On February 1, 2003, a tragic reminder of how delicate life is struck those watching the landing of Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-107). Commander Rick D. Husband, Pilot William C. “Willie” McCool, and mission specialists David M. Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Michael P. Anderson, Laurel B. Clark, and Ilan Ramon were selected for Columbia’s 28th mission. The mission involved orbiting Earth while conducting experimental research.
What they didn’t know was that, during liftoff, a piece of insulation foam had compromised one of the shuttle’s heat shields. Upon reentry, with just 16 minutes remaining before they were expected to touch down, the shuttle met its fatal end.
Crew of the STS-107. Photo credit: NASA
Giant leaps
Many have recently taken a renewed interest in astrophysics, inspired by the awe of the Artemis II mission. Astronauts who devote their lives to space exploration are nothing short of magnificent. It’s a pursuit defined by equal parts devotion, incredible bravery, and the ability to see the big picture, quite literally. As astronaut Neil Armstrong famously put it, even “small steps” in this realm are “giant leaps for mankind,” a reminder of the importance of perspective within the smallest scientific details.
Letter from space
Mission specialist Brown had sent an email just one day before the crew was set to land, and his aerial view of our tiny blue marble of a planet clearly gave him perspective.
A Reddit user who said they were related to Brown shared the email and wrote, “I had a family member on Columbia, Dave Brown. We were at the launch and the disaster was put in a very different perspective for us, even though I didn’t know him that well. He emailed the family regularly and the day before reentry sent a very impactful email to us that became much more so after the incident.”
The email read:
“Friends, It’s hard to believe but I’m coming up on 16 days in space and we land tomorrow.
I can tell you a few things:
Floating is great – at two weeks it really started to become natural. I move much more slowly as there really isn’t a hurry. If you go too fast then stopping can be quite awkward. At first, we were still handing each other things, but now we pass them with just a little push.
We lose stuff all the time. I’m kind of prone to this on Earth, but it’s much worse here as I can now put things on the walls and ceiling too. It’s hard to remember that you have to look everywhere when you lose something, not just down.
The views of the Earth are really beautiful. If you’ve ever seen a space IMAX movie that’s really what it looks like. What really amazes me is to see large geographic features with my own eyes. Today, I saw all of Northern Libya, the Sinai Peninsula, the whole country of Israel, and then the Red Sea. I wish I’d had more time just to sit and look out the window with a map but our science program kept us very busy in the lab most of the time.
The science has been great and we’ve accomplished a lot. I could write more about it but that would take hours.
My crewmates are like my family – it will be hard to leave them after being so close for 2 1/2 years.
My most moving moment was reading a letter Ilan brought from a Holocaust survivor talking about his seven-year-old daughter who did not survive. I was stunned such a beautiful planet could harbor such bad things. It makes me want to enjoy every bit of the Earth for how great it really is.
I will make one more observation – if I’d been born in space I know I would desire to visit the beautiful Earth more than I’ve ever yearned to visit space. It is a wonderful planet.
Dave”
Data from the mission
While these precious lives were ended far too soon, their work was not in vain. NASA was able to salvage much of the data collected during the mission.
One of many examples was video footage that appeared to show a new, unexplained lightning-like phenomenon. In an article for New Scientist, Maggie McKee explains that researchers who pored over the footage saw a reddish glow unlike anything astrophysicists had seen at the time: “The glow occurred about 150 kilometres above the ocean near Madagascar and does not appear to be linked with thunderstorms.”
Similar to the tragic end of the Space Shuttle Challenger (STS-51L) mission, astrophysicists, as all good scientists do, find a way to carry on. They use these experiences to deepen their understanding and to advance science beyond what once seemed possible. In the words of Isaac Newton, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
A Somali refugee and current resident of Minneapolis, the multimedia artist and activist draws on her lived experiences to create work that explores trauma, displacement, and resilience. But like so many of the guests on Freedom to Thrive, an award-winning podcast produced by the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), Mansour doesn’t want to focus only on trauma; she also wants to celebrate the unexpected beauty she’s found during difficult experiences.
“One of the beautiful things about tragedies is that it activates hearts, and courageous people are born,” she says. For example, Mansour has noticed more Minnesotans than ever are reaching out to help the vulnerable, after the anti-immigrant crackdowns carried out by the Department of Homeland Security. “They are bringing food, they’re bringing extra clothes, they’re walking with people, and it’s just really beautiful.”
Hector Flores, co-founder of the Las Cafeteras and host of Freedom to Thrive, agrees with her. A child of immigrants himself, he has also seen how hope and hardship often live side by side.
Flores comes from a family with mixed status and is highly aware of the challenges immigrants and refugees in his community face, and how they’re affected by people’s misconceptions. “People want to know about trauma all the time, but we’re more than just undocumented,” he says. “We’re artists, singers, creatives … there’s so much richness in the culture.”
At its core, Flores’ comment is exactly what the Freedom to Thrive podcast is all about: Celebrating immigrants as complex, dynamic individuals, and challenging the dominant narrative that too often reduces them to symbols of hardship.
