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It’s September 2024, and a group of American thalidomide survivors and their family members arrive in Washington, D.C., to lobby the government for support. More than 60 years have gone by since Food and Drug Administration medical examiner Frances Oldham Kelsey first stalled the new drug application for thalidomide from the pharmaceutical company Richardson-Merrell.

Although she stopped the drug from going on the market in the U.S., thousands of pregnant people still took thalidomide in Merrell’s so-called clinical trials, and many had babies with shortened limbs and other serious medical conditions. Others had miscarriages or stillborn babies. Here we look at the legacy of thalidomide, the changes in drug regulations in the wake of the scandal, and what happened to our hero, Frances Kelsey.

Katie Hafner: I’m Katie Hafner, and this is the final chapter of The Devil in the Details, a special season from “Lost Women of Science.” It’s about Frances Oldham Kelsey, the doctor who said no to the thalidomide.

As we were working on this story, piecing together a complicated timeline that spanned years and oceans, there was something that kept nagging at me. It wasn’t huge, but it was something.

You know, we’ve talked so much about time — how much time was wasted before anyone figured out there was an epidemic of injured babies, yet more time before thalidomide was pulled from the market in Europe, and even more before the American public was warned about it.

For almost five years, women were taking this drug, thinking it was the safest thing in the world.

Well, there’s another little stretch of time that got me to wondering about that something I just mentioned. It starts in April 1962, when Helen Taussig alerts Frances Kelsey to just how bad the situation was in Europe, and it ends three months later in July 1962, when Americans finally get the message about thalidomide.

What was Frances Kelsey doing during those months? Did she just decide to trust that the drug company, William S. Merrell, had it covered? Of course not.

Jennifer Vanderbes: She starts just going to big hospitals that she has relationships with and asking, have you seen a spike in babies born with phocomelia?

Katie Hafner: Jennifer Vanderbes, the author of “Wonder Drug.”

Jennifer Vanderbes: The answer is yes, but we don’t think they’re connected to thalidomide. And that’s pretty much the answer she gets along the way. She gets really ticked off. There’s another hospital in Cincinnati, that she writes a memo, she says, you know, this is ridiculous, there’s reported five phocomelic births at this hospital, and they’re saying it’s not thalidomide.

Katie Hafner: But there was only so much she could do. Because don’t forget– Frances Kelsey reviewed drug applications; she didn’t run national investigations.

It was only when the FDA launched its official investigation that the agency finally dug into how far thalidomide had spread. And at first, it seemed like the U.S. really had dodged a bullet. On August 7, 1962, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare sent out a press release. A pretty optimistic one. It said that the FDA had already interviewed more than a thousand doctors who’d participated in the “clinical trials” and had determined that more than 15,000 people across the country had received thalidomide.

Katie Hafner: Of those, about one in five were women of childbearing age. But according to this press release, quote, “no abnormalities were observed in the offspring of these patients.”

Frances herself offered a similar message when she was interviewed by the CBC a few days later.

Interviewer: In the experimental use of thalidomide in the United States, about how many people did take the drug?

Frances Kelsey: Uh, in the neighborhood of 15,000, I believe.

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Florida has some protection from two upcoming tropical threats, but there is a chance that protection could waver as the month progresses.

ByAlex Sosnowski, AccuWeather senior meteorologist

Despite an influx of cooler and less humid air across the southeastern United States, Florida remains at risk for tropical threats as AccuWeather meteorologists continue to monitor multiple potential developments.

Approximately six weeks remain in the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 through Nov. 30, and the tropics continue to remain active.

AccuWeather meteorologists have called out two main areas that are most likely to spur tropical development in the next few days to a week or so, and one feature could still find a way to impact Florida.

Western Caribbean feature to push into Central America

An area of showers and thunderstorms continues to grow over Central America in response to a gyre, a large and slowly rotating area of low pressure. This very weak storm could spur development in the western Caribbean or the eastern Pacific in the coming days.

“Based on the latest information we have and studying the situation, the most likely path the brewing feature in the western Caribbean would take would be a more southern one into Central America this weekend,” AccuWeather Lead Hurricane Expert Alex DaSilva said.

The northward path of this feature is currently blocked and should stay blocked,” DaSilva added.

