Reporting from the Annual OCD Conference, Andrew Kay investigates OCD’s grip on contemporary life in the USA, including his own. “Perhaps OCD has always been with us,” he muses, “some have ventured that it is an atavistic relic from the prehistory of Homo sapiens, when it behooved hunter-gatherers to check their space compulsively for safety reasons, or when repeatedly washing or picking at one’s person made sense in an outdoor world rife with parasites.” Regardless of origins, this piece —much like Sanchez on microdosing — is part narrative and part investigation, and an all-around interesting read. Harper's

🏁 The Tangled Past and Unsettled Future of Greyhound Racing in West Virginia. Wheeling, West Virginia is home to one of only two remaining live greyhound racetracks in the USA, and this piece traces greyhound racing’s legacy from ancient origins to modern times. The once-thriving industry now survives largely through gambling subsidies like West Virginia’s Greyhound Breeding Development Fund. While proponents emphasize “tradition,” economic benefits, and the supposed loving care of the greyhounds, critics highlight injuries, confinement, and euthanasia. To me, these dogs deserve better. Oxford American

🇮🇷 Digital Blow to Tehran: Hackers Disrupt Iran’s Illicit Finance Network. Interesting post on a crypto exchange hack in Iran, which largely went under the radar as news coverage focused on the more visible aspects of conflict in the Middle East. “Reducing Iran’s ability to provide financial support to its proxies was likely the intended goal of the hack; while this has been achieved in the short term, it remains to be seen whether this will be successful in the long term.” Insight Monitor

🤖 Some AI-related links for the month:

• AllTrails launches AI route-making tool, worrying search-and-rescue members. (Archive link) “Imagine dying because you want to say you went on the same hike as everyone else but have AI tell you the shortest path instead of doing it the way everyone else has done safely for hundreds of years.” Canada's National Observer

• ChatGPT May Be Eroding Critical Thinking Skills, According to a New MIT Study. Very small sample size, and preliminary research. Is it AI, or is it a loss of critical thinking skills? Have those critical thinking skills been replaced by entitlement and apathy? Maybe everything, all at once. This piece just covers the preliminary study, but it won’t be the last writeup on this hot topic. TIME

• Trends: Artificial Intelligence. A very long (many hundreds of slides) powerpoint presentation about trends in AI, with graphs, analyses, and interesting commentary from global tech investment firm BOND. Love AI or hate it, the data speaks volumes about how integrated it has already become. As the report concludes, “One thing is certain – it’s gametime for AI, and it’s only getting more intense … and the genie is not going back in the bottle”. BOND, via Travelbloggerbuzz

• And finally: They Asked an A.I. Chatbot Questions. The Answers Sent Them Spiraling. (Archive link) This is the second story I've shared about how AI chatbots are leading people into psychological crises. New York Times

🏋🏻 The Death of a CrossFit Athlete. Calum Marsh on the drowning death of a CrossFit athlete, and the CrossFit Organization’s side-stepping of accountability. The sport isn’t generally considered to be dangerous, but reports like this are only one risk; not mentioned here: a spinal CSF leak. I’ve heard from several patients who sustained their spontaneous spinal CSF leak after a particularly gruelling CrossFit session. These cases aren’t the norm, but they are worth reading about. Rolling Stone

⚕️ Two Patients Faced Chemo. The One Who Survived Demanded a Test To See if It Was Safe. In rare cases, chemotherapy can kill. There’s a test to prevent this but most patients aren’t getting it, and it’s a matter of guidance trickling down to actual practice, something that takes so much longer than people realize and can have truly awful effects when it’s ignored. KFF Health News

🪐 The Mysterious Inner Workings of Io, Jupiter’s Volcanic Moon. A look at how “maddeningly inscrutable” the volcanic orb still is to scientists, though studies are starting to pick apart how it functions. “The more we observe it, notes Ashley Davis, a volcanologist at NASA, “the more sophisticated the data and the analyses, the more puzzling it becomes.” WIRED

🦠 Long Covid is Now the Number One Chronic Illness in Children I haven’t shared as many Covid links here during the last few months, but research continues and what it has shown is as the many pieces I’ve posted in CAE predicted: that there is plenty we still don’t know about what cumulative infections will mean for kids or adults, but thus far disability is rising as are cases of long Covid in kids and adults. This piece is a criticism of coverage from recent studies about the condition, but it shares data that is important for everyone. We’ve been failed insofar as we now have research about how viral infections can impact us later in life: EBV’s correlation with MS and certain cancer types, for example, and recent studies about Alzheimer’s potentially being “kicked off” by infection as well. Why would Covid be any different, especially when people are getting it over and over compared to other viruses? (We don’t get the flu multiple times a year, usually!). My life derailed starting with a virus in 2013; I don’t wish it on anyone, and I really hope where I ended up is the exception not the norm, but the data are not comforting. The Gauntlet See also: 90+ recent studies on what Covid does to the body, here, divided by topic.

