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It’s a cruel twist. Just as we become more concerned about our appearance, our faces start to erupt in great red spots. Pimples cause anguish for many teenagers and can persist into adulthood too. But now two companies are developing vaccines that they hope will revolutionise the treatment of acne. Is an end to the misery at hand?

The main idea behind this new approach is that acne is caused by the immune system overreacting to proteins released by skin bacteria. Triggering the body to produce antibodies against these proteins should block this process and prevent – or at least reduce – acne. Pharma giant Sanofi is preparing for trials in the US and Canada of an mRNA vaccine targeting at least one bacterial protein, while US start-up Armora Biosciences is focusing on a different protein.

Better treatments for acne are certainly needed. “Acne causes a significant emotional burden,” says Tomasz Zastawny at Armora. “It can lead to the development of depression, social isolation and other psychological outcomes as well.”

It has been known for decades that acne is linked to the presence of a bacterium called Cutibacterium acnes, which thrives deep in hair follicles where there is little oxygen. But C. acnes is the most common skin bacterium, present on just about everybody – including those that don’t have acne – so there’s a lot more to it.

One factor is the surge in hormones during puberty, which increases the production of fatty substances in the skin, affecting bacterial growth. But not everyone gets pimply during adolescence, so there seem to be genetic factors involved as well.

“Acne is very complicated. It’s not an infection,” says Richard Gallo at the University of California, San Diego. “It’s an immune problem.”

In other words, while the presence of C. acne doesn’t usually cause problems, sometimes it may trigger a strong immune response inside a follicle. During this response, some cells in the skin actually turn into fat cells and start releasing alarm signals and antimicrobial substances – a process known as reactive adipogenesis. “This is a normal way to fight an infection, but in this case, it’s an inappropriate response,” says Gallo.

What triggers that response? C. acnes can secrete a toxin known as Christie-Atkins-Munch-Petersen factor, or CAMP. The bacteria may ramp up production of CAMP in certain circumstances.

So, Gallo’s team tried vaccinating mice against CAMP, to make the animals produce antibodies that neutralise the toxin. A number of studies by his team suggest this could help prevent or treat acne.

Sanofi has now developed an mRNA vaccine that targets CAMP, possibly along with some other C. acnes proteins – the company hasn’t revealed exactly what’s in the vaccine and, after much back and forth, declined to talk to me about it.

While there have been reports that the Sanofi trial is already underway, it is labelled as “not yet recruiting” as per the latest update on 18 September. This means it may be some time before we know if it works. That said, while these initial trials are primarily intended to establish safety, it should be clear to volunteers within weeks if it is making a difference to their acne – this isn’t like a normal vaccine trial where researchers have to wait months or years for people to be exposed to pathogens.

“We were very, very optimistic that this could be revolutionary for acne therapy,” says Gallo. “We’ll just have to see if it pans out in the human population.”

Meanwhile, Armora is targeting a different protein, called hyaluronidase, based on work by George Liu at the University of California, San Diego. Hyaluronidase is an enzyme that breaks down hyaluronic acid, a large sugar secreted into the spaces between cells. These terms might be familiar because hyaluronic acid is often used as a filler for cosmetic purposes, while hyaluronidase is injected to break down filler that is no longer wanted or if things go wrong.

Some bacteria such as strep B (Streptococcus agalactiae) produce hyaluronidase for similar purposes, to help them invade tissues. There are two main types of hyaluronidase, it turns out. Some break down hyaluronic acid into simple sugars. Others break it up into large chunks that act as an alarm signal to the immune system.

When it became clear that there were two types, Liu’s team searched genetic databases to see which type is found in which bacteria. They found the “simple sugars” type was the most common. The “large chunks” type was limited to a few free-living bacteria, which makes sense because they don’t need to worry about immune systems.

“The exception was acne,” says Liu. C. acnes jumped out to the researchers because it produces both types of hyaluronidase. More precisely, some strains of C. acne produce the simple-sugars type, while other produce the large-chunks one – none produce both, he says.

That made Liu wonder if this was connected to acne. Sure enough, the team showed in mouse studies that large-chunks strains of C. acnes cause acne-related inflammation, while the simple-sugars one slightly reduces inflammation. The team then went to show that a vaccine that stimulates the production of antibodies targeting only the large-chunks form of hyaluronidase could reduce acne in mice, as could inhibiting the enzyme with a small protein.

What isn’t clear is why some strains of C. acnes have evolved to trigger an immune response. One possibility is that it is a way to kill off some of their competitors, says Liu.

He thinks that in people, a vaccine against the large-chunks form of hyaluronidase would be most effective against the “more severe, red, angry type of acne lesion”.

“The ones that are hard to treat right now, those are the ones that we would target with a vaccine,” he says.

His findings might also help explain why antibiotics, which are commonly prescribed for acne, don’t work that well: they kill off the helpful C. acnes strains as well as the harmful ones. The other issue with antibiotics, of course, is that resistance can develop.

Another acne treatment called isotretinoin (Roaccutane) is more effective than antibiotics but has a long list of nasty side effects including causing birth defects, impotence and dry, itchy skin. How it works isn’t clear, though there is some evidence it alters the skin microbiome.

Acne vaccines promise to solve all these issues. They shouldn’t have any lasting side effects, nor should there be any issue with resistance, because the vaccines are targeting secreted proteins rather than directly targeting bacteria.

The fact that two competing approaches are being developed is great news for those with acne. If one vaccine doesn’t work, perhaps the other will. And it could be that both will work, or that targeting both CAMP and hyaluronidase simultaneously will prove even more effective than either alone. Maybe, just maybe, adolescence is about to get a little easier.

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Key Takeaways

• When gun violence is in the news, it can be a scary time for children. Reassure your child that their safety is your top priority, no matter their age.
• Limit your child’s exposure to media coverage and explain events in age-appropriate ways.
• Teach kids about gun safety early, especially if there are guns in your home.

 

Sandy Hook. Aurora. San Bernardino. Orlando. Las Vegas. Parkland. Pittsburgh. Gilroy. El Paso. Dayton. Buffalo. Uvalde. Newport News. Denver. Lewiston. Winder. Madison. Minneapolis. These are just some of the American cities and towns affected by mass shootings.

Gun violence has happened at schools, movie theaters, bars, concerts, festivals, stores, churches, and even at a parade after the Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl in 2024. And this is just scratching the surface of the impact of gun violence in the United States.

Now, another shooting within the walls of a school has taken the lives of three elementary students and a teacher. This time in Bend, Oregon, on October 15, 2026.

Each time there’s a mass shooting, we find ourselves having trouble finding the words to explain to our children why it happened yet again, and why it continues to occur. So, how should you talk about gun violence to your child? We asked experts to share their best insights.

Assure Your Child That You’re Doing Your Best To Keep Them Safe

Kids need to be reminded that you’re looking out for them.

“Reassuring our children in these turbulent and violent times is a paramount question for parenting,” says John Mayer, PhD, a clinical psychologist at Doctor On Demand. “Say to your children: ‘We will never take you anywhere or put you in any place where there is danger. That is our primary job as parents, to protect you.’ That fundamental message of safety is critical to make sure your children hear.”