Some of the same energy from the Caribbean system may survive into the eastern Pacific.

The same gyre could spur new development in the eastern Pacific, which then could become a threat for areas farther to the north along the coast of Mexico next week.

Tropical Rainstorm approaching the Leewards

The western Caribbean zone is not the only area that could give birth to a tropical storm.

“We have been tracking a wave of low pressure (tropical wave) that moved off the coast of Africa earlier this month,” DaSilva said, “This feature has been showing some signs of life off and on in recent days but could be entering a much more favorable area for tropical development this week as it nears the Leeward Islands in the northeastern Caribbean.”

Between Friday and Sunday, the Atlantic feature will have conditions conducive to further organization, including low wind shear and warm water. Because of the growing threat, AccuWeather meteorologists have begun referring to the feature as a tropical rainstorm to raise public awareness of the situation.

“It is possible for the feature to ramp up quickly to a tropical depression or tropical storm as its core approaches or passes near the Leewards late this week,” DaSilva said, “But, as this system travels farther to the west, whatever it becomes, could run into more hostile conditions for strengthening and organization.”

Like the conditions with the western Caribbean system, a path into Florida also appears to be blocked, but that could change over time depending on the position and strength of other weather features.

Natural deterrents for Florida, southeastern US?

There are two factors that could suppress any tropical feature that may develop and track toward Florida.

The first is the larger islands of the northern Caribbean, such as Puerto Rico and Hispaniola. The tall mountains could rip away at any system that tracks overhead. The other factor is a complex weather pattern, including the jet stream setup over the southern Atlantic Ocean, the eastern Gulf coast of the U.S., and over the Bahamas

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AccuWeather Lead Hurricane Expert Alex DaSilva tracks new threats of tropical development brewing in the Caribbean and the Atlantic as of Oct. 15, as well as the regions at risk of these storms.

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Look to the sky this week after sunset to catch a glimpse of Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS as it swings past Earth for the first time in 80,000 years.

A bright comet has made a rare appearance in the sky, and skywatchers will have several opportunities to see it before it retreats into the icy depths of space.

Comet C/2023 A3, also known as Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, is visiting the inner solar system for the first time in 80,000 years and is putting on a show. It has become bright enough to see with the naked eye after sunset, and is expected to remain bright throughout the week.

Photographers have already captured stunning images of the comet, which is around the same brightness as Comet NEOWISE was during the summer of 2020.

How to see Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS

Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS will be visible in the western sky about 30 to 60 minutes after sunset. It will appear above and to the right of Venus, which will be easy to spot due to how bright it glows in the evening.

Each evening, the comet will appear slightly higher in the sky. However, it will also start to fade, so experts recommend looking for it after sunset before it becomes too dim to see without a telescope.

What is a comet?

Comets are frozen space rocks containing gas, dust, and ice that typically reside in the far reaches of our solar system.

“When a comet’s orbit brings it close to the sun, it heats up and spews dust and gases into a giant glowing head larger than most planets,” NASA explained on its website, “The dust and gases form a tail that stretches away from the sun for millions of miles.”

Halley’s Comet is one of the most well-known comets, which orbits the sun about once every 76 years. However, most comets take thousands of years to complete one orbit around the sun, such as Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS.

When will the next comet be visible?

Another comet, known as C/2024 S1 (ATLAS), was recently discovered and has the potential to put on a grand display in the morning sky around the end of October and the start of November. However, it is far from a guarantee.

According to EarthSky, Comet S1 comet might be breaking apart as it approaches the sun. “After its close encounter with the sun (if it survived) it could put on a fantastic show for the Northern Hemisphere in the morning skies,” EarthSky explained.

Astronomers will have a better idea later this month on how bright the new comet may get in the sky.

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Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS

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CLIMATEWIRE | Forecasters warned for days that Tampa could be staring down “the big one” — a direct hit from a major hurricane that threatened to submerge much of Florida’s second-largest metro area with never-before-seen storm surge.

The nightmare scenario didn’t happen. Hurricane Milton tracked slightly south of its worst-case trajectory, making landfall Wednesday night in Sarasota County. Storm surge, overall, was lower than the water levels driven by Hurricane Helene two weeks prior.