Launched in 2024, Freedom to Thrive explores heritage, resilience, community, and the ways art and comedy can spark social change. Now in its second season, the podcast continues to feature conversations with immigrants, policymakers, artists, musicians, activists, and more. Recent guests have included comedian Mo Amer, Grammy Award-winning singer Lila Downs, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen.
Where the first season focused on individual stories of identity and belonging, Flores says his goal for season two, where he joins as host, is to “take it to the next level” — using storytelling to highlight “the fact that we’re more similar than different.”
One recent podcast episode drives this point home. In December, Flores interviewed Bryan Andrews, a rising country music star and rural Missouri native who frequently uses his platform to speak about issues affecting immigrant families. At the heart of his message and his songwriting, Andrews says, is the idea that small-town Americans and the rest of the country, including immigrants, have more in common than they realize.
“It doesn’t matter where you’re from,” Andrews says on the podcast. “We’re all trying to make a living and we’re tired of getting railroaded by corporate greed or by politicians who don’t care.”
Rural Americans, Andrews says, are often stereotyped as racist and misogynistic but “the overwhelming majority of people in my home town have love in their hearts.” Media stereotypes often amplify differences and divide, he says, but at the end of the day, “we’re all in this together.”
Flores, who was raised in a working-class immigrant neighborhood in East Los Angeles, had similar thoughts. He says he often sees its residents stereotyped as wealthy, consumerist, and status obsessed. “That exists, but that’s not my life, that’s not my community,” he says. Like small-town Americans, people in the city “just want to work hard and take care of their families. We all want the same thing.”
Although the podcast tackles some heavy issues, each episode’s ultimate focus is how personal and collective struggles can be healed through art, driving home a message of hope and resilience:
Mansour’s episode about her experiences in Minnesota is just one of many examples. Flores asks her,
“What gives you hope for the people creating a home here?”
“The love I feel from other Minnesotans. It is trumping any hate we’re experiencing,” she replies.
CTA: Stream all episodes now on the Freedom to ThriveYouTube channel or the website,here.
The podcast has been nominated for a Webby in the “Belonging & Inclusion” category. You can vote for it to win until Thursday, April 16!
This article is part of Upworthy’s “The Threads Between U.S.” series that highlights what we have in common thanks to the generous support from the Levis Strauss Foundation, whose grantmaking is committed to creating a culture of belonging.
In April 1970, a year after Apollo 11 put the first man on the Moon, three astronauts set off to complete NASA’s third lunar landing. Instead, two days after the Apollo 13 launch, the mission became one of simple survival. An explosion on the spacecraft caused critical damage, forcing the crew and everyone at Mission Control to problem-solve in real time.
As lead flight director, Gene Kranz was in charge of the Apollo 13 mission. (You may remember actor Ed Harris portraying Kranz in the 1995 film Apollo 13.) His leadership helped avert disaster, bringing the astronauts home safely. In addition to other programs, Kranz served as a flight director for seven Apollo missions, including Apollo 11.
Now, at 93 years old, he has watched humanity return to the Moon. In an interview with WTVG-TV, Kranz shared how he felt witnessing the Artemis II mission more than five decades after the Apollo missions he helped oversee.
“It took me back, made me young again,” Kranz said when asked about seeing the new images of the Moon. “I’m 93 right now, and I was in my thirties, 34, when we landed on the Moon. And it’s like starting all over again. And I just wish I’d talked to the NASA interns, the new people coming in…We must have about—the last session was about three weeks ago—we had about 60 of them, and I looked at these kids, and I was jealous. Anything I’ve ever done, I would trade them to be in their position.”
Kranz said that looking at images of the Moon makes him think of the astronauts and controllers he worked with, as well as the material they brought back.
“And [I] just say, ‘Thank God we had a mission,’” he said.
Gene Kranz working in the Mission Control Center in Houston in 1965. Photo credit: NASA
Now we’re “back on track,” Kranz said, as Artemis program takes us to the Moon to build a habitat. “It’s going to be a new era in space exploration.”
Kranz said he’s “too proud to even describe” how he feels about NASA reaching this point.
“You know, I came in as a young pup,” he said. “I was a fighter pilot—I did flight test. I was there in the very beginning. And all I can think of are the great people that I worked with that made all of this possible.”
Kranz shared that he had written his high school thesis on how humans would land on the Moon. It was titled The Design and Possibilities of an Interplanetary Mission.
Gene Kranz working at his flight director’s console in the Mission Operations Control Room, 1965. Photo credit: NASA
“It is really strange to have written that description, written in that term paper—by the way, I got a 98—and be the person that actually took Neil Armstrong to the Moon for the first time,” he said. “I lived as an explorer. I lived with explorers.”
Kranz also shared one of the downsides of the Apollo missions in the 1960s and ’70s: the quality of the photo and video technology of the time wasn’t equal to the task.
“Now I see the imagery we have, and I said, ‘My God, if we had that image, we could have better directed the crew when they were on surface to go pick up that rocket, to go do this thing right on the line,’” he said. “I think we could have had a much better operation. But we did the best with what we had.”
Indeed, they did—and not just when it came to images. When the fate of the Apollo 13 crew was up in the air (or, more accurately, out in space), Kranz famously declared, “Failure is not an option.” Not only did Apollo mission scientists do the best with what they had, but they also engineered ways to pull off one of the most harrowing feats in human history.