Dr. Mayer says this message is just as important for older kids as it is for our youngest. “Older children need that reassurance just as often and vigorously as younger children,” he says. “So, age differences do not matter.”

Of course, the truth is we can’t guarantee their safety, but Dr. Mayer says parents shouldn’t argue that point. “While we as adults may know that is true, bringing in these doubts is not a helpful opinion to convey to kids,” he says.

Don’t Let the TV Do the Talking

There will be nonstop coverage of mass shooting events, but you don’t want your child to absorb too much of what’s being shown there—especially if your child is young.

“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand that the more repeated and prolonged exposure to TV and media images, the more anxiety this creates,” says Eirene Heidelberger, a parenting expert and founder of GIT Mom (Get It Together, Mom!). “Your child’s awareness is growing, and it’s imperative that you explain the basic facts about what happened; not TV or social media. Don’t go into gory detail, but don’t pretend your child isn’t aware that something’s amiss in the world.”

Make Sure Your Children Understand Gun Safety

Every year, more than 4,300 children and teenagers (ages 0 to 19) in the U.S. die due to guns, and more than 17,000 are injured, according to Everytown for Gun Safety.1 Of those tragedies, 2,814 are homicides, 1,275 are suicides, and 144 are accidental shootings. Ensuring that any guns in the home are safely secured (not loaded and locked away)—and teaching all children about gun safety—is essential.

“Parents who own guns have a responsibility to teach gun safety, ownership, and the appropriate utility of guns to their children,” says Dr. Mayer. “A gun shouldn’t just exist in the household, and parents assume that children will be OK with it being there and/or know all they should about that weapon.”

It’s important to be a teacher even when kids are small. “The biggest failing of parents is assuming that small children do not need education about guns in the house,” adds Dr. Mayer. “If you don’t become a teacher about what your family’s concept or orientation toward guns is, then children will make up their own, and these are almost guaranteed to be immature and inaccurate of what your values are about guns and gun ownership.”

Make sure your child understands the seriousness of guns—and key safety rules. Heidelberger says:

1. Tell them to never touch a gun by themself.
2. Reiterate that only mom and dad/grownups use guns.
3. Keep curiosity away by being straightforward and explaining that the guns are locked away, and they will never be able to crack the lock. Lock down your kid’s curiosity.
4. Explain the differences between real and toy guns and the consequences.

Make Your Messaging Age-Appropriate

You won’t talk about gun violence the same way with a 5-year-old as you would with a teenager. Scale the conversation based on your child’s age and maturity level.

“Small children do not need long explanations about the social and psychological ramifications of gun violence erupting in our society,” says Dr. Mayer. “Prior to age 12, focus on how you as parents will keep them safe. From 12 to 15 or 16, you can talk about the issues in larger society, how this is wrong and immoral to take another’s life and to use guns inappropriately. In older adolescents and young adults, it is important to discuss the social/political and moral issues about gun violence. These age breakdowns follow the different stages of cognitive development in children and young people and when their brain can actually think about the issues.”

Let Your Child Share Their Thoughts

Your kids may have opinions, questions, fears—or all of the above. Let them express them.

“Start by asking what they’ve heard and know about the event,” Heidelberger suggests. “Let your child talk and listen—I mean really listen—to them. Think about how you feel after talking through scary situations with someone you trust. You feel safer and more assured, right? By talking about it, they’ll cope better.”

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President Trump has encouraged voters to pretend he is on the ballot for the Nov. 3 midterm elections, and this time we can agree with his political advice. Americans should be thinking of the Trump administration as they vote for members of Congress and state officials.

Voters should keep in mind Mr. Trump’s failure to keep his campaign promises, his attempts to undermine American democracy and his flagrant corruption. They should be thinking of the Republican Party’s acquiescence to this abuse of power, and they should hold Republicans accountable. Today’s Democratic Party has plenty of flaws, including a disappointing failure to present a coherent agenda of its own. Nonetheless, Democrats offer the only alternative this year to the damage that Mr. Trump and his party have inflicted on the nation. A vote for a Democratic candidate is the best way for Americans to repudiate the Trump administration’s performance over the past two years.

If Democrats retake both houses of Congress, and more state governments than they now control, it will tell the world that Mr. Trump does not represent most Americans. It will demonstrate that a country that starts to slide toward autocracy can move back to normalcy, as happened in Hungary this spring. Most important, it will create a desperately needed check on Mr. Trump during his final two years in office.

Take a moment to imagine how Washington could change if Democrats win control of the House of Representatives. Mr. Trump’s legislative ambitions will be largely ended; he will not be able to pass more tax cuts that worsen the national debt. Democrats can instead use must-pass spending bills to restore money that was improperly cut from Medicaid, schools, scientific research and disease prevention. And Congress will finally have committee chairs who seek to exercise their constitutional duty to hold the president and his appointees responsible for their actions, through the use of hearings, subpoenas and more. Even if Mr. Trump and his aides illegally defy subpoenas, the House can summon corporate executives and others who have enabled him.

If Democrats take the Senate, they will be able to do more. As the body that confirms nominees for top administration jobs and the judiciary, the Senate can stop Mr. Trump from appointing unqualified cabinet members like Todd Blanche, Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and ideologues like Russ Vought. Senators can insist on federal judges who, while surely conservative, will uphold the law. Many judges appointed by previous Republican presidents have honorably done so in recent years, but some Trump appointees have failed to meet this basic standard. The Senate’s confirmation role will be particularly important if any Supreme Court vacancies arise in the next two years.

Regardless, Mr. Trump will almost certainly continue to do damage in office. He will issue executive orders and conduct foreign policy, and he may defy congressional authority in ways that violate tradition or the law. Yet the difference between a government completely run by a political party in thrall to him and a government with an empowered opposition is profound. Americans now have an opportunity to register their displeasure with his conduct, and they should seize it.

It is worth taking a moment to review the records of both Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans since he returned to office in January 2025.

In a 21-month span, he has done more harm to democracy and the rule of law than any other president in the modern era and perhaps longer than that. He has broken his oath to defend the Constitution by trying to rewrite it on his own. He has refused to honor Congress’s power of the purse and misused national security laws for political ends. He has defied federal court orders on Medicaid funding, deportation orders and more. He has dismantled the Justice Department’s legacy as an impartial enforcer of federal law, turning it into an instrument of retribution against his adversaries while canceling investigations into his allies. He has appointed inept sycophants to oversee crucial government functions, including law enforcement, national defense and public health. He has sought to disenfranchise large numbers of voters, claiming fraud that cannot be found, and championed an extreme new approach to partisan gerrymandering. He has physically besmirched the White House by demolishing the East Wing and financing a garish renovation with donations from wealthy allies.

In foreign affairs, Mr. Trump has wasted lives and military resources on a miscalculated and illegal war with Iran, a strategic blunder that has forced a global retreat of American power. He has left the United States less prepared for future conflicts. He has left the United States isolated and vulnerable, by alienating longtime allies. He has weakened Ukraine in its heroic fight against Russia and cozied up to President Vladimir Putin.