Yet it was still a record-breaking storm, dumping historic rainfall along the coast and spawning tornadoes that carved a path of destruction across multiple counties.

Scientists say climate change, including unusually warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, likely worsened its explosive intensification into a Category 5 cyclone before it weakened and made landfall as a Category 3.

“What we can say is the storm was significant, but thankfully this was not the worst-case scenario,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a press briefing Thursday morning.

Tampa was spared largely thanks to a southward wobble in Milton’s track in the final hours before landfall, sending the storm toward Sarasota.

That doesn’t mean projections by the National Weather Service were inaccurate, said Austen Flannery, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Tampa office. Landfall still happened well within the forecast’s cone of uncertainty.

“Overall, the end result was relatively consistent with the forecast,” he said.

Preliminary estimates suggest storm surge was highest in Sarasota County, he said, likely around 8 to 10 feet. That’s significantly less than the 15 feet the National Weather Service had warned was possible for Tampa.

Yet widespread flooding still occurred across the state — partly from surge, but largely because of heavy rains.

Parts of Tampa were pelted with more than 10 inches of rainfall. Tampa International Airport recorded 11.73 inches, according to the National Weather Service. And the nearby city of St. Petersburg saw nearly 19 inches of rain, a monthly record.

“In two days, we had more rain than we’ve ever had in the month of October at that location,” Flannery said.

Strong winds also blasted the Tampa Bay region, downing trees and power lines, damaging homes and businesses, and ripping the roof off Tropicana Field, the stadium that’s home to the Tampa Bay Rays in St. Petersburg. Preliminary datasets from the National Weather Service report gusts of over 100 mph in parts of Tampa and Sarasota County.

Milton also sparked tornado outbreaks across the state, including at least 45 individual tornado reports and 19 confirmed touchdowns. The outbreaks triggered more than 100 tornado warnings across the state in a single day, a record for Florida, according to local meteorologists.

Scientists are still digging into the reasons Milton spawned so many twisters. Aspects of the storm’s track and motion across the Gulf and its interaction with other weather systems as it moved over Florida likely fostered favorable conditions for tornado formation.

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In an effort to build a better catfish, researchers at Auburn University have genetically engineered a hybrid catfish species using alligator DNA. The methodology might sound scary. But the byproducts are nearly identical to the farm-raised catfish sold in grocery stores throughout the country. Still, regulatory approval isn’t a guarantee and these reptilian mud kitties won’t end up on the shelves anytime soon.

Creating a More Resilient Catfish

Americans eat a lot of catfish, and it’s impossible to put a number on how many chuckleheads we catch and cook on an annual basis. Regardless, it’s not enough to satisfy the overall demand. In 2021 alone, we imported around 256 million pounds of it from other countries. Meanwhile, we commercially produced another 307 million pounds here at home. Most of these farm-raised fish come from the South—primarily Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Texas—where the deep-fried delicacy’s true soulmate, the “hush puppy,” was born.

The only problem with raising catfish in farm ponds is that these water bodies turn into breeding grounds for disease. Farmers lose a huge number of fish every year to various infections. That’s why researchers at Auburn University are trying to create a more resilient catfish. With some genetic engineering and just a pinch of alligator DNA, a team of scientists have successfully spawned a new hybrid catfish species that they believe can better resist infection.

To achieve this, the research team led by Rex Dunham and Baofeng Su is using CRISPR technology, which allows scientists to edit and alter the genes of plants and animals. They were already looking for a genetic component to increase the heartiness of freshwater catfish. That search led them to a unique protein found in alligators called cathlecidin. In an interview with the Ireland-based Fish Site, Dunham explained that this antimicrobial protein is thought to protect alligators from developing infections in their wounds. The team figured if they could insert this gene into catfish, they’d end up with a more resilient fish.

Ethical Concerns

One fear that came up during the experiment was the risk of a genetically modified super-fish escaping from farms and disrupting neighboring ecosystems. To prevent this, they used the CRISPR gene-editing tool to remove a catfish gene associated with reproduction. They replaced it with the alligator gene. With these genes swapped, the hybrid catfish are unable to reproduce.

Follow-up experiments proved that the survival rates of these hybrid fish were “between two- and five-fold higher,” according to Dunham. Their findings have been published in bioRxiv.