How remarkable that this legendary leader in lunar exploration has lived to see a second round of Moon missions, and what a delight it is to hear him share his reaction.
It is not unheard of for someone to grab something off the rack to wear immediately after purchasing. In fact, this is a fairly common occurrence in the United States. But a dermatologist warns that this behavior could be damaging to your skin.
Cleveland Clinic dermatologist Dr. Shilpi Khetarpal tells WDIV 4 that she recommends everyone wash their clothes before wearing them. “There’s a few reasons why. The first is that many bright colors can bleed onto skin or other fabrics before the first wash. So when you wash them at home first before wearing them, you’re preventing that from transferring onto your skin,” she tells the outlet.
Anyone who has purchased dark blue or black jeans knows just how annoying it is when the ink bleeds onto other clothing, furniture, and skin. This isn’t new information for most people, and those with very sensitive skin are likely more apt to pre-wash new clothes to avoid skin irritation. Those without hypersensitive skin may feel more inclined to keep yanking those tags off and stepping into unwashed new clothing.
Khetarpal and other dermatologists say, not so fast. Skin irritation doesn’t only occur because someone has sensitive skin. Still, a recent survey conducted by Tommy John reveals that only 22% of Americans always wash new clothes before wearing them. Other things are going on in the construction and packaging of new clothing that might give others pause.
According to Dr. Khetarpal, some manufacturers add formaldehyde and other chemicals to keep clothes from wrinkling or molding when shipping. There’s also the concern of fungus, bacteria, and other things lingering on clothing from people handling the items or trying them on.
“You never know who tried on the garment before you bought it, so you don’t know about germs on their skin, nose, mouth. In fact, a few studies have been done looking at bacteria and viruses lingering on clothes after they have been tried on—fecal bacteria and nasal viruses were commonly found. Lice, scabies, and even bed bugs can also live on clothing for a few days,” Dr. Jami L. Miller, Associate Professor of Dermatology at Vanderbilt Health and Medical Director of the Dermatology Clinic at Vanderbilt Health One Hundred Oaks, tells Southern Living.
A 2014 study completed by Stockholm University in Sweden tested 31 different clothing items. The scientists found “Quinoline and ten quinoline derivatives were determined in 31 textile samples. The clothing samples, diverse in color, material, brand, country of manufacture, and price, and intended for a broad market, were purchased from different shops in Stockholm, Sweden. Quinoline, a possible human carcinogen, was found to be the most abundant compound present in almost all of the samples investigated.”
While it all sounds very scary, Dr. David C. Gaston, Assistant Professor of Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology atVanderbilt Health, tells Southern Living, “The risk of obtaining a communicable disease from clothing in a retail store after being tried on by another person is vanishingly small and essentially non-existent if the clothing is new.”
The scientific consensus is to wash new clothes just to be on the safe side, but if you don’t have sensitive skin, you’re most likely fine-ish.
We are constantly being reminded of Isaac Newton’s famous quote, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Eleven such giants were recruited as volunteers from Gallaudet University (then Gallaudet College) in Washington, D.C. in 1958. Their task was to help researchers understand the effects of weightlessness on Deaf people who didn’t experience motion sickness.
Deemed the Gallaudet Eleven, they helped pave the way for hundreds of space flights, including the most recent Artemis II. Ranging in age from 25 to 48 years, the eleven men included Harold Domich, Robert Greenmun, Barron Gulak, Raymond Harper, Jerald Jordan, Harry Larson, David Myers, Donald Peterson, Raymond Piper, Alvin Steele, and John Zakutney. Each and every one of them selflessly gave their time and their bodies to what would become monstrous breakthroughs in astrophysics.
Houston had a problem
Actor and Deaf activist, Nyle DiMarco, recently took to social media to share the historical tidbit, lest people forget. In an Instagram reel, he wrote,
“Everyone’s talking about Artemis II. The first humans to travel to the moon in 50 years. Historic mission. But nobody’s talking about the Deaf men who made it possible.
In the late 1950s, NASA had a problem. They needed to understand what weightlessness does to the human body. But every test subject kept getting violently motion sick.
So they came to Gallaudet.
Eleven Deaf men. Most of them had lost their hearing to spinal meningitis as children, which also damaged their vestibular system. Their inner ears couldn’t be overwhelmed. They were immune to motion sickness.
NASA put them in centrifuges. Zero-gravity flights. A rotating room for twelve straight days. One experiment on a ferry in choppy Nova Scotia waters. The researchers got so seasick they had to cancel it. The Gallaudet Eleven? They were playing cards.
Their bodies gave NASA the data it needed to send humans into space.
No Gallaudet Eleven — no Mercury. No Mercury — no Apollo. No Apollo — no Artemis II.
Sixty years later, four astronauts just flew 252,000 miles from Earth and came home safely. They stood on the shoulders of eleven Deaf men most people have never heard of. Now you know! #nasa #gallaudet11 #artemisii @nasa”
The post has already received nearly 400,000 likes and over 6,000 comments. One Instagrammer writes, “Diversity in all its forms is what makes us great. And all of us working together is what helps us advance as a civilization! Thank you for sharing this and bringing visibility to this piece of history, and thank you Gallaudet 11 for your contribution.”
