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Archaeologists are hailing the discovery of a “spectacular” hoard of roughly 3,000 Viking coins found in a field in eastern Norway. More could yet be uncovered—the search is ongoing.

“This is a historic find. The fact that it is also from the Viking Age makes it even more spectacular,” said Andreas Bjelland Eriksen, the country’s minister of climate and environment, in a statement.

The coins were initially discovered by two metal detectorists in a field near the Norwegian city of Rena in the region of Østerdalen, according to the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage. On April 10, the pair uncovered 19 silver coins; they immediately informed local officials.

The hoard includes specimens from the 980s to the 1040s C.E.—the height of the Viking Age. Notably, many of the coins were foreign-made, originating from England and Germany and including elements of coins from Denmark and Norway. The Vikings dominated much of what is now Scandinavia, but they ventured by sea to many other regions, including Britain, Iceland, and even the Americas.

“Foreign coinage dominates the circulation of money in Norway up until Harald Hardrada (1046–1066) established a national coinage,” said Svein Gullbekk, an archaeologist at the University of Oslo, in a statement from the university’s Museum of Cultural History. Hardrada, also known as Harald III, served as king of Norway from 1046 to 1066. During his tenure, the king’s mint replaced most of the foreign currency in circulation, according to Gullbekk. “The hoard was deposited right at the beginning of this development,” he said.

It’s possible that the coins are related to iron works in the area, said archaeologist Jostein Bergstøl of the Museum of Cultural History in the same statement.

“From the 900s until the late 1200s, there was an enormous iron production in this area. Ore was extracted from the bogs, and the processed iron was exported to Europe,” he said.

Archaeologists are still probing the site because they hope to gain more insight into what the extent of the treasure is and why it has lain there for so long.

“This is a truly unique discovery of the kind one might only experience once in an entire career. To be present when something like this comes to light is simply a great experience, both professionally and personally,” said local archaeologist May-Tove Smiseth in the same statement. The last time a large stash of Viking coins was discovered in Norway was in 1950, according to the Museum of Cultural History’s statement.

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But what you really wanted to ask is: What’s something about birth and postpartum that surprised you? What do you wish your partner understood? How did becoming a mother change your marriage?

Those are the conversations that actually matter, because they deepen relationships and allow mothers to pass their wisdom to one another. But they feel impossible to start without seeming intense or intrusive.

Spread the Jelly, an 18-month-old media platform, wants to help. It has just launched a deck of cards called The Sticky Stuff, meant to prompt mothers to have deeper conversations faster. “Everything we’ve been doing is about like breaking people open, allowing people to be their messiest or their happiest selves at the same time,” says Amrit Tietz, who founded the company with Lauren Levinger in late 2024.

The Sticky Stuff, which is available on the Spread the Jelly website for $45, joins a growing number of conversation cards that have entered the market, including therapist Esther Perel’s Where Should We Begin? cards that launched in 2021, Tales, which facilitates conversations with kids, and even the fast food chains Chick-fil-A, which gives out cards meant to prompt conversations around the meals.

“The popularity of the cards highlights how we desperately want to talk about deep issues,” says Nicholas Epley, a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business who has been studying conversation for two decades.

Modern Motherhood

The idea for Spread the Jelly’s conversation cards didn’t start with market research or a business plan. It started with two women in Los Angeles who desperately needed someone to talk to. Lauren Levinger had recently had her son when Amrit Tietz, pregnant and without mom friends in her life, reached out via social media. “From social media, you look like you’re doing motherhood pretty well,” Tietz wrote to her. “Can we connect?”

When they finally sat down together months later, they were surprised by how good it felt to have an honest conversation. They quickly began to discuss the things that nobody talks about, from how lonely it can be to spend your days with a non-verbal human, to postpartum sexuality. “We realized how starved we were for community,” says Levinger.

This prompted them to launch Spread The Jelly, as an online magazine for radical honesty about modern motherhood. The conversation cards came later, as a natural extension of that mission. Tietz and Levinger began to build out a deck of questions, and tested them out with their partners, families, and friends. They ended up encompassing four different categories: foundation, identity, belonging, and intimacy. They included prompts like, “Describe your childhood in one sentence;” “Describe a moment you’re not proud of,” and “How do you show up for your loved ones?”

Levinger points out that everyday conversations at the dinner table have a way of becoming stagnant. The cards suddenly unlocked a way to venture into new territory with the people in our lives.

