Thursday Things: Fifth Issue
12 September 2019. Vol 1 No 5. By Dan McGirt. #5
Photo by Kevin Lindstrom on Unsplash
Welcome to Thursday Things!
Please forward this issue to someone who might enjoy Thursday Things. Still looking forward to getting a subscriber I don’t already know :)
A deep quote I found: “Life isn’t about finding yourself or finding anything. It’s about creating yourself.” — Bob Dylan in Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese on Netflix. I’m sure it’s deep, because Dylan won the Nobel Prize, man.
Johns Hopkins Medicine is launching a new psychedelic research center where scientists will test the potential of so-called magic mushrooms and other drugs to treat some of the toughest mental health and addiction challenges. The Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins Medicine will study the use of psychedelic drugs to treat depression, anxiety, and their effect on behavior, brain function, learning and memory, among other areas of research. It’s a whole new age of medicine. Specifically, the Age of Aquarius. Aquarius!
Along with better living through chemistry, we’ve also got new research pointing the way toward living longer. In fact, scientists may be able to reverse the process of aging. Participants in a recent study were given a “cocktail of three drugs” (a growth hormone and two diabetes medications) and on average their epigenetic clocks — which is one measure of biological age — turned back 2.5 years. That’s some cocktail! Here is the more science-filled explanation at Nature.
Thursday Things is not meant to be a world of science newsletter, but we do like to share good news where we find it, and there are a lot of promising developments in health, medicine, and biology these days that can improve and extend our lives. The larger point to appreciate is that things are getting better all the time in many ways, often through the hard work and dedication of people who paid much better attention in science class than you or I did. Thanks, science people!
Book I enjoyed: Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. Old Genghis gets a bad rap. Sure, he’d show up with his Mongol horde, overrun your kingdom, massacre your troops, and sack your cities. But once his vast empire was assembled, the Great Khan suppressed banditry, protected religious freedom, banned torture, invented the postal service and the practice of diplomatic immunity, encouraged culture and the arts, and had many more accomplishments that belie his “uncouth barbarian” image. This 2004 bestseller details Genghis Khan’s rise and the achievements of his successors (spoiler alert: they were for the most part not up to GK’s level of awesome). It it an eye-opening account of how the Mongols swept down from the steppes in the 13th century and reshaped the world in ways we still feel today. Worth tracking down a copy! I read this about ten years ago and really need to pick it up again. But there are so … many … books to read.
Another reason you might want to read that book — there’s a decent chance you are descended from Genghis Khan.
Yesterday was the 18th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, a day for solemn and somber remembrance. But in contrast to the evils perpetrated and the losses endured that day, there were also many stories of courage, and heroism, and of people simply coming together to help each other. One such story inspired a new musical production I hope to see eventually: Come From Away, billed as “the remarkable true story of 7,000 stranded passengers and the small town in Newfoundland that welcomed them.” I just hope the history is more accurate than that in Hamilton (which is entertaining but overrated. Duel me if you want.)
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Thank you for reading! See you next Thursday!