On the economy, his policies have raised the cost of living, contributing to a decline in real wages. Interest rates are up. Economic growth and job growth are down. He has handed out billions to the wealthy and large corporations, leaving the rest of us with the tab, through a national debt that now exceeds $40 trillion.

He has created a culture of corruption and avarice with no precedent. He has pardoned political cronies, violent felons among them. He has used the levers of power, including regulatory oversight and diplomacy, to bring in billions of dollars of profit for his family business and his closest supporters. In 2025 alone, the president’s business empire earned $2.24 billion, nearly two-thirds of it from cryptocurrency, which Mr. Trump’s executive branch is supposed to be regulating.

What has the Republican-controlled Congress done to rein in these abuses? Virtually nothing. With only a few exceptions, the Senate has approved inept cabinet members and agency heads and then stood by as they rounded up legal immigrants, brought ludicrous criminal charges against political opponents, depleted the military of top talent and spurned the scientific consensus on the need for vaccines.

No congressional committee has demanded an accounting for the destruction of the United States Agency for International Development, which is leading to needless misery and death in other countries. Nor has Congress fought back against the shrinking of other federal agencies that it created and that the Trump White House unilaterally defunded. No committee has investigated the Trump family’s enrichment and self-dealing, though it is vastly worse than Hunter Biden’s schemes of familial exploitation, which Republicans rightly denounced.

A determined Congress could have tried to prevent the two presidential decisions most responsible for the inflation that has imperiled Republican political prospects: starting a war against Iran and imposing tariffs on global imports. Republican leaders didn’t even try. A handful of Republican legislators joined Democrats in passing resolutions against the war, but party leaders opposed the efforts and made sure they remained toothless.

The Republican majorities in the House and Senate do not even seem to care when Mr. Trump casts aside laws that they passed themselves. In September, Congress passed a bill enabling tighter sanctions on Russia’s energy exports, and the president signed it. When he later changed his position and said he would not enforce the sanctions, only a small number of Republicans objected, none of them in leadership.

The current Congress is the second least productive on record, passing fewer bills than any other save its immediate predecessor, the 118th Congress, in 2023 and 2024, when Republicans also controlled the House. The most significant piece of legislation that the 119th Congress passed is the law that Mr. Trump insisted be called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. In truth, it is mostly a handout to the wealthy, which worsens both the national debt and economic inequality.

The Republican congressional candidates on the ballot this year deserve to pay a price for both the damage their party has done and the damage it has failed to stop. In the face of a power-grabbing president, they have mostly shown cowardice. The Constitution envisions the legislative branch as the first among equals in the government’s power-sharing system; James Madison said that it “necessarily predominates.”

This Congress has enthusiastically ceded its power. It is Congress that has the power of the purse, the power to declare war, the power to determine who enters the country, the power to levy duties and tariffs. Its current leaders have instead become bystanders to Mr. Trump’s assertions of executive supremacy. Having signed on to Mr. Trump’s cult of personality, a vast majority of congressional Republicans are now loath to break with it, fearing the president will destroy their political careers and subject them to harassment, as he has done to others in the party.

Only voters can provide a counterweight. They have a chance to demonstrate next Tuesday that dereliction of constitutional duty can likewise end a politician’s career.

Mr. Trump has become so unpopular that this year’s elections appear likely to be competitive across much of the country, including traditionally red Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Ohio and Texas. But even Americans who live in reliably blue or red areas should feel motivated to vote.

Beyond Congress, governors and state legislatures can also play an important role in constraining Mr. Trump’s authoritarian impulses. They can block his calls for extreme partisan gerrymandering, his efforts to restrict mail voting and his election meddling. Local officials can push back against the abuses of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They can go to court to block his illegal funding cuts and usurpations of state authority. They can act in the interest of the people even as Mr. Trump pursues his own interests at public expense.

If any Republican officials on your ballot have consistently stood up to Mr. Trump on these matters, you should consider rewarding their political courage. In most state and local races, though, constraining his overreach will require voting Democratic. There are now 23 states where Republicans control both houses of the state legislature and the governor’s seat; several of those “trifectas” are at risk, including those in Georgia, Iowa, Ohio and New Hampshire.

When a democracy begins to slide toward autocracy, legislative elections offer the most significant potential turning point. If voters endorse the new regime — or the party in power manages to subvert the popular will — the slide can accelerate. If voters successfully reject the regime, democracy can begin to recover. The United States will be stronger if the 2026 midterms are such a turning point.

Even if Mr. Trump’s party loses badly, the country will face enormous challenges. Our political system, with its gerrymandered districts and unrepresentative Senate and Electoral College, was insufficiently democratic even before he weakened it. Our economy is grossly unequal. The planet is warming. China and Russia are newly aggressive. Artificial intelligence presents a threat that may define this century. Yet the best hope for addressing these challenges is a functioning government, rather than one befouled by corruption, incompetence and abuse of power.

Mr. Trump has dominated American politics for more than a decade, and the Republican Party has been his eager accomplice in degrading the nation’s ideals. The American people have a chance over the next week to speak in a clear voice. If they do, they can allow the nation to glimpse the end of the Trump era and the start of something brighter.

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Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. You’re listening to our weekly science news roundup.

Let’s start with some space news. Last week, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA for short, successfully launched a half-a-billion-dollar mission to land on Phobos, the largest Martian moon.

The Martian Moons Exploration spacecraft, also known as MMX, is expected to reach the vicinity of Mars in August of 2027. Once there, it will spend three years circling Mars in a path similar to Phobos’s orbit. One of its objectives is to find an ideal spot for landing on Phobos. In 2028 or 2029, MMX will send a rover down to the surface to spend 100 days observing the moon. That data will come in handy later in 2029, when MMX itself will attempt one or even two landings. If all goes well, MMX will return back up to orbit with 10 grams, or one-third of an ounce, of material from Phobos. It’s expected to make it back to Earth sometime in 2031.

So, why all this effort to check out a lumpy little moon? Phobos may be just 14 miles wide, but it’s got a lot to say. With an orbit of just over seven hours, it’s closer to its planet than any other moon in our solar system. That orbit is also gradually shrinking, bringing it on a slow-but-steady collision course with Mars.

Then there’s the unknown origin of Phobos and its little sibling, the Martian moon Deimos. Scientists aren’t sure whether these wee moons were once asteroids that got too close to Mars or if they formed from debris after something collided with the red planet. When the MMX sample comes home, researchers will compare its composition against Martian material and asteroids to try to solve that mystery.

Speaking of weird little guys with adorably tiny orbits, our next story features a little snake that uses cartwheels as a strange evasive maneuver.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I find cartwheels hard enough with two arms and legs to support me. But apparently there are tiny little snakes that put my acrobatic attempts to shame with nary a limb in sight. Scientists first showcased this ability with the dwarf reed snake in 2023, but now they’ve identified that same cartwheeling behavior in two additional species of the same genus, Pseudorabdion. And what’s even better is that they caught the bizarre locomotion on video.