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[Photo: Spread the Jelly]

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Babak’s experience has become increasingly common throughout Iran as companies have instituted round after round of layoffs in recent weeks, according to interviews with businesses and employees and Iranian news reports.

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Crowds inside the sprawling Grand Bazaar in Tehran on Saturday. Imports of goods have been affected by the war.

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Are you tired? If so, you aren’t alone. An alarming number of the country’s adults are tired most days, according to a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And that could have significant implications for public health.

In 2024, the year the data were collected, nearly a third of all U.S. adults slept fewer than the recommended seven hours per night on average. Only a little more than half of U.S. adults said they woke up feeling “well-rested” on most days.

It’s hard to overstate how important sleep is for your health: Research shows that getting enough rest can reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease, help regulate hormones, and keep blood sugar under control, and that it may even help fight dementia. It can also affect your mood and mental health.

That is why health experts are worried that so many adults seem to be missing out on those z’s. “Our need for sleep parallels our need for air and water,” said Michael Grandner, director of the Sleep and Health Research Program at the University of Arizona, in an interview about the report with MedPage Today.

According to the report, around 40 percent of Black adults are getting fewer than seven hours of sleep per night on average and are less likely to wake up feeling well-rested than their Asian, white, and Hispanic peers. Asian adults were the most likely to report feeling well-rested—about 62 percent. The report is part of the National Health Interview Survey, a poll involving thousands of U.S. adults.

Men and women reported about the same rates of undersleeping, but men tended to say that they woke up feeling well-rested more often than women did. Women were also more likely than men to say that they found it hard to fall asleep at night—with the experience reported by about 19 percent of women versus about 12 percent of men.

Broken down by age, adults aged 65 and older reported that they woke up feeling well-rested on at least most days, with the impressive frequency of about 64 percent of the time. Adults aged 18 to 34, on the other hand, had the hardest time falling asleep of any age group.

If you are struggling to fall asleep, experts recommend techniques such as getting out of bed to do a calming activity, such as reading or breathing exercises, avoiding phone scrolling and snacking, and seeing a doctor if the problem persists.

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The note was reportedly discovered by the cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione, at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York in July 2019 after Epstein first attempted suicide weeks before his death.

“They investigated me for month[s] — found nothing!” the note reads. “It is a treat to be able to choose one’s time to say goodbye.”

The note continues: “Watcha want me to do — burst out cryin! No fun – not worth it.”

The words “no fun” were also included in a separate note obtained by CBS from Epstein’s cell after his death. In both notes, the words are underlined. Epstein also appears to have used the phrase “watcha want me to do- burst out cryin” in an email from 2016, released by the Justice Department. 

Epstein’s first apparent suicide attempt

The note has no signature. TIME has been unable to independently verify if it was written by Epstein, and has reached out to the Justice Department for comment. 

Records released by the Justice Department show that on July 23, 2019, Epstein was found “unresponsive” in his cell, and that Epstein claimed later that same day that Tartaglione, who was awaiting trial in a quadruple murder case, had assaulted him. The sex offender was then put on suicide watch. 

The document then shows that Tartaglione appears to have found the note in the days that followed. Epstein was later moved to a separate cell following the alleged assault, where he was later found dead on August 10, 2019. A medical examiner later determined that the cause of death was suicide. 

Tartaglione was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences in June 2024, one for each murder he carried out. 

The push to unseal the document

Judge Kenneth M. Karas of Federal District Court in White Plains, New York, released the note on Wednesday, after a request from the New York Times for it to be released was sent on April 30.

Democrat Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois also requested for the release of the note, writing to the Justice Department on May 4 calling for it to be unsealed. 

“The survivors of Jeffrey Epstein deserve a full and transparent accounting of all pertinent information,” Krishnamoorthi wrote. 

Speaking to the Times, Tartaglione said he found the note tucked into a graphic novel after Epstein was transferred from the cell. He said he then gave the note to his lawyers.

The former cellmate of Epstein had already mentioned the note, speaking on a podcast with Jessica Reed Kraus in July of last year. 

Tartaglione previously discussed the alleged note

Tartaglione claims on the podcast that the note read along the lines that the FBI had investigated Epstein “for months and found nothing” and “what do you want me to do – cry about it?”

Over the last year, questions about alleged relationships between Epstein and prominent global figures have emerged, including with President Donald Trump.