The tests
The official NASA website shared some of the tests in which the brave volunteers took part. “One test saw four subjects spend 12 straight days inside a 20-foot slow rotation room, which remained in a constant motion of ten revolutions per minute.”
Then, of course, there were the zero-g flights. “In another scenario, subjects participated in a series of zero-g flights in the notorious ‘Vomit Comet’ aircraft to understand connections between body orientation and gravitational cues.”
They even took the volunteers to Nova Scotia to test big waves. “Another experiment, conducted in a ferry off the coast of Nova Scotia, tested the subjects’ reactions to the choppy seas. While the test subjects played cards and enjoyed one another’s company, the researchers themselves were so overcome with seasickness that the experiment had to be canceled. The Gallaudet test subjects reported no adverse physical effects and, in fact, enjoyed the experience.”
The test subjects themselves shared their experiences. Barron Gulak reminisced, “In retrospect, yes, it was scary…but at the same time we were young and adventurous.”
On DiMarco’s identical Facebook post, Harry Larson’s child, “Moose” Larson, shared a photo and wrote, “They were recently recognized with a cool plaque at Gallaudet! My dad is one of them and, funny enough, never really talked about it.” A commenter responded, “I’ve worked with your dad a lot on this project during the museum exhibition several years ago. He’s been so wonderful, always willing to come to events. I’m so glad he’s sharing his story now.”
There have been a lot of dubious medical research papers published over the years. Famously, there was the 1998 case series that kicked off what would become an entire movement of vaccine skepticism by falsely linking them to autism. Before that, there was a whole slew of research bought and paid for by the sugar industry designed to “downplay the risks of sugar and highlight the hazards of fat,” according to NPR.
Rarely, however, are studies so heavily, and intentionally, fictionalized as a paper that quietly popped up in some small corners of the Internet in early 2024.
Researcher tests AI hypothesis
Almira Osmanovic Thunström, medical researcher at the University of Gothenburg, knew that Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini, etc. draw from an expansive knowledge base they’re trained on.
Training data can include anything and everything from books to Reddit posts to song lyrics to articles published in reputable medical journals.
Crucially, hundreds of millions of people log into these AI services every year to ask about symptoms and receive medical advice. It’s the natural evolution of the “Just check WebMD” approach. Thunström wanted to see if she could effect the output of these LLMs by planting bogus ideas into their training data.
So, she made up a disease. She called it “Bixonimania,” which includes symptoms such as sore, itchy eyes and discolored eyelids. Then, she fabricated an entire research study around the condition and uploaded a “preprint” of the paper to a couple of servers—a preprint being a version of the research paper that has not yet undergone peer review, but is still made available for the public to read.
Finally, with the seeds planted, and the false study publicly available for anyone (or anything) to see, Thunström waited to see if LLMs would begin spitting out “Bixonimania” as a diagnosis.
Fake disease finds serious legs in AI chats
If the experiment sounds ethically dubious, that’s fair, but Thunström made every effort to make it clear that the findings were completely false. Not only did she collaborate heavily with an ethics consultant on the experiment, she left plenty of breadcrumbs along the way.
For starters, the lead author of the study is listed as “Lazljiv Izgubljenovic,” a person who does not exist. Translated from Slovenian, the name means “The Lying Loser.”
Second was the name of the disease itself, which was chosen to be ridiculous sounding. “I wanted to be really clear to any physician or any medical staff that this is a made-up condition, because no eye condition would be called mania—that’s a psychiatric term,” Thunström said per Nature.com.
Early in the paper, the text “this entire paper is made up,” appears. As does a note that all of the fifty so-called “participants” were completely fictional. Toward the end, Thunström thanks such esteemed colleagues as “Professor Maria Bohm at The Starfleet Academy … onboard the USS Enterprise” and partners like “the Professor Sideshow Bob Foundation.”
Despite the warnings, and the fact that (nearly) any qualified human reading the paper would know it was a fake, it began showing up in search results and even had the authority to appear on Google Scholar.
AI chatbots began spitting out “Bixonimania” as a possible diagnosis to users within just a few weeks—users who were probably suffering from eye irritation due to too much screen exposure. Thunström even has the screenshots to prove that certain models, including Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini, still refer to the disease as a “recently” proposed or described condition.
Then something even stranger happened.
“Bixonimania” gets cited by other research papers
The “Bixonimania” paper was never peer-reviewed or published in an official journal, for obvious reasons. But, soon enough, it was referenced and cited in a new paper that was peer-reviewed.
“Bixonimania is an emerging form of POM [periorbital melanosis] linked to blue light exposure; further research on the mechanism is underway,” the authors confidently wrote.
The papers referencing the made-up disease were later retracted.
More than just AI trickery
The TL;DR? People rarely read beyond the headline. In fact, one study (a real one!) found that more than 75% of people who share an article online haven’t even read it. Most of us trust anything that appears in a medical journal.
You’d think physicians and researchers would be more thorough, but the truth is they’re just as susceptible to time crunches, lapses of focus, and even taking shortcuts in their work from time to time. In other words, they’re only human.