The snakes start out by making a tight little curve, kind of like the letter “C,” with its head up top, facing the direction it wants to go, and something like the middle of its body touching the ground. Then it reels forward until its tail is the part touching the ground, which gives it the momentum to launch itself into the air. While it’s airborne, the snake twists around until it gets itself into the position of the starting point of the next roll, and it alternates which side of its body strikes the ground with each rotation. And did I mention these snakes are tiny and adorable? I’m definitely not doing the footage of their limbless leaping justice, so you really gotta check the video out for yourself. We’ll link to that in our show notes!

Those aren’t the only animal showoffs we saw making headlines last week. In a study published last Wednesday, researchers shared the surprisingly complex range of sounds made by birds not generally known for their gorgeous singing voices: vultures.

When you think of a vulture, you probably picture a relatively solitary and silent bird, maybe like a few of them flying around in an ominous circle but not much more than that. But the thing is that some species are quite social—and, as it turns out, those more gregarious species can also be quite vocal. Rüppell’s vultures, which nest in colonies hundreds of birds strong, are known to follow a literal pecking order when it comes time to pick a carcass clean. Some experts think that social complexity fuels the evolution of complex communication. So, the set hierarchy that these vultures live by made scientists wonder how they might use sound to communicate.

Researchers captured 150 hours of noise from two groups of vultures in captivity, which contained something like 2,500 calls. When they analyzed qualities like pitch and length, they were able to distinguish 16 distinct call types, which could be double the average for birds in general, based on previous research.

If you’re wondering what those calls sound like, well lucky for you we have some examples. The study authors dubbed the most common call the “metallic groan,” and it generally came from birds who were on the receiving end of some kind of aggression. There were also specific brays that came from vultures trying to bully other birds for food, hisses made in response, hoarse mating groans, and special calls made by parents as they lovingly puked food into their babies’ mouths.

For our next story, you know those tabloid stories that show celebrities, like, grocery shopping and stuff with the headline “they’re just like us?” Well slap some Japanese macaques onto those glossy pages. Because according to a study published last week in Royal Society Open Science, these monkeys have a lot in common with humans when it comes to responding to disease outbreaks.

Not unlike the human tendency to stock up on hand sanitizer and wipe down groceries in the wake of a pandemic, the researchers say, primates who have survived life-threatening disease outbreaks remain more cautious about potential food contamination than their peers. That’s especially interesting given the fact that, for a macaque, there’s no public health agency announcing where a deadly ailment has come from. But even with no empirical knowledge of disease transmission, like literally these guys do not have germ theory, this study suggests that a brush with contagion inspires habits that limit exposure to new bugs.

The study looked at Japanese macaques at a primate sanctuary in southern Texas, where they’re grouped into several distinct enclosures. Three groups experienced an outbreak of simian retrovirus Type II, which can cause a sickness similar to AIDS, back in 2020. A fourth enclosure was completely spared, which provided a natural control group.

To test how that experience impacted pathogen avoidance, the researchers offered macaques food from visibly clean surfaces as well as ones seemingly contaminated by monkey poop, though covered by epoxy to prevent any actual disease risk. Previous studies have shown that this species will avoid some food with fecal contamination, but will risk it all for a favorite treat like a peanut. And, indeed, in this new study, monkeys ate from a seemingly dirty surface in 79 percent of trials. But in the groups that had survived an outbreak, monkeys went for the poop food less than half of the time. Even individuals who had not personally been sick were less likely to risk contamination.

Simian retrovirus Type II doesn’t actually spread through food, but via scratches and bites. But we know that disgust and pathogen avoidance are complicated—and not always actually very useful—in humans, too.

We’ll wrap up with a story about the funnest little animals of them all: preschoolers. Researchers were curious about why people seem to think that kids are more creative than adults, despite scientific evidence showing the opposite. In a study published last week in PLOS One, they had 92 preschoolers and 70 adults tackle three creative tasks: spending eight minutes drawing freely on blank paper with colored pens and spending eight minutes inventing and drawing a made-up animal. The study subjects were all asked about how much they enjoyed those activities, how anxious the tasks made them feel, and how confident they felt about the quality of what they’d come up with. Then their results were evaluated by five people trained in a system for rating creative work.

It turns out that, at least in this case, adults were objectively more creative than preschoolers, coming up with more original and effective ideas—but they also enjoyed themselves way less and felt worse about their work. So if you often find yourself wishing you could recapture the boundless creativity of your youth, maybe you should actually just work on your self-confidence. One time a lady in my ceramic studio looked at what I was making and said, “Wow, I wish I gave myself that much freedom.” And I have to tell you, at the time, it did not feel good. But now, I think I might have changed my mind.

That’s all for this week’s news roundup. We’ll be back on Wednesday to see how science is showing up in the midterm elections.

Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Sushmita Pathak, Allison Rodgers and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Emily Makowski, Marielle Issa and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.

For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great week!

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With the midterm elections fast approaching, many Americans have the economy on their minds.

US voters are exhausted by years of higher prices. Donald Trump won the presidency in 2024 on promises to lower inflation and undo the damage he said the Biden administration had inflicted on the economy.

In Trump’s view, his plan is working. At a recent rally in Montana, Trump boasted about the current economy, framing it as a booming time for Americans. “We’re richer now,” he said. “We don’t have inflation.”

Economic data paints a different picture. Inflation, especially gas prices, have soared over the last year. The job market has been in stasis, and higher interest rates have meant it’s more expensive for Americans to borrow money for loans and mortgages.

These fluctuations have a concrete impact on the lives of Americans. A recent Harris poll for the Guardian found that a majority of Americans, including some Republicans, disagree. Nearly two-thirds said they believe the country is experiencing a recession, and many said higher prices have been a pain point. Americans are reporting having trouble saving, and a third polled said one surprise bill could sink them financially.

Here’s what the data shows us about Trump’s second term so far.

Inflation

The rate of price increases has dramatically cooled since its peak in 2022, when the pandemic’s economic stimulus packages found their way into consumer prices. Inflation peaked at 9.1%, a 40-year high, in June 2022.

In January 2025, the month when Trump started his second term, inflation was down to 3%. By April 2025, it would be 2.3% – the lowest rate since 2021.

That’s when things start to get bumpy. After Trump placed tariffs on nearly everything that the US imports, inflation started to heat up again, climbing back up to 3% in September 2025. After many of his tariffs were paused and eventually found to be illegal, prices started going down again. In January and February 2026, inflation was back down to 2.4%.

The Iran war, specifically its impact on oil prices, has brought inflation back up to levels not seen since 2023. In May, inflation reached 4.2% and has hovered above 3.4% since.

It’s been nearly six years since Americans has seen inflation at a manageable 2% level. Price increases build up over time and can put a squeeze on budgets, which is why it’s such a sensitive point for voters during a crucial election.

Gas prices

In the Guardian’s recent poll with the Harris Poll, gas prices were the most common pain point for Americans, with 83% saying they’re making a dent in their current finances.