The Justice Department has released several batches of the so-called ‘Epstein files’, most recently in January, when more than 3 million documents were published. 

First Lady Melania Trump is the latest prominent figure to address allegations of association with Epstein. In early April, the First Lady said in an address that “lies” tying her to Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell “must end.”

“To be clear, I never had a relationship with Epstein or his accomplice, Maxwell,” Melania said. “My polite reply to her email doesn’t amount to anything more than a trivial note,” she added in reference to a message sent to Maxwell in 2002, released by the Justice Department.

Scrutiny over Epstein associations continues

Since January’s release, several high-profile names have resigned from positions following questions about alleged association with Epstein. 

In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has faced continued scrutiny over his decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the U.S., despite being aware of continued correspondence between Mandelson and Epstein. 

The former ambassador was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office in February, though he maintains no wrongdoing. 

Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew, has also been put in the spotlight in recent months after the Justice Department files appeared to show alleged communication between Epstein and the brother of King Charles. 

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Jeffrey Epstein with Ghislaine Maxwell at the Wall Street Concert Series in New York City on March 15, 2005.

Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images

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In the balmy cloud forests of Central America, the operatic calls of Alston’s singing mouse, a small, short-tailed rodent famous for its courteous communication, can often be heard echoing through the trees.

These minuscule mice, each of which weighs less than a lightbulb, sing unique, chirp-filled songs to one another that can last as long as 16 seconds. Both sonic and ultrasonic sounds flow from the mouse’s mouth, creating a song reminiscent of the buzzing of a cicada. What’s more, the mice never interrupt each other; they hold their tiny tongues until their conversational partner is done singing.

Scientists have long wondered what enables these mice to have such uncannily complex conversations without the help of human brains. But as it turns out, our brains may not be so different.

In a new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers found that a simple expansion of existing neural pathways allowed these mice to broaden their vocal repertoire — the same mutation believed to have paved the way for the development of human language.

By studying the brains of Alston’s singing mice and their non-singing (but closely related) lab mouse cousins, researchers at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island were able to determine what evolutionary changes in the brain had given rise to the singing mouse’s cordial and symphonic songs. Now, scientists are wondering if the same method can be used to figure out the neurological basis for other animal behaviors.

“This is relevant far beyond singing mice,” said Mirjam Knörnschild, a behavioral ecologist who studies bioacoustics at the Museum of Natural History Berlin. Dr. Knörnschild, who was not involved with the study, said it could “inform work on vocal turn-taking, vocal learning and vocal flexibility in other mammals, including bats, primates and humans.”

In 2019, Arkarup Banerjee, a biologist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and his colleagues discovered that the back-and-forth serenades of Alston’s singing mice sound strikingly similar to our conversations. But at the time, he couldn’t make sense of it. Dr. Banerjee had examined the brains of Alston’s singing mice and non-singing lab mice, and they seemed more or less identical.

Scientists once believed that complex behaviors, such as tool use and peer-to-peer communication, required specialized neural circuitry. But when Dr. Banerjee went looking for such dedicated neural hardware in Alston’s singing mice, he didn’t find any.

“It didn’t seem like things were that different,” Dr. Banerjee recalls.

This prompted Dr. Banerjee and colleagues to set out in search of what gave these singing mice their vocal prowess. In their effort to find out, the researchers used a technique called Multiplexed Analysis of Projections by Sequencing, or MAPseq. This method allows scientists to map thousands of individual neurons by infecting them with a virus that delivers unique RNA bar codes into each cell. When scientists genetically sequence tissue from across the brain, the bar codes reveal a detailed map of where each neuron connects throughout the brain.

When the researchers used MAPseq on the brains of dozens of mice from both species, the differences became clear. The singing mice had approximately three times the number of neurons sending signals from the motor cortex to two specific downstream regions of the brain. While that may sound like a stark difference, the scientists say it’s more akin to “a relatively subtle change in brain wiring,” said Anthony Zador, a neuroscientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and co-author of the study.

According to Dr. Zador, the fact that such subtle neural changes can result in the development of a whole new vocal behavior “raises interesting questions about how much rewiring was involved in the evolution of human language.”

In addition to challenging our understanding of the evolution of our most novel behavior, the findings of this study may help scientists learn more about the neurological basis for many animal behaviors.

“This work hits on an important unanswered question in neuroscience: What gives some animals exceptional abilities that others don’t have?” said David Schneider, a professor of neuroscience at New York University who was not involved with the study.