This fascinating experiment isn’t just about how a researcher managed to fool AI, it speaks to bigger problems with how we use the technology and our daily media habits.
“The solution isn’t just better filters. It’s better habits, better norms, and better expectations around how we read, verify and cite. Human‑centred resilience has to come first,” an astute commenter wrote.
“This expose has huge implications for academia and ‘googling your symptoms’. I was/am worried about being the one taking the hit for a controversial experiment of this sort. It was done with very high guardrails and ethical considerations, I hope everyone reading will take that in to account,” Thunström elaborated on LinkedIn.
She recently decided to retract the papers and keep them private somewhere curious users can read them, but they’ll no longer be crawled by LLMs.
LLMs are powerful tools, but they can be dangerous. Photo Credit: Canva Photos
“The bixonimania experiment was never about exposing LLMs as flawed tools, or arguing they have no place in medicine. They do. It was about demonstrating that any system can be infiltrated and that researchers who blindly cite AI-generated references really should read what they’re quoting. I know this firsthand,” she says in another LinkedIn post, adding that she herself has been duped by AI-generated summaries of her own research papers.
“The failure wasn’t the system. It was how I used it.”
Ever wake up in the morning unsure of what you want to get out of the day? One day rolls into the next, and it’s easy to lose track of time and go on through our daily routines without any real purpose. That’s why, if we want to achieve our dreams and live the best life possible, it’s important to have a clear idea of what we’re working towards and to affirm it every morning.
Dr. Cindra Kamphoff, a certified mental performance coach who has worked with the Minnesota Vikings, USA Track & Field, and several Fortune 100 and 500 companies, created a 4-minute practice you can do every morning to have a successful day. She calls it the GRIT morning routine. “This simple GRIT routine gets my day started on the right foot!” she wrote on LinkedIn.
How to start your day using Dr. Cindra Kamphoff’s GRIT morning routine
To perform the GRIT routine, Kamphoff says that you should focus for one minute on each of the following:
1. Gratitude
“For one minute, remind yourself what you’re grateful for, the good things and the tough things,” she said in a YouTube video. Kamphoff told CNBC to envision a highlight reel of everything that has shaped your path. Think about the people you love, the blessings you’ve had in life, and the challenges that you’ve overcome to be the person you are today.
Gratitude is extremely important because it’s at the root of living a satisfied life. If you don’t appreciate the things you have in life, then it’s almost like not having them at all. A 2024 Harvard study found that gratitude is associated with greater emotional well-being, lower risk of depression, better sleep and heart health, and may even extend people’s lives.
“R is remember your purpose, or your ‘why.’ For one minute, remember and remind yourself why you do what you do,” Kamphoff says. If you haven’t found a specific purpose yet, that’s okay. Your purpose can be as lofty as creating a great movement that changes the world or as small as learning to be 1% kinder every day. Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, says that finding purpose may feel overwhelming, so it’s best to boil it down to a simple question: “What can I do with my time that is important?”
“For one minute, state at least three intentions. These are the ways you want to show up today, less about what you want to do but who you want to be,” Kamphoff says. She says to consider “who you want to be” and how you “want to show up” in the world, whether at home or at the office. Some examples include: “I will be a more patient parent” or “I will do everything in my power to avoid being distracted.”
4. Talk to yourself powerfully
“The last step is T, which is to talk to yourself powerfully. For one minute, tell yourself who you really are,” she says. She suggests that people talk to themselves with statements that include “I will,” “I can,” or “I am,” she told CNBC. If you are going to a job as a teacher, tell yourself, “I am the best teacher these kids have ever had,” or if you have a mile-long to-do list, tell yourself, “I can accomplish everything on my list and more.”
As the great Taoist philosopher Lao Tzu once said, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” Every morning, we begin our own journey, and the most important thing is to take that step in the right direction. With the GRIT morning ritual, hopefully, finding that direction and staying on the path is a lot easier.
For millions of people, this sort of run-of-the-mill sleep advice feels like being handed a pamphlet about umbrellas in the middle of a tropical storm. The advice isn’t wrong, not really. But it’s basic. Generic. It fails to account for the wildly diverse reasons people struggle with sleep in the first place.
A new study from Concordia University feels radical for a simple reason: Instead of lumping all sleepers into “good” and “bad” categories, researchers identified five distinct sleep profiles, each with its own causes, brain patterns, and emotional fingerprints. Once you know which one sounds like you, the advice actually starts to make sense.
What they found: Your sleep isn’t just about what happens when you close your eyes. It’s deeply intertwined with your brain wiring, your emotional life, and how you move through the world during the day. These findings align with the current sleep-deprivation crisis. Six in ten adults aren’t getting enough sleep, according to the National Sleep Foundation, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that one in three adults is chronically sleep-deprived. But not all of those sleepers are struggling for the same reasons, and that distinction matters more than previously realized.
Your sleep profile isn’t a quirky, fun fact like an astrological sign. Knowing which profile you belong to could unlock a good night’s rest—not just tonight, but for a lifetime.
Does this sound familiar? You get into bed exhausted, lie there for an hour, and suddenly your brain wants to review every awkward conversation you’ve had since 2009. When you do sleep, it’s shallow. You wake up wondering why you even bothered.