Soon after the war in Iran began, the strait of Hormuz, a key route that a fifth of the world’s oil typically passes through, was blocked off. Its closure has pushed up prices all around the world. Though the US itself is a major oil producer, prices have still surged since the war. The average price of gas was $4.32 per gallon in mid-October, according to AAA, nearly $1.30 a gallon higher than a year ago.

Even for an oil-producing state like Texas, a gallon of gas is $3.81 compared with $2.64 a year ago. Meanwhile, drivers in California, a state that imports much of its gas from overseas, are paying $6.21 per gallon.

Monthly job figures

The labor market is another metric used to measure the health of the economy, and while the US job market has seen some growth since Trump took office again, figures have fluctuated over the last year. In 2025, altogether 181,000 new jobs were added to the economy, compared with 2.2m jobs in 2024.

Employers have been dealing with a mixed landscape for hiring: harsher immigration policies, uncertainty from tariffs and higher prices for supplies have all meant slow job growth. The unemployment rate has remained low, though, at just over 4%. Economists call this a “low-hire, low-fire” economy, in which employers are neither hiring or laying off workers.

S&P 500 

Though many Americans report struggling in today’s economy, a small handful have never been wealthier. The stock market has continued to soar since Trump took office, recovering from dips seen during his initial tariff announcement and the early days of the Iran war. 

Economists largely see AI investment as the leading factor in the stock market’s acceleration. Tech companies are spending billions of dollars investing in datacenters and for chips that are needed to power AI. 

While many Americans are invested in the stock market through their retirement and pension funds, this growth has really been a boon for the top 1% wealthiest Americans, who own nearly half of the stock market investments. 

Economists say higher prices paired with an exuberant stock market has led to a K-shaped economy, where the wealthier have never felt richer while everyday Americans continue to deal with tightened budgets from high prices. 

Interest rates 

Interest rates are often not as noticeable to consumers as gas or grocery prices, which they come across every day. The impact that higher interest rates have on the economy takes longer to appear and runs deep. Interest rates shape how much Americans pay to borrow money – to run their businesses, pay off car loans and buy their homes. 

For the Federal Reserve, shifting interest rates is the tool it uses to balance the economy. Raising rates can cool the economy, bringing prices down, though at the risk of hurting the job market. Lowering rates can stimulate the economy at the risk of leading to more inflation. 

When Trump entered office in January 2025, the Fed was in the middle of a series of interest rate reductions. Officials said they were seeing inflation cooling and slower growth in the labor market. Interest rates were at a range of 4.25% to 4.5% – 1% lower than they were a year ago. 

Uncertainty around Trump’s new tariffs would ultimately lead officials to pause the reduction, though the president was still demanding lower rates. As tariffs proved to have less of a long-term effect on prices, the Fed started lowering rates again in fall 2025. 

For months, the Fed held off on changing rates as the economic impacts of the war of Iran bore out. But in September, the Fed hiked rates for the first time since 2023, by a quarter point. The Trump-appointed Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, said that “inflation is too high and has been for too long”. 

Higher interest rates have already had an impact on mortgage rates, which had dipped down to below 6% (for a 30-year mortgage) for the first time since 2022, in February, but are now up past 7%.

At this dangerous time

We hope you appreciated this article. Before you close this tab, can we ask you to support the Guardian at this critical time for journalism in the US?

According to a leading global watchdog, US democracy is now more imperiled than at any point since the 1960s. Press freedom is under threat on many fronts – from criminal investigations to politicized regulation, frivolous lawsuits and catastrophic funding cuts to public media. 

With the midterm elections approaching, these attacks are accelerating. Most recently, Trump banned CNN, MS Now and Politico from the White House, in retaliation for “negative” coverage. While a federal judge has restored White House access for now, saying the ban is likely unconstitutional, the case is still in the courts.

At the same time, Trump is using the FCC – which is supposed to be an independent regulator in the public interest – to settle political scores: The FCC targeted ABC after Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about the First Lady, and Trump suggested that the agency should punish the host of Meet the Press for making a factual statement the president disliked. 

The Pentagon, meanwhile, fired the editor of Stars and Stripes newspaper for “insubordination” shortly after they reported on a suicide attempt aboard the USS Lincoln, the Navy aircraft carrier reported to be in dire straits after 10 months at sea.

Together these efforts make it more difficult to get fact-based reporting to US voters ahead of critical elections that will determine control of Congress and the future of Trump’s agenda.

Making matters worse, many of the US’s largest news organizations are now owned by billionaires whose personal and business interests may imperil the outlets’ editorial independence. Media critics have observed how CBS News, now owned by a Trump ally, has softened its coverage; CNN could be taken over by the same billionaire; and Jeff Bezos has imposed extreme staff cuts and editorial interventions at the Washington Post.

When freedom is under attack, it falls to a determined few news organizations to ensure the full truth still reaches the public. The Guardian is owned neither by a billionaire nor a corporation and remains dedicated to keeping trustworthy journalism paywall-free for the world.

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Illustration: Guardian Design/Getty Images As the US midterm elections approach, we take a look at data to see a true picture of the US economy under Trump

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Brazilian voters on Sunday handed the leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a fourth term in office and a surprise victory over Flávio Bolsonaro, his right-wing challenger, in a striking rebuke to a conservative surge sweeping Latin America.

Mr. Bolsonaro refused to accept the outcome and said it was the result of foul play, increasing the risk of unrest over the election result.

The rejection by voters of Mr. Bolsonaro, the son of a former president jailed for attempting a coup four years ago, is also a loss for President Trump, who had embraced the Bolsonaro family and the region’s rising right.

Mr. Lula, in contrast to many world leaders, has often and defiantly clashed with Mr. Trump, and his victory highlights that Latin America’s left-wing forces still wield influence despite a string of losses across the hemisphere. This is the first leftist victory following seven straight wins by right-wing leaders in the region over the last 18 months.

“I would like to thank the Brazilian people for the generosity they have shown me for a long time,” Mr. Lula said, during a victory speech in São Paulo, flanked by his wife, running mate and allies.

The result capped a chaotic final stretch of the race, as polling places were ordered to remain open after public transportation delays and torrential rains disrupted voting. The extended polling hours, which both candidates asked for but came right as voting was set to conclude, opened up the possibility that the results would be disputed.

Mr. Bolsonaro called an order by Brazil’s judiciary to extend voting a “dirty trick” and demanded the election be annulled.

“There’s a lot that needs to be cleared up before Brazil simply accepts this foul play that took place in these elections,” he said during a news conference in Brasília, the capital.

Mr. Bolsonaro’s party will now likely petition electoral authorities for a review of the result.

Since Brazil’s return to democracy, no presidential election has ever been annulled. In 2014, the losing party requested an audit, but that review found no evidence of fraud and the results were upheld.

In 2022, Mr. Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party similarly challenged his father’s loss in the election, but the court ultimately fined the party more than $4 million for failing to provide evidence to support its allegations.

Among Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters on Sunday, the sentiment was one of sadness and indignation. “We know we’ve been robbed again,” said Valéria Maria de Melo, a 49-year-old housewife, bursting into tears.

Mr. Lula headed into Sunday’s vote as the underdog after finishing 2 percentage points behind his opponent in the first round of voting earlier this month.