Before this study, scientists had never used MAPseq to compare the brains of two closely related species with remarkably different behavior. Experts say their success in doing so has opened up a world of scientific possibilities.

“This study gives us a road map for how to think about and quantitatively test ideas about the evolution of brain structure,” said Steven Phelps, a professor of integrative biology at the University of Texas, Austin, who was not involved with the study.

As the study came to a close, Dr. Banerjee said he couldn’t get a quote from Charles Darwin’s 1871 book “The Descent of Man” out of his head: “The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.”

“There’s increasing evidence that there may be some profound truth to this idea,” Dr. Banerjee said. As his study has demonstrated, even tiny changes in the brain can have profound impacts on behavior. When you keep that in mind, he said, “suddenly the development of things like language in humans doesn’t seem that mysterious.”

Explore the Animal Kingdom

A selection of quirky, intriguing, and surprising discoveries about animal life.

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• Birds of a Feather Learn Together: In a study, Australian cockatoos figured out that a new food was OK to consume by observing one another, a vivid example of “social learning” in animals.

• Swimming With Orcas: Only two places in the world allow tourists to enter the water with the ocean’s apex predator. But the safety of both species is a growing concern.

• Legal Protection for Snails?: Scientists are debating the classification of threatened mollusks that an Indigenous community in Mexico relies on for their way of life.

• Salmon High on Cocaine: Scientists in Sweden made an unexpected discovery when they exposed the fish to the illegal drug as well as another substance.

• Bruce the Parrot: In 2021, a disabled parrot made headlines worldwide for creating his own prosthetic beak. Now, he has become the alpha male of his group by learning to joust.

• Female Anglerfish: The deep-sea fish ended up with glowing lures not just to snag meals, but also to attract mates, a new study finds.

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Scientists at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island mapped the neurons of two species of mice to better understand how their brain wiring helps them vocalize. CreditCredit…Isko et al., Nature 2026

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Iran has a drinking water crisis. And the war with the U.S. is making matters worse for Iran—and the entire Gulf region. That’s in part because of threats not only to water infrastructure, including dams and reservoirs, but also to desalination facilities, which millions in the broader region depend on for their drinking water.

For years, Iran’s reserves of potable water have been dwindling, thanks to a combination of climate change, mismanagement, and infrastructure problems. But the war has also put desalination—something that most of Iran isn’t reliant on—in the spotlight.

In March, Iran accused the U.S. of an attack on an Iranian desalination plant on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. denied responsibility for the strike, and just a day later, officials in Bahrain, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East, accused Iran of damaging one of Bahrain’s desalination plants. By April, at least two desalination plants in Kuwait, another U.S. ally, had also been attacked.

Desalination plants are a critical resource—they convert seawater to drinking water. Around 70 to 90 percent of the population in most countries in the Persian Gulf region relies on desalination for drinking water, says Chris Low, director of the Middle East Center at the University of Utah and author of the forthcoming book Saltwater Kingdoms. Targeting desalination plants is likely a war crime under international law because they are civilian infrastructure, he adds.

Direct attacks aren’t the only threat to the region’s drinking water, however. Hits to energy infrastructure by U.S.-Israeli and Iranian forces have sent untold amounts of oil into the Persian Gulf—enough for the spills to be visible from space—which risks clogging up desalination pipes and fouling filters, Low says. Radioactive waste from damaged nuclear facilities could further contaminate the water, too.

Smaller countries in the region, such as Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait, are “exquisitely vulnerable,” Low says. “They only have a few days to a week, let’s say, of reserve capacity. There’s not much slack in the system.”

To understand how the war is affecting the region’s drinking water, Scientific American spoke with Low about how the conflict could spiral into a “long-term ecological disaster.”

How many people are dependent on desalination in the Persian Gulf region?

If we think about the Gulf as a relatively cohesive region, [there are] 60-million-plus people who are dependent in some way, shape or form on desalination.

If you break out desalination dependency for drinking water by country, you get Qatar somewhere around 99 percent—it’s completely dependent. Kuwait and Bahrain: 90-plus percent. Oman: 86 percent. Saudi Arabia: 70 percent. United Arab Emirates, the number comes in at 42 percent.

If we were to turn off the tap of the Jebel Ali plant in Dubai, [UAE], Dubai would not fare well. If we were to turn off access to the Al Taweelah plant in Abu Dhabi—it’s deeply dependent.