Because of the ethical concerns surrounding CRISPR technology and genetic modification, regulatory approval for these hybrid catfish isn’t a certainty. The experiment has already raised doubts among the larger scientific community as well. Some have argued that even if these hybrids are more resilient, most fish farmers don’t have a use for lab-spawned, sterile fish. And even though the hybrid species is still just a catfish, there’s also the marketing problem of selling hybridized alligator-catfish to consumers.

Dunham and Su think people could eventually come around to the idea, and Dunham explained that it’s unlikely anybody would notice a difference in the meat itself. “I would eat it in a heartbeat,” he said.

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Catfish farming is a huge industry both here in the United States and abroad. (Adobe stock)

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The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates defined health as a body in balance. The human body was a system of four coordinated humors (blood, black bile, yellow bile, phlegm), each of which had its own balance of qualities (hot or cold, wet or dry) connected to the four elements (fire, air, earth, water). The balance of these qualities and humors was inextricably linked to environmental conditions. Phlegm, for instance, was connected to the element of water, and had the qualities of cold and wet. Hippocrates recognized that when this bodily system was exposed to conditions that perturbed or exacerbated its humors, such as the cold and wet of a snowstorm, the system became unbalanced, in this case producing too much phlegm. His treatments for an abundance of phlegm focused on removing the excess humor and increasing the yellow bile (hot and dry) to bring the body back into balance. Today, we might identify such a condition as a respiratory disease. Hippocrates would not have identified the condition so locally. He would have considered it a condition of the whole body: ‘dis-ease’ was literally a system out of ease or balance.

Today, we think less about the whole body as a complex system and more about its parts and sub-systems. An X-ray of the lungs shows congestion, so we assume the problem is in the lungs and treat for pneumonia, not worrying about other parts of the body unless they show their own symptoms. If a culture in the pathology lab shows a particular microbe at work, we prescribe the relevant antibiotics to combat that microbe rather than attempt to rebalance the system as a whole (despite the current trend to add ‘probiotics’ to the antibiotics approach). This move toward localized diagnoses began in the 18th century with the rise of morbid anatomy and the localization of symptoms to parts. The French physician René Laënnec’s invention of the stethoscope in 1816 allowed him to hear various abnormal sounds in the chest of a patient suffering respiratory distress. He could then carry out an autopsy after the patient died and correlate the visibly abnormal parts with the symptoms that he had detected, which led to powerful diagnostic tools.

The result was the localization of abnormalities to particular parts of the body, which led to the concept of localized diseases and the need for specialized treatments. Modern medicine celebrates the ability to diagnose problems based on localization of symptoms. The systemic imbalance or ‘dis-ease’ of Hippocrates thus became a growing set of separate diseases associated with specific causes, dissociated from the notion of the body as a system.

Following the localization of diseases came the specialization of treatments. These treatments typically rely on identifying the problem within a particular part or subsystem and fixing it, with the goal of getting the patient back to ‘normal’. If a physical part is damaged, we want to repair it so that it works again as closely as possible to the way it was working before. Or, if it cannot be fixed, perhaps because a limb was cut off or a kidney failed, then the tradition has been to replace it with something as close as possible that will work the same way: prosthetics for lost limbs, dialysis machines for failing kidneys.

Despite vast differences in understanding of disease and treatments, models of health from Hippocrates to modern medicine have focused on reestablishing the same state as occurred before illness. Health is a concept imbued with a sense of stability; it is constituted by a body returning to a state that existed before disease or injury and the maintenance of this state. Stability is therefore understood as the maintenance or regeneration of a single, ‘healthy’ state of the body. Since this approach has saved vast numbers of lives, medicine applauds the invention of new analytical tools, procedures, and treatments that advance an understanding of health as a return to a previous state. The sense of stability implicit in thinking about health leads to a picture of health as an outcome of regeneration: a body damaged by injury or disease is brought back to, or regenerates, a previous, ‘healthy’ state.

But what if health isn’t simply a return to a previous state? If we think about health as part of a larger framework of considering organisms as complex systems, there is no ‘return’. Complex systems shift in response to environmental challenges; they adapt to their conditions in order to survive – and adaptation breeds change. Framing health in terms of regeneration, and then asking what it means to regenerate, allows us to prod our assumptions about health as a singular, predetermined outcome and rethink our values in sustaining complex systems in light of damage. That raises the question: what does regeneration mean?