But on Sunday, Mr. Lula achieved a stunning comeback, winning 51.8 percent of the vote versus 48.2 percent for Flávio Bolsonaro, with nearly all the ballots counted.

Mr. Lula’s margin of victory on Sunday was roughly double the margin four years ago when he narrowly defeated Mr. Bolsonaro’s father. It was the first time in Brazil’s history that a candidate who lost the first round of voting came back to win the second.

Mr. Lula’s victory was even more surprising given that several of the candidates who failed to make it out of the first round were conservatives whose votes were expected to broadly shift to Mr. Bolsonaro.

Mr. Lula, speaking at a hotel surrounded by cheering allies and supporters, thanked those who had voted for him. In an indirect swipe at Mr. Trump, he said the mass rallies in Brazilian cities in the days leading up to the vote were “a demonstration that this country refuses to be anyone’s backyard.”

“I want to thank the generosity of the Brazilian youth, who took to the streets to defend democracy,” he added.

The results showed that far more voters had turned up to cast a ballot on Sunday than in the earlier round, a highly unusual shift. Typically, the number of voters drops from the first round to the second. In total, more than 128 million Brazilians voted on Sunday, compared to 125 million in the first round.

Between voters who did not vote in the first round, but voted in the second, and other Brazilians who had supported losing candidates in the first round, Mr. Lula drew 10 million additional votes on Sunday.

An intense social media campaign that included a wildly popular channel on WhatsApp, a platform long dominated by Mr. Bolsonaro’s right-wing movement, played a major role in mobilizing Mr. Lula’s supporters in the final stretch of the race.

As he celebrated in Rio de Janeiro, Fernando Porto said that he and his friends never gave up hope as they took to social media and to the streets to rally support for Mr. Lula over the last three weeks. “This comeback was truly incredible,” said Mr. Porto, 24, a psychology student.

In São Paulo, a massive celebration that had already erupted long before the results came grew quickly with news of Mr. Lula’s victory. Supporters of the president broke down in tears of disbelief and set off fireworks, while cars honked in a deafening chorus of horns.

Mr. Lula’s comeback win capped a roller-coaster career for the president that has traversed soaring popularity, scandal and prison, and now an election that deeply divided Brazil, forcing voters to choose between two starkly different visions for the future of Latin America’s largest nation.

A stalwart of Brazilian politics, Mr. Lula lifted millions out of poverty through social programs in earlier years as president, though his popularity waned in his third term as he failed to address anxieties over crime and the economy.

His political legacy has also been tarnished by links to corruption scandals, including a new one unfolding on his watch that has implicated much of Brazil’s political and judicial elite, including Mr. Bolsonaro himself.

Yet Sunday’s narrow tally makes clear that Mr. Lula, 80, faces a daunting task: leading a polarized nation plagued by a spiraling debt crisis, high grocery prices and growing fears about organized crime. And Mr. Lula is bound to face resistance at every turn, after voters elected an overwhelming number of Mr. Bolsonaro’s political allies to the Legislature.

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President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil in São Paulo after winning the presidential runoff election on Sunday.Credit…Andre Penner/Associated Press

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A personalised mRNA vaccine for melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, is expected to be approved for use in the US, Europe and the UK next year. The vaccine is designed to stimulate immune responses against genetic mutations that are unique to an individual’s cancer. When used alongside standard treatment in a late-stage trial, it substantially cut the risk of cancer recurrence or death within the next two years.

“I think approval could be quick, and next year sounds reasonable,” says Alan Melcher at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, who wasn’t involved in the trial.

“It is a huge deal,” says Rebecca Lee at the University of Manchester, UK, who also wasn’t involved. Thousands of people in the UK alone could benefit from this, based on the trial’s patient population, she says. “It’s highly likely the US and Europe [including the UK] will approve it next year.” However, producing the vaccine is very expensive, and it may not be deemed cost-effective for use on the UK’s National Health Services (NHS), she says.

In August, drug-maker Moderna announced that the vaccine had positive results in a late-stage trial. More specific findings have now been released.

The trial recruited more than 1100 adults who had surgery to remove high-risk melanomas that were likely to recur or spread to distant sites. In the UK, 19,400 melanoma cases are diagnosed annually, of which about 25 per cent are deemed high risk.

Two-thirds of the participants were randomly assigned to receive a bespoke vaccine on top of standard immunotherapy, called pembrolizumab, which helps the immune system find and destroy cancer. Both were delivered every three weeks for up to a year. The remaining participants received placebo injections plus pembrolizumab.

The vaccine is made by genetically sequencing a small sample of a person’s cancer and comparing that sequence with the DNA in the individual’s healthy blood cells. This enables researchers to pinpoint mutations specific to the cancer.

Based on the same technology used in covid-19 vaccines, the cancer vaccine contains mRNA molecules that encode f

or proteins with up to 34 of those mutations. “The jab contains a fingerprint of proteins specifically associated with the cancer,” says Lee. “This helps [immune] T-cells recognise the cancer better, and then pembrolizumab prevents those T-cells from becoming exhausted once they’ve started attacking the cancer cells.”

About two years after the start of treatment, 82 per cent of the participants who received the vaccine plus pembrolizumab were alive without their cancer recurring, on average, compared with 70 per cent among those on pembrolizumab alone. “It’s a really exciting result,” says Lee. Side effects were similar between the two groups.

The results combine cancer recurrence and death rates into one figure, but since a treated cancer has to recur for it to cause death, this combined measure should be interpreted mostly as a sign of the vaccine reducing recurrence, says Melcher. The participants haven’t been tracked for long enough to robustly determine whether the vaccine improves survival rates. These results should be available within a few years, says Lee.

But because the vaccine has to be tailored to and manufactured for each individual, it is expected to be very costly, which could affect NHS access. “If it was a cheap drug, I’d definitely say it will get approved [for NHS use], but it’s going to be expensive,” says Lee. In January, a report by Reuters suggested it would cost around $200,000 per treatment. Moderna and Merck (also known as MSD), which was also involved in the vaccine’s development, did not respond to a request about its cost.

Further research is needed to better understand who is mostly likely to benefit from the vaccine, says Melcher. Some people may have mutations included in their vaccine that fail to stimulate anti-cancer immunity as predicted, or pembrolizumab could work so well that the vaccine can’t lead to further improvement. “If we can find immune markers in the blood or tumour that predict patient responses, we could use those to determine who to give the jab to,” says Melcher.

James Larkin, also at the Institute of Cancer Research, says personalised vaccines could also work for other types of cancer, such as those affecting the lungs, bladder and kidneys, which are also routinely treated with immunotherapy. Further research is needed to verify this and explore whether the vaccines could work as standalone treatments.

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The concept of a corporate psychopath is eerily recognizable, depending on your work history. It’s also notoriously misunderstood. The archetype of the manipulative, self-serving manager has regularly resurfaced in popular culture for decades, but concrete evidence supporting the wider concept is debatable. For example, a research study went viral in 2016 after estimating upwards of 1-in-5 business employees fit the “psychopath” bill, only to be retracted two years later. Additionally, psychiatrists widely agree that only about 1 percent of the general population truly can be considered clinically psychopathic.