All of those major population centers—those skyscraper, glittering cities, they all are attached to very significant desalination facilities.

What about Iran? Is it reliant upon desalination?

No—that’s a key difference. Its desalination capacity only accounts for 3 percent of its water needs.

If you looked outside my window [in Salt Lake City] and see snowcapped mountains, that looks like Tehran. It’s a very similar kind of landscape. Snowmelt, rivers, dams, lakes—these are things that are not present in the Gulf. Iran has a much different ecological landscape as opposed to Gulf nations.

Now, Iran, of course, is acutely vulnerable to water risks. In 2025, President [Masoud] Pezeshkian announced that Iran was considering moving its administrative capital from Tehran to the southern coast, the Makran region, in part because the water is running out.

Have desalination plants come under attack in previous conflicts?

In the 1980s, when Iran and Iraq were at war, there emerged something called the tanker war. They basically started to fire on oil and commercial vessels with flags related to the other country.

The second, and I think most severe, issue related to desalination was Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990–91. When Saddam Hussein and Iraq occupied Kuwait, and the U.S. and coalition forces came in, what Hussein did was basically unfurl a kind of program of ecological terror.

They sabotaged power plants, desalination plants. They set the oil wells—some 700-plus oil wells—on fire, and they intentionally spilled oil into the Gulf. They basically just wrecked Kuwait’s environment, not just in the short term but for many, many years into the future.

It took weeks, if not months, to get water supply back on. In the interim, you had water tankers and water trucks coming from Saudi Arabia, bottled water from as far away as Turkey, [and] U.S. and European support for mobile diesel units and generators.

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Tim Andrews was so close to death, he was ready to risk what little life he might have left.

The retired grocery store manager was told he would have to wait five years before reaching the top of the transplant list and qualifying for a new, life-saving kidney. He knew he wasn’t going to make it. Already, he could no longer walk or hold down food.

So last year, he volunteered for an experimental surgery at the leading edge of scientific research: He agreed to get a pig kidney to replace his own failing organ. 

“I’m gonna die anyways, why wouldn’t I do something for all these [other people with kidney disease] that are suffering?” said Andrews, of Concord, New Hampshire.

“I don’t care if I die the next day as long as you learn something,” he told his doctor.

One pig- and one human-kidney transplant later, Andrews, 68, says he is now thinking of his future in terms of decades instead of days.

“I’m laughing again,” Andrews chuckled, remembering his time as a self-proclaimed “pig man.”

In the process, Andrews has become an example of how far transplantation has come and what it could look like in the future when there are enough organs for everyone in need and when the medication that enables a transplant’s success doesn’t threaten a recipient’s long-term survival. Andrews’ success as a transplant patient represents a decades-long American journey, one of many USA TODAY is profiling as part of its coverage of the United States’ 250th anniversary year.

The first-ever successful organ transplant took place in 1954, just a few miles from where Andrews received his own. The distance the field has traveled since −and has yet to go − represents a remarkable and very American medical journey, characterized by big ideas, big risks, perseverance, and issues of fairness and eye-popping prices.

The result: Andrews is alive and much healthier than he was two years ago.

“Oh my God, I’m in a science-fiction movie!” said Andrews, chuckling again, and adding that he’s always been a sci-fi buff. “How did I end up here?”

The wait for an organ

More than 100,000 Americans now sit on an organ transplant list, and most of them are waiting for a kidney. Like Andrews, they worry they won’t last long enough to get the ultimate gift.

For kidneys and some liver transplants, live donation is possible ‒ that is, someone can donate one of their two kidneys or a part of their liver and live out the rest of their lives normally. But not everyone can find a living match among friends, relatives or total strangers.

Andrews, like many, eventually benefited from a deceased organ donor. Only about three in 1,000 people die in a way that allows them to donate an organ like a kidney, lungs, or heart.

The science is getting better, enabling more organs to be used from patients who die older, sicker, or further from a hospital.

“We’re expanding the pool by using what we used to call ‘marginal’ organs,” said Dr. Nahel Elias, surgical director for kidney transplantation at Massachusetts General Hospital, where Andrews had his surgeries. “But at the end of the day, dead people are dead for a reason. Young, healthy people don’t just drop dead.”

And there simply aren’t enough organs for the people who need them, Elias and other experts said.

That’s where the idea of using pig organs comes in. For decades, researchers have been working toward the goal of using animal organs to save people. Some view the trade as unethical, but Americans already eat more than 130 million pigs every year, and pig, cow, and even shark tissue have long been used in medical settings.

