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Group fitness classes aren’t just about exercise, Mikala Jamison writes. https://theatln.tc/z5fhRvrdWhen Jamison was tea...
02/03/2025

Group fitness classes aren’t just about exercise, Mikala Jamison writes. https://theatln.tc/z5fhRvrd

When Jamison was teaching indoor cycling, she was the nicest version of herself: “warm, welcoming, and encouraging to the point of profound corniness, despite my usual caustic tendencies,” she writes. People that met in her class started dating; strangers went out for coffee. “These experiences have convinced me that group fitness classes are the best place to make friends as an adult,” she continues, “an idea supported by research that suggests that the glow of exercise’s feel-good chemicals has interpersonal benefits.”

Once, friendships were born in what the sociologist Ray Oldenburg called “third places”: physical spaces that aren’t a home or a workplace, don’t charge (much) for entry, and exist in large part to foster conversation. Group classes don’t quite fit in that definition—they can cost money, and their primary activities are “sweating, grunting, and skipping a few reps when the instructor isn’t looking,” Jamison writes. “But they fulfill many conditions that social-psychology research has repeatedly shown to help forge meaningful connections between strangers: proximity (being in the same place), ritual (at the same time, over and over), accumulation (for many hours), and shared experiences or interests (because you do and like the same things)”—a less awkward way to find people with similar interests than at work or at a party.

Even if you don’t find your next best friend at Zumba class, getting into a fitness habit might help you step out of your comfort zone and make more friends in other spaces.

“A room full of grown adults flailing, shouting, and running miles without ever going anywhere is a fundamentally ridiculous prospect,” Jamison continues. “Ridiculous things, however, play a crucial role in connecting with others: They make us laugh.”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/z5fhRvrd

🎨: Debora Szpilman

In the time since the publication of Kurt Vonnegut’s seminal novel, the work has never gotten old and it’s never waned i...
02/03/2025

In the time since the publication of Kurt Vonnegut’s seminal novel, the work has never gotten old and it’s never waned in energy, James Parker writes. (From 2019)

“If you really want to achieve a bone-deep understanding of a philosophical idea,” writes Arthur C. Brooks, “try living ...
02/03/2025

“If you really want to achieve a bone-deep understanding of a philosophical idea,” writes Arthur C. Brooks, “try living according to its prescription for a few days, or a week.” https://theatln.tc/10pN8zUA

The Netflix hit’s second season can’t quite break out of its own vicious cycle, Shirley Li writes.
02/03/2025

The Netflix hit’s second season can’t quite break out of its own vicious cycle, Shirley Li writes.

"The Democratic Party, at least in theory, is an organization dedicated to winning political power through elected offic...
02/03/2025

"The Democratic Party, at least in theory, is an organization dedicated to winning political power through elected office, though this might seem hard to believe, on the evidence provided by its official proceedings," writes Jonathan Chait:

During pregnancy, fetal cells migrate out of the womb and into a mother’s heart, liver, lung, kidney, brain, and more. T...
02/02/2025

During pregnancy, fetal cells migrate out of the womb and into a mother’s heart, liver, lung, kidney, brain, and more. They could shape moms’ health for a lifetime, Katherine J. Wu reported in 2024:⁠ https://theatln.tc/wpcelUjO
⁠
The presence of these cells, known as microchimerism, is thought to affect every person who has carried an embryo, even if briefly, and anyone who has ever inhabited a womb. The cross-generational transfers are bidirectional—as fetal cells cross the placenta into maternal tissues, a small number of maternal cells migrate into fetal tissues, where they can persist into adulthood. ⁠
⁠
Genetic swaps, then, might occur several times throughout a life. Some researchers believe that people may be miniature mosaics of many of their relatives, via chains of pregnancy: their older siblings, perhaps, or their maternal grandmother, or any aunts and uncles their grandmother might have conceived before their mother was born. “It’s like you carry your entire family inside of you,” Francisco Úbeda de Torres, an evolutionary biologist at the Royal Holloway University of London, told Wu.⁠
⁠
Some scientists have argued that cells so sparse and inconsistent couldn’t possibly have meaningful effects. Even among microchimerism researchers, hypotheses about what these cells do—if anything at all—remain “highly controversial,” Sing Sing Way, an immunologist and a pediatrician at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, told Wu. But many experts contend that microchimeric cells aren’t just passive passengers. They are genetically distinct entities. And they might hold sway over many aspects of health: our susceptibility to infectious or autoimmune disease, the success of pregnancies, maybe even behavior. ⁠
⁠
If these cells turn out to be as important as some scientists believe they are, they might be one of the most underappreciated architects of human life, Wu writes. ⁠
⁠
Read more: https://theatln.tc/wpcelUjO

“A city ruined, and above it clouds. / A ruined city and above it a column of azure sky. / And in the distance, stepping...
02/02/2025

“A city ruined, and above it clouds. / A ruined city and above it a column of azure sky. / And in the distance, stepping over blue thresholds, / The remains of History or the Spring of myth.”