That said, many of the people determined to claw their way to the top of the company ladder display at least some of the trademark psychopathic behaviors. Many theorists have convincingly argued this has a lot to do with corporate capitalism’s foundational principles, which leave it easily exploited by the most ruthless and manipulative among us.

Clive Boddy, one of the world’s foremost investigators of corporate psychopathy, recently took this idea to its logical historical conclusion. In a study recently published in the Asian Journal of Business Ethics, Boddy reviewed one of toxic corporate leadership’s earliest documented examples—and he makes today’s nightmare coworkers sound tame in comparison.

Who was Jeronimus Cornelisz?

Meet Jeronimus Cornelisz, an all-time contender for World’s Worst Boss. According to archival accounts, the 17th century Dutchman Cornelisz embodied every core corporate psychopath characteristic over 400 years ago while working for the conglomerate that started it all: the Dutch East India Company.

Established in Amsterdam in 1602, the Dutch East India Company is arguably the world’s first multinational, shareholder-owned company. It quickly amassed enough funds and power to rival most sovereign countries through the import and export of spices, tea, luxury items, coffee, wine, and enslaved populations. The Dutch East India Company eventually exerted enough influence to wage its own wars, mint its own currency, form colonies, as well as arrest and execute convicts.

All of this was made possible through a vast fleet of ships,but even the best outfitted vessels sometimes fell afoul of nature. In June 1629, a Dutch East India Company’s flagship called Batavia collided with a reef off the Western Australian coast. Nearly 300 survivors made it to the nearby island shores, but their remote location ensured they wouldn’t survive without help. The ship’s senior officers soon set off in an open longboat on a 1,900-mile journey to present-day Jakarta, then the Dutch East Indies’ capital. Before leaving, they appointed under-merchant Jeronimus Cornelisz to the top corporate position in their absence.

Mutiny, murder, and malignant narcissism

Unbeknownst to Batavia’s departing senior crew, Cornelisz had already spent weeks scheming on ways to incite a mutiny. The plan was to take control of the vessel then steer its copious stores of gold and silver to a new life. Cornelisz apparently viewed getting marooned as an inconvenient detour, and quickly got to work on his hostile takeover.

According to firsthand accounts, Cornelisz immediately consolidated power by swapping fellow council members with loyalists and requiring them to pledge an oath of allegiance to him. Next, he tricked suspected opponents under the direction of a soldier named Wiebbe Hayes to search a nearby island for supplies, then left them to die.

Although his revised plan required any impending rescue ship, Cornelisz’s ultimate goal remained the same—get as far away as possible, then start his own kingdom using riches plundered from Batavia. Over the ensuing months, Cornelisz directed his gang to kill more than 100 of the shipwrecked men, women, and children. Cornelisz often justified the murders under the pretense of conserving food and water, when in actuality he was continuing to eliminate perceived threats. Meanwhile, some of the surviving women were subjected to sexual abuse.

However, Cornelisz underestimated his abandoned compatriots. As the operatically psychopathic Cornelisz terrorized his group of survivors and scrounged for supplies, Hayes’ team reportedly discovered freshwater wells and hunted local wallabies, seals, and fish. The two sides subsequently squared off on multiple occasions after learning of each others’ continued existence until a rescue ship finally arrived in October 1629. After nearly three months, only about a third of Batavia’s original passengers and crew were left.

Cornelisz receives his company review

Management ultimately decided Cornelisz wasn’t internal promotion material, even by Dutch East India Company standards. Nearly everyone involved in his reign of terror was executed. As for Cornelisz and his closest loyalists, authorities eventually hanged them, but not before cutting off their hands.

The tragedy of the Batavia is an admittedly extreme case study, but Boddy argued that it illustrates how corporate structures have facilitated and encouraged psychopathic behaviors since the invention of the corporation itself.

“The same playbook we see in toxic workplaces today appears in this case from 1629,” he said. “He removed opponents, rewarded loyalists, created fear, manipulated followers and pursued power at any cost.”

A corporate (psychopath) case study

In recent years, some historians have expressed doubts about details in the Batavia saga after reviewing available evidence and recontextualizing cultural dynamics. Instead of focusing on the machinations of a single ruthless corporate psychopath, they contend Batavia is more accurately a case study in group desperation. But even when viewed under this lens, the chilling event is still a cautionary tale about corporate capitalism’s darker underpinnings.

“Perhaps the most striking finding is that another leader facing the same circumstances achieved completely different outcomes,” Boddy said. “This was effectively a natural experiment in leadership. One group prospered while the other descended into murder and abuse.”

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One of the Batavia mutiny (1629) victims, excavated on Beacon Island and now displayed at Fremantle Shipwreck Museum. Credit: Guy de la Bedoyere / Wikimedia Commons / Popular Science

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n my column last week, I wrote about the Democratic Party’s dramatic change of fortune in the race to control the Senate. The expectation at the start of this election cycle was that Republicans would hold the chamber easily and, depending on the course of events, even expand their majority.

After all, just to maintain the status quo, Democrats had to defend incumbents in states that President Trump won handily. And to have any chance at a majority, they would need to defeat at least one incumbent — Susan Collins of Maine, for example — and overcome the Republican Party’s home-field advantage in at least two states.

A tall order if there ever was one.

But thanks to a set of Trump’s bad decisions — from his authoritarian occupations of American cities that enraged liberal voters to a war in Iran that has angered swing voters and independents with inflation and high prices — Democrats have turned what was supposed to be a bad Senate map into one where they stand a real chance of winning a decently sized majority in the chamber.

But while the fundamentals determine the overall shape of the electoral landscape, candidates and campaigns play a meaningful part in the final outcome. And it is in the realm of candidates and campaigns that I want to remark on two particular aspects of this campaign season.

The first is the wide gap in candidate quality between the Republicans and Democrats. In race after race, Democrats have managed to recruit and advance candidates who are well positioned to capitalize on changing political circumstances. Even if he were not facing off against Ken Paxton, an experienced but still strikingly weak candidate, James Talarico would still be an impressive recruit. He is a natural communicator — whose seminarian background and personal faith have been a great asset in winning over Texas voters — and he has proved to be both nimble and aggressive, able to hold Paxton’s feet to the fire despite facing an onslaught of cash from outside groups and actors, like Elon Musk.

You could say similar things of Adam Hamilton in Kansas, perhaps the surprise candidate of this cycle, who is running a competitive race against the Republican incumbent, Roger Marshall. Hamilton is a religious leader — the founder and senior pastor of the Church of the Resurrection, the largest United Methodist congregation in the United States — with broad appeal in a state that is, like Texas, known for its deep religious feeling. With his moderate politics, Hamilton has successfully presented himself as a bipartisan figure, with support from prominent Republicans in Kansas. It also helps that Marshall, a doctor, has struggled in the face of revelations that he took harsh and punitive action against his patients, dragging them to court for trivial amounts of money.