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Les Baugh lost both his arms in an electrical accident when he was a teenager. Since then, he has managed life mostly without the help of prosthetic arms, finding them to be more of a nuisance than a help. Photo by Zackary Canepari/Panos

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A group of bacteria has proved adept at destroying the ultratough carbon-fluorine bonds that give “forever chemicals” their name. This finding boosts hopes that microbes might someday help remove these notoriously pervasive pollutants from the environment.

Nearly 15,000 chemicals commonly found in everyday consumer products such as pizza boxes, rain jackets, and sunscreens are recognized as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFASs. These chemicals can enter the body via drinking water or sludge-fertilized crops, and they have already infiltrated the blood of almost every person in the U.S. Scientists have linked even low levels of chronic PFAS exposure to myriad health effects such as kidney cancer, thyroid disease, and ulcerative colitis.

Current methods to destroy PFASs require extreme heat or pressure, and they work safely only on filtered-out waste. Researchers have long wondered whether bacteria could break down the chemicals in natural environments, providing a cheaper and more scalable approach. But carbon-­fluorine bonds occur mainly in humanmade materials, and PFASs have not existed long enough for bacteria to have specifically evolved the ability to digest them. The new study—though not the first to identify a microbe that destroys carbon-fluorine bonds—provides a step forward, says William Dichtel, a chemist at Northwestern University who studies energy-efficient ways to chemically degrade PFASs.

To identify a promising set of bacteria, the study’s authors screened several microbe communities living in wastewater. Four strains from the Acetobacterium genus stood out, the team reported in Science Advances. Each strain produced an enzyme that can digest caffeate—a naturally occurring plant compound that roughly resembles some PFASs. This enzyme replaced certain fluorine atoms in the PFASs with hydrogen atoms; then a “transporter protein” ferried the fluoride ion by-products out of the single-celled microbes, protecting them from damage. Over three weeks most of the strains split the targeted PFAS molecules into smaller fragments that could be degraded more easily via traditional chemical means.

By directly targeting carbon-fluorine bonds, the Acetobacterium bacteria partially digested perfluoroalkyls, a type of PFAS that very few microbes can break down. Even so, these Acetobacterium strains could work only on perfluoroalkyl molecules that contain carbon-carbon double bonds adjacent to the car­bon-fluorine ones. These “unsaturated” perfluoroalkyl compounds serve as building blocks for most larger PFASs; they are produced by chemical manufacturers and also emerge when PFASs are destroyed via incineration.

Scientists had previously demonstrated that a microbe called Acidimicrobium sp. strain A6 could break down carbon-fluorine bonds and completely degrade two of the most ubiquitous perfluoroalkyls. This microbe grows slowly, however, and requires finicky environmental conditions to function. And researchers do not yet fully understand how this bacterial strain does the job.

The Acetobacterium lines target a separate group of PFASs, and the team hopes to engineer the microbes to either improve their efficiency or expand their reach—potentially to more perfluoroalkyls. Lead study author Yujie Men of the University of California, Riverside, imagines the microbes would perform best in combination with other approaches to degrade PFASs. The range of chemical structures in these compounds means “a single lab cannot solve this problem.”

Any future commercial use of the microbes would face numerous hurdles, including breakdown speed and replicability outside of the lab, but Men looks forward to seeing how far her team can push the technique. “We’re paving the road as we go,” she says with a laugh.

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Thomas Fuchs

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CLIMATEWIRE | In 1925, a small-town Ford dealer in Georgia named Albert Luce attached a wooden coach to the top of a Model T frame and sold it to the owner of a cement plant who wanted a way to transport his workers.

The idea evolved into a business, and nearly a century later the company — known as Blue Bird Corp. — has become one of the biggest school-bus builders in the country.

To stay ahead though, Blue Bird is transforming again. The company is shifting more of its business to electric school buses, even as it continues to crank out the same diesel-powered models that have ferried kids to school for generations.

The new approach for Blue Bird — and its competitors — is due in part to a windfall of money the Biden administration has steered to the industry.