LC1, known as the Struggling Sleeper, is the most prevalent and clinically significant sleep profile. It is defined by a potent combination: sleep difficulty and underlying mental health struggles, including anxiety, depression, low mood, and poor concentration. These factors are so closely linked that it’s almost impossible to tell which came first. Research has consistently shown that insomnia and anxiety and depression have a bidirectional relationship, with each feeding and amplifying the other in a self-reinforcing cycle. Treating only the sleep without addressing the emotional root is like mopping the floor while the faucet is still running.
Brain scans reveal another neurological layer: Individuals with LC1 exhibit hyperactivity in emotional processing regions and reduced connectivity in areas tied to rumination and focus. The brain gets stuck in a loop. So when it’s 2 a.m. and you’re mentally planning contingencies for catastrophes that haven’t happened, this is your brain’s wiring, not a personal failure.
This one’s surprising. While Resilient Sleepers often carry real psychological stress—attention difficulties, low mood, pressure that would flatten most people—somehow, they sleep.
This profile offers a fascinating contrast to LC1. People in LC2 experience similar levels of psychological burden as those in Profile 1, but their sleep does not break down under that pressure. Researchers think this may reflect a neural resilience pathway—a different kind of wiring that prevents stress from taking over the sleep system.
Their brain scans reveal something intriguing: strong attention and control networks that act as a buffer, preventing emotional noise from flooding the sleep system at night. You might even underestimate your own sleep quality, thinking it’s worse than it actually is. Researchers believe this profile could be key to understanding what the brain can learn to defend, and whether those defenses can be developed in other sleepers.
For the Medicated Sleeper, sleeping aids are non-negotiable. Photo credit: Canva
Profile 3: The Medicated Sleeper (LC3)
Melatonin gummies, sleepy tea, a glass of wine, a Benadryl “just this once” that became every night—if sleep aids have quietly become non-negotiable, you probably recognize this profile.
Medicated Sleepers are often doing well by most measures—they’re socially active and physically healthy—but simply can’t fall asleep on their own without a little chemical assist. The trade-off? Mild declines in visual memory and emotional regulation, as sedating medications have been shown to affect both perceptual and emotional processing.
An important note: The researchers found that LC3, LC4, and LC5 were less robust than LC1 and LC2, suggesting these profiles may be more variable across populations and should be interpreted with caution.
Short Sleepers don’t need less sleep—they’re sleep-deprived. Photo credit: Canva
Profile 4: The Short Sleeper (LC4)
You’re efficient. You’ve adapted. So five and a half hours of sleep is fine—you’ve been running on it for years.
Here’s the hard truth: The brain scans of Short Sleepers look nearly identical to those of people who have pulled a full all-nighter. No, not just tired people—people who literally haven’t slept. As you can imagine, the cognitive costs of this sleeper profile accumulate quickly, often below the threshold of what we can feel but well above what researchers can measure.
LC4 is characterized by regularly sleeping fewer than six to seven hours per night, and the cognitive impacts are measurable: slower reaction times, decreased problem-solving ability, lower emotional patience, and difficulty managing interpersonal frustration. You may pride yourself on needing little sleep, having built an identity around efficiency. But your partner notices you snap more easily. You’ve forgotten three appointments this month. You’re not superhuman. You’re sleep-deprived, and your brain is working overtime to hide it from you.
You spend eight hours in bed, but you wake up exhausted. Throughout the night, everything in the world seems to keep you from rest—discomfort, noise sensitivity, a partner who snores—and despite spending plenty of time technically “sleeping,” Disturbed Sleepers rarely feel rested. The quality of sleep is just too fractured.
This was the only profile in the study to show a notable gender difference, with women scoring significantly higher—consistent with research showing that women experience greater sleep fragmentation over their lifetimes.
Why your sleep type matters
The stakes go well beyond feeling groggy. Each of these profiles carries unique long-term health risks, and the brain research is truly concerning.
The dementia connection
Every night, while you’re asleep, your brain quietly does something extraordinary. It activates what scientists call the glymphatic system—a built-in janitorial crew of fluid channels that weave between your brain cells. Their job? To flush out toxic proteins that accumulate during the day, including amyloid beta and tau. These are the same proteins that clump and tangle in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease.
When this system fails over time—as it does in people with the Struggling Sleeper, Short Sleeper, and Disturbed Sleeper profiles—toxic proteins don’t just linger; they build up. They cluster together. They trigger inflammation, worsening the problem. It’s a slow, silent spiral that can develop for years before anyone notices anything wrong.
The anxiety-depression loop
The relationship between sleep and mental health isn’t a one-way street where anxiety causes bad sleep. It’s more like a revolving door. Decades of research have confirmed that insomnia predicts the onset of depression, and depression predicts the worsening of insomnia. Each one fuels the other, back and forth, in a cycle that can go on for years.
If you treat depression alone and ignore sleep, you’ll often get incomplete results. If you treat only the sleep and overlook the underlying anxiety, the same issue occurs. The two are so closely connected that addressing one without the other usually leaves the whole thing unchanged.