Other Democratic candidates, such as Josh Turek in Iowa, Sherrod Brown in Ohio and Troy Jackson in Maine, have also successfully capitalized on the Republican Party’s worsening electoral position. And even those Democrats who might be a little more progressive than their electorates — Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan — show a great deal of political talent and are well-positioned to win.

As for the Republicans, the opposite appears to be true. There are a few candidates in the field who may well outperform the fundamentals, like the Iowa Senate nominee Ashley Hinson. Michele Tafoya in Minnesota also seems to be keeping up with her opponent. But beyond them, Republicans are working with candidates who are just not up to snuff. In Georgia, Mike Collins has been marred by his associations with white nationalists and other extremists, and is headed for a crushing defeat in his race against the incumbent, Senator Jon Ossoff. Darline Graham in South Carolina is barely ahead of her Democratic opponent, and again, this is South Carolina. The aforementioned Ken Paxton is such a lackluster candidate that he may well deliver the Texas Republican Party its first statewide defeat for federal office since 1988.

Perhaps the most striking example of a candidate ill-equipped for a competitive race is Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio. Ramaswamy ran unsuccessfully for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, then returned home to Ohio to try to lead the party there. Perhaps the fact that Republicans were not anticipating a competitive year is how Ramaswamy managed to win the nomination. Either way, he is currently poised to lose to the Democratic nominee, Amy Acton.

In apparent desperation, the Ramaswamy campaign commissioned an advertisement featuring Amy Acton’s mother. The two have not seen or spoken to each other since 1978. As a child, Acton testified against her stepfather, who was charged with sexually abusing her. Acton’s mother took her husband’s side, and the two fled the state. In the advertisement, Acton’s mother calls her daughter a liar, someone who “lies about her past.” The evidence says otherwise. To give one example, documents released by Mahoning County officials in Ohio corroborate Acton’s claim that she lived in a tent as a child.

The Ramaswamy camp, which includes fellow Ohioan JD Vance, thinks the ad is effective. But it’s been condemned by people on both sides, including the state’s Republican governor, as crude, craven and cruel. There is a chance, as well, that it blows back on Ramaswamy, undermining his campaign in the critical final stretch of the election. It is the kind of move that a more seasoned and competent candidate might have avoided. As it is, Ramaswamy’s gambit may well drag down the entire statewide ticket.

We’re still 10 days away from Election Day, so I’m not going to make any grand pronouncements about the outcome. But I will say that if Republicans do lose the Senate, and if they lose it badly, it will be a testament to one of the most striking political dynamics of the Trump era.

It is very possible that Trump was the only Republican who could have stitched together his particular electoral coalition. It is undoubtedly the case that Trump has some special sauce that makes him a formidable general election candidate. But this has not extended to the rest of the Republican Party. No other Republican is able to mimic Trump’s particular style of politics. And while Trump’s endorsement is a powerful force in Republican primaries, the president does not actually have a great track record of picking candidates who go on to win general elections.

Trump is in absolute command of the Republican Party, but outside of his own victories, he has steered it, more often than not, into troubled electoral waters.

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Aleksey Kondratyev for The New York Times

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

There’s a lot of uncertainty in the air right now, whether you’re trying to predict the outcome of an upcoming election or just trying to guess how much it will cost to gas up your car come next week. You don’t need a degree in neuroscience to know that all those unknowns are tough for the human brain to handle. But some experts think there’s actually a lot of nuance to explore about the cognitive burden of uncertainty—and that you might actually have the power to change how well you tackle it.

Our guest today is Maia Szalavitz, a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and the author or co-author of eight books. She’s also the author of a feature in the latest issue of Scientific American that explores the emerging science of the human brain as a prediction engine. She’s here to tell us more about what that means in a world that feels increasingly unpredictable—and what we can do to make our minds more adaptable to chaos.

Thank you so much for coming on to chat with us.

Maia Szalavitz: Thanks for having me.

Feltman: So how did you first get interested in this topic?.

Szalavitz: Sure. So our world seems to be becoming increasingly uncertain, and it’s not the kind of uncertainty that we’re used to dealing with in modern America because we’re used to the law being predictable. We’re used to the government’s actions being reasonably predictable. We’re used to all kinds of norms that are being violated. We’re used to being able to think of “What do I wanna be when I grow up?” and that be an actual thing that you can choose rather than perhaps losing all jobs to AI.

So I was in the midst of my own uncertainty, and I’ve been thinking a lot about this idea of how the brain works as a prediction engine, and I was really interested in hearing from people with that perspective about, like, how to manage in this really unusual situation—I mean, I didn’t even get to mention climate change. You’re used to, like, summer being summer and winter being winter—so it’s really unsettling and really, you know, because our brains do work, as far as we can tell, as prediction engines, and we’re constantly having to update prediction errors, when there’s uncertainty, it gives your brain a lot more work.

Feltman: What exactly do we mean when we say we’re modeling the brain as a prediction engine?

Szalavitz: So essentially, all of our experience of reality is a hallucination under this perspective, which is really weird to think about just in itself. But essentially, in order to solve the problem of avoiding entropy and avoiding death and ideally successfully reproducing, biological creatures need a way of managing risk and figuring out what to do next.

And so our brains sort of optimize on, okay, we get this general sense—and it’s based on experience, and there’s obviously some genetics—but you start out with this general, you know, way of perceiving the world, and then you update it when there’s an error. And so, you know, my example that I use in the piece is that, like, if you are in your room, and you have a cat, and you look, and you see something out of your corner of your eye, and it’s curled up, and it’s gray, you have a pretty full picture of that cat in your head when you, you know, do that. And then you look, and, oh, it’s actually the towel that you forgot to put in the laundry, right? But there’s no, like, glitch in it going from cat to towel, right? It’s, like, completely seamless, and this is the way our entire world works. And there’s all kinds of really interesting implications of it for things like pain and how you act psychologically.

But that is kind of the fundamental idea, that we are always making predictions, revising predictions, and, you know, with major prediction errors, it becomes seriously problematic because we may not be able to, you know, eat and survive and do the things we need to do.

Feltman: So what are some of the implications for, you know, what this means in terms of, like, how we think things through and how we process the world? I guess what I’m getting at is, like, “Why is it helpful to use this prediction engine idea?”

Szalavitz: If you think about it, if your entire life is based on predictions, there are certain things that you are going to be good at and certain things you are going to be bad at. Staying in the moment is going to be a very difficult thing if your entire world is predictions, right? And if you’re constantly predicting things, then what you’re predicting has a very big influence on what you will perceive.

And so if you are constantly seeing the world in a really negative way, that will skew it even further. Or if you are constantly just trying to avoid things, it’s really, if you think about it, it has implications for absolutely every aspect, which is why I’m sort of struggling of, like, narrowing it down here.

Feltman: Yeah, absolutely. What about the implications for how cognitive stress impacts our bodies?

Szalavitz: Sure. So Bruce McEwen was the great researcher on the impact of stress and health, right? And he talks about, like, how stress gets under the skin. And at this very moment, I am having a personal experience of this because I had to take a course of prednisone to deal with a hearing issue, and that’s basically massive amounts of stress hormones, like, coursing through me and making me feel like bad coke or something.

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