The bipartisan infrastructure law provided $5 billion, overseen by the EPA, for school districts to buy the new buses. And the Inflation Reduction Act dedicated billions of dollars more in grants and tax incentives to pay for factories and battery plants.

But industry officials say the shift to electric was happening even before President Joe Biden took office. For that reason, they say they are optimistic the transition will continue no matter who wins the White House in November — even though there’s a clear difference between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump in their support for electrification.

“We’re going to be in this business for a long time,” said Albert Burleigh, vice president of alternative fuels for Blue Bird.

The company expects to double its e-bus sales from 546 in 2023 to 1,125 in 2025. And the new line could comprise as much as 40 percent of the company’s sales by 2027 — 4,000 to 5,000 buses out of 11,000 to 12,000 in total sales.

Blue Bird’s two largest competitors, Thomas Built Buses and IC Bus, are actively gearing up for the electric market too.

Thomas Built, owned by Daimler, has a factory in High Point, North Carolina, and sold its 1,000th electric bus earlier this year. The company added a third shift at its plant in 2022 to keep up with demand, and it set up a consulting team in 2023 to help customers plan for electric buses.

And IC Bus — which is based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and is owned by Volkswagen’s Traton division — says school buses are a natural fit for electrification.

“With defined routes and a central depot, school buses are a perfect fit to transition to electric,” says the company on its website.

The e-bus industry got its start in the U.S. in 2014, when a handful of California school districts began buying electric buses to meet the state’s emissions requirements, according to a report from the World Resources Institute.

Another catalyst came in 2016 when Volkswagen agreed to pay $14.7 billion to settle allegations that it cheated on emissions reporting. The settlement allocated $2.7 billion for individual states to fund clean-air projects, and many of them focused on eliminating diesel-powered school buses.

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Raleigh McCool | Longreads | September 5, 2024 | 3,082 words (11 minutes)

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It’s my first day of spin class, and I am in the darkest corner of the room. My feet are crammed into shoes I rent from the front desk—little black Velcro things with cleats on the bottoms. The feet of other riders are strapped into sleek Nikes splashed in bright reds and volt blues and glow-in-the-dark neons. Dangling from my perch upon the bike’s seat, my feet strain at the pedals as I attempt to jam the cleats until they fit. I flail around for a second, until finally, a satisfying snap. I’m connected.

To the bike, I mean. Outside of class, I’m terribly lonely. That’s how I’ve ended up here.

There’s a tweet I wish I’d written about how the real miracle was Jesus having a dozen friends in his 30s, and as someone who has now outlived Jesus, I can testify to the divine work it takes to have friends. With few exceptions, all my friends are married, having kids, and buying houses in the ’burbs. Achieving domestic bliss has really started to cut into my friends’ hangout time.

In the bike room, my feet are tethered to the pedals and I begin to spin my legs around in warm-up. I stand, pedal like I’m riding down Ridgewood Road to my friend Ross’s house—he lived down the street, and in the summer I’d bike over, and we’d hole up in his attic, playing video games and the dice baseball game we invented. Riding my bike as a kid, my bowl cut whooshed in the hot Tennessee air. Here it’s pulled back with a headband, and the room is dark and cool, and the instructor announces we’ll start in a couple minutes. She comes up to me, introduces herself, thanks me for being there. Her name’s Karson. She makes sure my cleats are clipped in and that I have water, tugging on the handlebars to ensure everything is in place.

When class starts, the lights go out. “We ride to the beat of the music,” Karson says. The music is a pop remix I don’t recognize, and it’s playing at a volume that could raise the dead. She helps us find the cadence, “Right, left, right; right, left, right.” Karson announces that when the beat drops, we’ll rise up out of our seats, and we’ll ride, and we’ll, like, drop our elbows, or . . . something? And then, it happens. The music wobble-wobbles, and the lights flash on. Every last one of the 40 or so bikers is on their feet and bouncing up and down, their hands clutching the handlebars as they perform synchronized push-ups, even as their feet maintain the pulsing beat. I do my best to match, but I’m off, my legs too fast and my body too slow. Or maybe it’s the other way around. All around the room, everyone has got it, and it’s not just that their legs are pumping synchronously or that their push-ups are perfectly timed—it’s some ineffable flair, an extra zhuzh of swag that my bike neighbors are adding. I sort of want to pause and be like, “Well, look at you go!” but the lights go dim again, and I am positively gasping. I use the dark to snatch at my towel, slug my water, and sit.