Pig organs are similar enough in size and function to humans’, but transplanting entire organs was completely out of reach until about a decade ago, when scientists began mastering gene editing well enough to breed pigs whose organs are less likely to be rejected by the human immune system.

But xenotransplantation, as it is known, is still very much a work in progress, with just 10 Americans, including Andrews, having undergone a transplant. Only six are still alive. Andrews holds the record as of this writing. He lived 271 days with a pig organ.

Clinical trials started in 2026 to test pig organs in more people. The goal, doctors say, is to count their survival in years, not days.

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When Warner Bros. Discovery investors approved Paramount’s $111 billion acquisition offer last month, it seemed like the latest chapter in a story of corporate consolidation in Hollywood and the American media that’s been in full force since the 1980s. This chapter includes the potential end of one of the great movie studios, as well as putting CNN under the same roof as the now imperiled CBS News. But despite appearances, the end of this story hasn’t been written. This time, there’s real opposition to this kind of corporate consolidation — and a blueprint for how to win.

In 2023, the two of us, one a Hollywood actor and the other an antimonopoly policy analyst, met on a Zoom call during the Writers Guild strike. We came together because we recognized the root cause of the strike: A handful of corporations were swallowing an entire industry and leaving those who work in it worse off. Netflix, Amazon, and Disney were accumulating power, combining their production capacity with their enormous distribution platforms to form what could quickly become the kind of oligopolistic entities not seen in Hollywood in decades.

On that Zoom call, we talked about the consequences of consolidation for the people who make movies and TV, as well as for audiences. Mark had starred in “I Know This Much Is True,” a 2020 mini-series about how America treats mental illness, and we both wondered: Would a show like that still be made if an entity like HBO, which will come under Paramount’s control as part of this merger, were no longer free to take these kinds of creative risks?

The same question applies to “Spotlight,” the Oscar-winning movie about corruption and pedophilia in the Catholic Church, which was produced by an independent studio. Competition and opportunities for brave storytelling are intrinsically related, and we both knew that having lots of competitive outlets to produce art and lots of paths to distribute it helps to ensure that riskier, more controversial films and TV shows keep getting made.

When we spoke, Mark, like a good organizer, kept asking, “What’s the plan?” At the time, there wasn’t one. Now there is.

It is straightforward: Convince state attorneys general to do what President Trump’s antitrust enforcers likely will not, and block the merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. on antitrust grounds.

After that? Go on the offensive and work to break up the studio streaming system that is stultifying Hollywood.

This plan is already in motion. Within weeks of Paramount winning the bidding war for Warner Bros., we helped bring together a loose coalition of civil society groups, unions, and actors, and this coalition enlisted over 1,000 artists to sign an open letter indicating our support of state attorneys general efforts to block the takeover. Many more subsequently added their voices, and the letter now has nearly 5,000 signatories.

But the most revealing thing about that letter wasn’t the people who signed. It was the people who didn’t. Not because they disagreed — because they were afraid.

There are many reasons to block this deal, but we now believe the most fundamental one is what we encountered when asking artists to use their voices: fear. A deep, ugly, and pervasive fear of speaking out.

We heard time and time again from artists, when asked to sign this letter, that they supported it but were afraid of retribution. Their fear is not unjustified. When the editorial director of The Ankler, one of the last independent trade magazines, who also founded the publication and serves as one of its columnists, was seen at an event carrying a bag of “Block the Merger” buttons, Paramount reportedly pulled its advertising in response. (The editorial director, Richard Rushfield, was among the letter’s signatories, but said he was not handing out the buttons.) One of us, Mr. Ruffalo, was suggested as a guest for a CNN discussion of the merger, but a producer later said that the network had decided to pass on the segment, and reportedly told the organizers behind the letter, “It’s a delicate subject for us at CNN given Warner Bros. Discovery is our parent company, and there are legal considerations around what we can and cannot cover or say while the merger is ongoing.” (A CNN spokesperson later said that “no one advised any editorial employee at CNN not to pursue this story.”) This merger will cause many harms in Hollywood, but one is already in effect: People are afraid to say what they think about their own industry.

While this particular merger involves Hollywood, this fear of speaking out is something many in America already know. In 2019, Representative David Cicilline, then leading an investigation into Big Tech, noted that smaller firms’ reliance on the giants for access to consumers “makes them concerned about raising their voice, raising concerns about the monopoly power of these platforms.” The most notorious monopoly in America, Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, has a track record of alleged coercion.