The biggest takeaway from the research is the idea that sleep problems don’t all stem from the same place. They can’t all be fixed in the same way. What helps a Struggling Sleeper might do nothing for a Short Sleeper. What a Disturbed Sleeper needs is a completely different conversation from what a Medicated Sleeper needs. Here’s a rundown of what your sleeper profile requires for genuine rest:
Congrats! You’re doing something right, even if you’re not sure what it is.
Take a minute to take stock of your stress-management habits; something in your routine is actively protecting your sleep. Jot this down, whatever it is, and try not to trade it away when life gets busy. It’s doing more for your mental health than you realize.
One gentle caution: Resilience isn’t a permanent condition. Major life disruptions—loss, burnout, significant transitions—can shift your profile over time. Keep checking in.
If you’re a Medicated Sleeper (Profile 3):
No judgment here: a lot of people are in this category, and most of them didn’t plan to be.
Let’s name the thing directly: The belief that you’ve adapted to six hours is one of the most common and most convincing lies the sleep-deprived brain tells itself.
True Short Sleepers—people who genuinely thrive on less than seven hours due to a rare genetic trait—represent less than 3% of the population. Everyone else who “only needs six hours” has simply stopped noticing the deficit. Treat 7–8 hours the way you treat eating or exercise: a non-negotiable, not a nice-to-have.
If you’re a Disturbed Sleeper (Profile 5):
Sleep hygiene alone probably isn’t going to fix this, because the root is often physical, and physical problems need physical solutions.
A consistent sleep and wake schedule also helps anchor your circadian rhythm, making it easier for your body to build the biological pressure for sleep that actually gets you through the night.
Knowing your profile isn’t just interesting self-knowledge. It’s a starting point for solving the problem and finally getting the kind of sleep that makes everything else in life feel a little more possible.
We live in an age of conflict. Sharp political and social divides are everywhere, and while it’s easy to theoretically write off people who disagree with us on fundamental core issues and values, the reality is that we often must co-exist with them and learn to manage our conflicts in a healthy way. Sometimes that means putting aside our differences and “agreeing to disagree.” Something it means hashing them out.
The quickest way to stop having a constructive dialog with someone is when they become defensive. This usually results in them digging in their heels and making you defensive. This can result in a vicious cycle of back-and-forth defensive behavior that can feel impossible to break. Once that happens, the walls go up, the gloves come off and resolving the situation becomes tough.
Ripley is a bestselling author and the co-founder of Good Conflict, a media and training company that helps people reimagine conflict. Not surprisingly, she’s in high demand on news programs, conferences, and media summits these days.
How to have a constructive conversation
Let’s say you believe the room should be painted red and your spouse says it should be blue. Instead of saying, “I think blue is ugly,” you can say, “It’s interesting that you say that…” and ask them to explain why they chose blue.
The key phrase is: “It’s interesting that you say that…”
It shows genuine curiosity in their point of view. That’s critical to avoid someone shutting down on you.
Two men shake hands while a woman looks on. Photo credit: Canva
When you show the other person that you genuinely care about their thoughts and appreciate their reasoning, they let down their guard. This makes them feel heard and encourages them to hear your side as well. This approach also encourages the person you disagree with to consider coming up with a collaborative solution instead of arguing to defend their position.
It’s important to assume the other person has the best intentions while listening to them make their case. “To be genuinely curious, we need to refrain from judgment and making negative assumptions about others. Assume the other person didn’t intend to annoy you. Assume they are doing the best they can. Assume the very best about them. You’ll appreciate it when others do it for you,” Kaitlyn Skelly at The Ripple Effect Education writes.
Look out for signs of defensiveness like blaming, criticizing, making excuses, or being passive-aggressive. These are warning signals that your conversation is veering off the rails.
Phrases you can use to avoid an argument
The curiosity approach can also involve affirming the other person’s perspective while adding your own, using a phrase like, “On the one hand, I see what you’re saying. On the other hand…”
Here are some other phrases you can use:
“I wonder if…”
“It’s interesting that you say that because I see it differently…”
“I might be wrong, but…”
“How funny! I had a different reaction…”
“I hadn’t thought of it like that! For me, though, it seems…”
“I think I understand your point, though I look at it a little differently…”
Two men high-fiving one another. Photo credit: Canva
What’s the best way to disagree with people?
A 2016 study from Yale University supports Ripley’s ideas. The study found that when people argue to “win,” they take a hard line and only see one correct answer in the conflict. Whereas those who want to “learn” are more likely to see that there is more than one solution to the problem. At that point, competition magically turns into collaboration.
“Being willing to hear out other perspectives and engage in dialogue that isn’t simply meant to convince the other person you’re right can lead to all sorts of unexpected insights,” psychologist and marketing professor Matthew Fisher at Southern Methodist University tells CNBC.
The key words are “willing” and “genuine.” These phrases aren’t magic bullets designed to help you level your opponents. You have to actually, truly be willing to learn about their perspective and be open to changing your mind.