We are halfway through the first song.

In a last-ditch effort to make friends at my gym, I recently plucked out my headphones and stepped up to the squat rack in silence. The only sounds were the clang of weights, the hum of the AC, and my grunty breaths. The idea was to signal to the people around me that I was open for connection, conversation, or a spot. I’d been going to that gym for the past year, and I’d never talked to a soul—each of us with our headphones on, in our own little worlds of isolation.

The no-headphones thing didn’t really work. A couple guys asked for a bench press spot, but providing a spot for these men strangely did not lead to close personal friendship, which put it in good company alongside organizing a wiffle ball game, throwing a birthday party, working at a restaurant, drinking alone at bars, and scrolling mindlessly on my phone, none of which had led to friendships either.

There’s a tweet I wish I’d written about how the real miracle was Jesus having a dozen friends in his 30s, and as someone who has now outlived Jesus, I can testify to the divine work it takes to have friends.

My 30s have been weird: isolating and demoralizing, a depressing gnarl in my stomach. A bone-deep, soul-swamped loneliness I can’t seem to text or swipe my way out of. Days alone in a crowded gym, nights alone on my couch, scrolling and hoping for connection and washing down hope with a handful of IPAs instead. I’m ashamed to be lonely, ashamed to ask for friends in the first place. Needing someone? How embarrassing.

I’ve read and listened to all the articles and podcasts: the friendship recession is upon us. I’m not alone in being alone, which knowledge does not help. I follow the results of my Google search on “how to make friends” to a T: I cohost a bowling night, join a flag football team. The bowling turnout is abysmal, and our flag football team is so bad we’ve all turned against each other. One day I search for group fitness classes near me, and a spin studio pops up: Full Ride Cycling is just down the street.

The next time the beat drops, Karson adds another move to the dance, a little twist, and then a lean, and there’s a moment when she instructs us to “tap (y)our ass back” while riding, which seems simple enough when she does it and yet, my attempts to pump my legs and tighten my core and hurl my ass backward to the beat prove too much for my body altogether. I sit my ass down, and it stays there for the rest of class.

Somewhere in the latter half of my first spin class, I burst into tears. The room has gone completely dark. “This bike room is not about competition,” Karson says. “It’s not about getting it right, or how it looks.” There are two candles lit, the light fluttering up like she’s telling a ghost story; Karson blows them out. “It’s about showing up,” she says. “It’s about trying.” There’s no choreography or beat to keep, and in the utter darkness, I slump my shoulders, looking up at the ceiling I can’t see. “You belong here,” she says, somewhere out there in the dark. “Every one of you. You are welcome.” The song’s too loud to hear my sniffles. I sit and slowly pedal.

When I was little, we passed communion around on little trays—matzos wafers to crack apart, tiny plastic shot glasses of grape juice jiggling on a saucer. I loved church. All the people, our voices harmonizing together, the buzzy electrical currents of love, the huge beautiful mystery of God.

I was a good kid. I obeyed God, followed all the rules—I memorized the verses and respected my elders, didn’t lust or use the Lord’s name in vain. No one yelled it or painted it blood-red on a sign, but they told us: to disobey was sin. And sinners went to hell.

It didn’t hit me until decades later, how afraid I’d been. Fire. Eternal separation. How the flames singed the corners of everything, a childhood charred by fear. The story of Jesus still yanks at me—God on earth, grabbing hold of the lost, insisting they belong—but I don’t really go to church anymore. The fear is still near, hot to the touch.

Sometimes, though, I miss it. The harmonies, the kind smiles, the whole messy lot of us together. When I miss it enough, I rise early and go to an Episcopal church down the street. When it’s time for communion, I file in line with strangers, and at the altar, the reverend hands me a hunk of torn-off bread and a goblet of wine. “This is the body of Christ broken for you,” she says, looking deeply into my eyes. “This is the blood of Christ shed for you,” she says, handing me the cup. When she finally unlocks her gaze, I close my eyes, let the bread and wine melt on my tongue.

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Illustration by CLR. Stock art by M_Light_Zone/Getty Images.

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