🇷🇺 She tried to expose Russia’s brutal detention system—and ended up dead. (Archive link) 27-year-old Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna planned to investigate reports that Russia was operating a network of unofficial detention centers in areas it occupied in Ukraine, but she was disappeared into Russia's prisons and died. Her body, or what was left of it, was retrieved during a body exchange; a group of journalists (45 international reporters) then continued her work and investigation, creating maps, 3D reconstructions of sites, and doing interviews with former inmates. This is a profoundly tough read, but describes the cruelty, both physical and mental, that she and others face in Russian prisons. The Washington Post

🇺🇦 And, about the same conflict: How Ukrainian linguists prepare the country’s spies. This is journalist Tim Mak’s publication, which is a snapshot of more everyday questions from the ground. This time, about Ukrainian diplomats in Istanbul who pretended not to understand Russian during negotiations. The Counteroffensive with Tim Mak

🎥 ‘The Mozart of the attention economy’: why MrBeast is the world’s biggest YouTube star. Last month we talked about a MrBeast + James Patterson collab, and this month there’s a long read about the influencer himself, someone who ”spent 24 hours immersed in slime, two days buried alive – and showered vast amounts of cash on lucky participants.” Are his antics genius or irritating clickbait? I suppose it’s up to you to decide. But if his popularity is any indication, must like Tiramisu torture, the masses have made their decision very clear. The Guardian

🫠 The Emergency We Cannot Feel: On the Psychological Unreadiness for American Collapse. Mike Brock on how America is experiencing a constitutional crisis, but their emotional and psychological defences prevent them from seeing it clearly. “Democracy isn’t dying from a sudden blow”, he argues, “but from our collective inability to recognize reality.” Notes from the Circus

🇸🇻 Delay, Interfere, Undermine: How El Salvador’s Government Impeded a U.S. Probe of MS-13. T. Christian Miller and Sebastian Rotella for ProPublica uncover a much more complicated story about Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s relationship to MS-13, including allegations that USAID money was funneled to gangs. This piece finds that the Bukele government harassed and intimidated Salvadoran law enforcement officials who were investigating corruption and assisting a US anti-gang task force, and at least eight of them have since fled the country with US help. ProPublica

📖 Is the decline of reading poisoning our politics? “Through text, people could express ideas with an eye to precision rather than repeatability, while building upon the accumulated knowledge of all who came before.” So yeah, probably. Vox

🏢 The Unbearable Darkness of Jail. This article is about literal darkness, in addition to the figurative, ominous cloud of being incarcerated. The Marshall Project’s local reporters looked at jails in three cities that flout local, state, and federal directives requiring access to natural light and time outside. “That place is like a basement... Now that I’m home, [my family has] been asking me why I keep waking up at night,” says someone who was detained for over four years. The Marshall Project

🇨🇦 The US Badly Needs Rare Minerals and Fresh Water. Guess Who Has Them? Spoiler: it’s us, here in Canada. The Walrus

🎣 The Fish That Climbed a Mountain. “My treasured memories...are all subsidized by a massive Fish Industrial Complex—one that has taken a toll on all sorts of insects, invertebrates, frogs, and salamanders.” Alex Brown on fishing and conservation and all the nuances in between. Longreads

🌌 The 2025 Milky Way Photographer Of The Year. Title suffices! Gorgeous photos within. Capture The Atlas

🔗 Quick links

• A family of raccoons recently broke into an Airbus factory in Canada, adding an unusual headache to their existing issues.

• Per Axios, al dente pasta is better for your health — and you shouldn’t rinse it after cooking, either.

• Discover the murders, sudden deaths, sanctuary churches, and prisons of three thriving medieval cities in this Medieval Murder Map. (via Chris)

• I’ve shared Marconi Union’s Weightless track several times in CAE. Billed as the most relaxing song of all time, it’s a permanent bookmark in my browser. They’ve got a new album out, and you can listen to the Manchester-based duo’s first single, ‘Eight Miles High Alone’ here.

• A new study finds that the 28 of the most populous metros in the USA are losing elevation, from New York City to Seattle.

• Meet Chonkus, the mutant cyanobacteria that could help us manage climate change. (What could go wrong?)

• The best movie stunts of all time. (Archive link for those who hit paywall, here.)

Hope to see you next month!
-Jodi