Let me know in the comments if this data rings true to you and your experience of conflict. And check out danharris.com for more from Amanda Ripley including what she has to say about “conflict entrepreneurs,”people who inflame turmoil to benefit themselves. #conflict#healthyconflict#communication#tenpercenthappier#10percenthappier
Another common tip that usually comes from the world of couple’s counseling is to stop seeing the other person as your adversary. If you can imagine the two of you on the same team versus the problem, your conversations will be more productive.
In a world of strong opinions and differing perspectives, curiosity can be a superpower that helps you have more constructive conversations with those with whom you disagree. All it takes is a little humility and an open mind, and you can turn conflict into collaboration, building bridges instead of walls.
This article originally appeared two years ago. It has been updated.
Look, let’s just get it out there: It’s uncomfortable any time you have to get fully or partially naked for a medical exam or cosmetic procedure. Right? It’s natural and part of the process, but while you know that the person on the other end is a professional who’s just there to do their job, they’re also a human being. Getting naked in front of them in any other context would be extremely weird, and it’s hard to completely shut that part of your brain off no matter the setting.
It’s amazing how body dysmorphia really knows no bounds. We tend to think of insecurities as focusing on things like the flatness of our stomachs or the size of our noses. But perhaps the thing that people are most self-conscious about is the thing we actually talk about the least.
According to one study, about 30% of men are “dissatisfied” with the size, shape, or appearance of their penis. That number is even higher when it comes to how women feel about their vaginas. A survey done by Refinery29 showed that almost half of women had “concerns” about the appearance of their vulva.
The numbers say anywhere from a third to a half or more of all people think there’s something wrong with the way our private parts look. Which begs the question: If we all think we’re weird, is anybody really weird at all?
A fascinating Reddit thread recently polled experts on this very topic—people who tend to see an awful lot of genitals in their line of work: Waxing technicians or estheticians. The responses were oddly inspiring.
The prompt asked, “Waxers, how often are you surprised by how a clients genitals look?”
Professional waxers chimed in with their stories and observations. As did doctors, nurses, pelvic floor therapists, urologists, and lots of other pros who work closely with people’s unmentionables.
“Gonna chime in as a doctor – and I would imagine it’s the same for professional waxers. WE. DONT. CARE. And in my case I would be surprised if you’d show me something I’ve never seen before.” – feelgoodx
“I use to be very self conscious and insecure about my genitals. I honestly thought I had a weird vagina. But working in this industry has taught me that every one is a snowflake. I’ve seen it all and nothing surprises me. Just clean yourself before coming in.” – Wild-Clementine
Not a waxer but I am a labor and delivery nurse. I see a vulva every single day I work, often multiple, and frequently about 3 feet from my face with a spotlight on it lol. Not much surprises me. Most are out of my memory by the time they’re clothed or covered up. When it comes to genitals you want to be unremarkable.” – tlotd
“Very, very rarely. Shaved, not shaved, lots o’ labia, no labia, etc—it’s all the same to me. I’m just here to work.” – Important-Tackle
“never. i have seen it all. scars, hyperpigmentation, unevenness; none of it surprises me. just please wash yourself before coming to me.” – pastelmorning
“Nothing surprises me, I’m mostly just focusing on the hair, but i do have a client who has a tuft of hair on the underside of his shaft near the tip of his penis we call his downstairs soul patch.” – noorisms
Two big takeaways:
First, outside of obvious mutilations or pathologies, nothing stands out to people who are extremely knowledgeable about genitals. Differences in size, shape, and structure are totally normal and barely even register on the radar!
Second, no matter what you look like down there, good hygiene is always appreciated. A solid tip that extends far beyond the borders of the esthetician’s office!
Being embarrassed, self-conscious, or even ashamed of the way your parts look doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it can be.
It’s bizarre and tragic that unrealistic beauty standards actually affect the way we perceive our own nether regions. Pornography, media, and inconsiderate past partners all play a role in people developing anxiety about the way their genitals look.
Both men and women can have their sex lives negatively impacted by bad self-image and anxiety over the way they look naked. When the shame is really bad, it can hold them back in relationships, or even stop them from seeking them in the first place.
This shame or embarrassment unfortunately extends into the medical arena, as well.
Fear of being judged or humiliated can stop women in particular from not just going in for a wax, but from going to the gynecologist, getting breast exams, or asking potentially-embarrassing but critical and life-saving health questions. For their part, men are prone to skipping prostate exams, testicular exams, or conversations about potentially embarrassing topics like erectile dysfunction or bladder problems. None of these things are fun or comfortable, but they’re critical for our health!
Experts say sharing your vulnerability with your doctor or cosmetic professional can help. Letting them know you’re nervous or embarrassment can signal them to offer you comfort measures. It also helps to be really direct and detailed with what you want or what you want to discuss.
According to Cedars Sinai, “Does sex hurt? Tell your doctor exactly where you feel the pain. Notice that your poop stinks? Try to describe the odor in detail.” If you’re too embarrassed to talk about it, try writing it down. At some point though, you’ll have to get the exam. Just get through it, it gets easier once you build a relationship with your doctor (or waxer!) over time.
If you’ve ever been a little self-conscious, take it from the experts, from the people who have seen hundreds if not thousands of genitals up close and personal, in the most unflattering lighting and from the worst angles possible: You’re totally normal!
This article originally appeared two years ago. It has been updated.