David Ellison, the leader of Paramount, has said that if this merger is allowed, he will provide artists with more avenues for work. But we should know better than to trust promises by the ultrarich. After Disney bought Fox in 2019, the combined entity released far fewer movies than it did before the companies merged. Time Warner has been sold twice in just the last 10 years — once to AT&T and once to Discovery — and each deal was followed by layoffs and price hikes. If this deal goes through, the consequences for the entertainment industry could be catastrophic, with thousands more workers laid off. Employment in film and TV in Los Angeles has already dropped by 30 percent over the past four years.

Hollywood has long put out important truth-telling films, from “All the President’s Men” to the documentary “Citizenfour.” Some of the most celebrated films and TV shows — such as “The Godfather,” “All in the Family” and “M*A*S*H” — explored daring, controversial themes. Much of this content was created when film and TV functioned through open markets involving separate studios, exhibitors, and distributors. After the industry allowed widespread consolidation, streaming companies began to take over. If a studio like Warner Bros. ceases to exist as an independent entity, we will lose yet another company to fund, produce and distribute that kind of art.

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Félix Decombat

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Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman.

The abstract concepts and complex equations found in the study of physics can feel as esoteric as they do intimidating. But today’s guest believes that physics can actually be deeply poetic, philosophical and even political.

Theoretical physicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s new book, The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie, weaves together cosmology, quantum mechanics, history, queer theory and pop culture—from Star Trek to Missy Elliott—to bring readers on a mind-altering journey to the boundaries of the universe. By exploring the edges of what we know about spacetime, she argues, we can gain a new perspective on the limitless possibilities of our own existence.

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Chanda recently came by the office to chat with SciAm associate books editor Bri Kane. Here’s their conversation.

Bri Kane: I am so excited to talk to you about all of my biggest and weirdest physics questions today [Laughs], but I wanted to start off with the poetry that you talk about in this book. You say that when physics is at its best, it’s very poetic. How is physics poetic to you?

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein: I mean, I think the universe is poetic. There’s something really beautiful and elegant, particularly for me, as a theoretical physicist, how all the pieces come together. There’s a poetry to that. There’s a rhythm to it and—rhythm and patterns, right? So I think what we do in physics is look for patterns and try and establish patterns. And poetry is often very pattern-based, whether you’re talking about meter or the structure of the poem on the page. So I see a lot of links.

Kane: Yeah, I mean, this book really connects a lot of different subjects in science and then brings them all to the center in physics. But one that I thought was really interesting is there’s a lot of history in this book and a lot of history that I didn’t know about. [Laughs.] There’s a lot of people that you talk about as being the first in their field or newly realized as the first in their field. And so I wanted to ask you about Mozi from the Zhou kingdom.

Prescod-Weinstein: So I should start by saying I didn’t come into the book thinking, “I’m gonna write about Zhou kingdom philosophers from, you know, before China was established,” and so even figuring out, “How do I talk about this?” because the reference point is going to be—this is stuff that’s written in ancient Chinese.

And as I was writing about Newton’s laws and trying to figure out, “How do I make Newton’s laws interesting to me?” ’cause I actually hated frosh physics. I did not enjoy it. It wasn’t my jam. I was someone who was, like, really hype about quantum mechanics, quantum physics, general relativity, that kind of thing. And in doing some research, I saw a little note somewhere that actually this philosopher from the Zhou kingdom, Mozi, had come up with one of Newton’s laws, like, a millennium before Newton had.

And so I chased this down, and it was a real moment of synergy of understanding how much we in the sciences depend on the humanities because someone had taken the time to do the translation. And it just opened this whole world to me of people asking these questions about “How do I explain the difference between extent in space and duration in time?” and the different ways that these people who lived very close to the land and in a different way were trying to have these conversations with themselves about the difference between space and time, or maybe the lack of difference between space and time.

Kane: Yeah, I mean, as you say in the book, we have been looking to the stars since there were stars, since we were able to look at them. I mean, it’s something that has always inspired us and also helped us reflect on ourselves, which I thought was really interesting ’cause physics can be kind of intimidating to people as a field, but it’s also very philosophical and poetic, as you’re saying, and it can be really exciting. It can also be pretty funny. I mean, I laughed out loud at a few lines in this book, and, and physics does not normally

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