Read a poem by Czesław Miłosz:

The romantic comedy premiered two decades ago. Its cruelties refuse to age, Megan Garber writes. (From 2021)
02/02/2025

The romantic comedy premiered two decades ago. Its cruelties refuse to age, Megan Garber writes. (From 2021)

“One of the most humbling parts of being alive is realizing you’ve long been doing a simple thing wrong—or, at least, no...
02/02/2025

“One of the most humbling parts of being alive is realizing you’ve long been doing a simple thing wrong—or, at least, not in the way experts say you should be doing it,” Isabel Fattal writes in The Wonder Reader. https://theatln.tc/P081WP6W

“Did you know that the best time to apply deodorant is right before bed? Or that you should get rid of your black plastic spatulas? Or that you probably shower too much? Being hit with these truths can feel unmooring … But there’s power in the knowledge too.” This week’s newsletter explores our ever-evolving understanding of how humans live, and what’s best for us.

Read more, and sign up for The Wonder Reader, a guide to new and classic Atlantic stories, published every Saturday: (From November) https://theatln.tc/P081WP6W

You’re bound to come across the “Dark Triad” type of malignant narcissists in life—and they can be superficially appeali...
02/02/2025

You’re bound to come across the “Dark Triad” type of malignant narcissists in life—and they can be superficially appealing. Better to look for their exact opposite, Arthur Brooks wrote in 2023.

“The most immediate task for the anti-Trump coalition in these early months of 2025 is to avoid more mistakes,” David Fr...
02/02/2025

“The most immediate task for the anti-Trump coalition in these early months of 2025 is to avoid more mistakes,” David Frum writes. “Build unity from the center, rather than indulge the factionalism of the ultra-left.”

Spend time with stories about how the Ivy League broke America, the private schools that breed entitlement, and more in ...
02/02/2025

Spend time with stories about how the Ivy League broke America, the private schools that breed entitlement, and more in this Sunday's The Atlantic Daily:

“In an afternoon, timeless fixtures of a landscape can be reduced to scrap and dust," Franklin Foer writes. "What’s dest...
02/02/2025

“In an afternoon, timeless fixtures of a landscape can be reduced to scrap and dust," Franklin Foer writes. "What’s destroyed in a flash of ideological fervor, at the behest of a president who abhors dissent, can’t be so easily replaced, if it all:"

"In his briefing-room appearance today—the first of his 10-day-old second term—Trump offered a few initial notes of symp...
02/02/2025

"In his briefing-room appearance today—the first of his 10-day-old second term—Trump offered a few initial notes of sympathy, and then turned almost immediately toward castigating DEI," Jonathan Lemire writes:

“Tourists are like bees,” Jerusalem Demsas wrote in 2023: “I don’t want a bunch of them circling around me, but I also d...
02/02/2025

“Tourists are like bees,” Jerusalem Demsas wrote in 2023: “I don’t want a bunch of them circling around me, but I also don’t want them to disappear.”⁠ https://theatln.tc/2ri7RvF6

📷: Ian Berry / Magnum

No one can know exactly, but archaeologists have found a few unexpected clues, Sarah Zhang writes. (From 2024)
02/02/2025

No one can know exactly, but archaeologists have found a few unexpected clues, Sarah Zhang writes. (From 2024)

In 1942, aboard ship and heading for war, a young sailor—my uncle—wrote a letter home, describing and defining the princ...
02/02/2025

In 1942, aboard ship and heading for war, a young sailor—my uncle—wrote a letter home, describing and defining the principles he was fighting for, David M. Shribman wrote in April.

Oscar Wilde’s last words were reportedly “This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do....
02/02/2025

Oscar Wilde’s last words were reportedly “This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do.” (From 2016)

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