How many U.S. states have you visited? Louise Story, the CEO of Atlas Obscura, has been to 39 — but she’s planning to up that number to 50 by the time America’s 250th birthday comes around on July 4. As she journeys to hit the remaining 11 states, Story is scoping out lesser-known destinations, like the Stonehenge replica made of antique cars in Nebraska and the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center in Indiana. “I am choosing to see more of the country, so that I can know our country and our people better,” she wrote when announcing the mission. Use this tool to see how many states you’ve checked off.
Fremont, California, Named Happiest City in America for 2026
Dee Liu/iStock
The key to happiness may be rather nuanced, but living in the happiest city in America can’t hurt … and Fremont, California, earned that title (again) this year. Earlier this week, WalletHub published its annual happiest city rankings based on 29 key indicators of happiness, including depression rates, income growth, and average daily leisure time. “The ideal city provides conditions that foster good mental and physical health, like reasonable work hours, short commutes, good weather, and caring neighbors,” analyst Chip Lupo explained in a statement. The NorCal locale checks many of the above boxes. It ranked No. 1 in the emotional and physical well-being category, and has the highest life satisfaction and the lowest separation and divorce rates. Coming in second and third place, respectively, are Bismarck, North Dakota, and Scottsdale, Arizona. Check out the top 25.
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Health
How a Tiny Berry Is Helping Chemotherapy Patients Enjoy Food Again
Sandi Smolker/iStock
Food as medicine, indeed: A small berry is helping some cancer patients cope with “metal mouth,” a common and often distressing side effect of chemotherapy that can make food taste metallic, bitter, or even rotten. The “miracle fruit” — scientifically known as Synsepalum dulcificum and commonly grown in South Florida — contains a protein called miraculin that temporarily alters taste buds, making sour or bitter foods taste sweet for about a half hour (think: lemons tasting more like oranges). So it isn’t a “cure” per se, but rather a tool that can help patients maintain proper nutrition during treatment, oncologist Mike Cusnir, who has led some of the first studies on its effects in cancer patients, told CBS News. And even short-lived relief can go a long way. Julie Ascen, who has a form of lymphoma, told the outlet: “When I tried the miracle fruit for the first time, my whole life changed.” She added: “It is one of those miracles that, if you have this disease, you want to live your life and not have it control you. And this lets it not control me; I can control myself.”
Science
The Science Behind Skills That Feel Like Second Nature
MIT News; figures courtesy of the researchers
Think about the last time you tried to teach someone something you’ve mastered, like riding a bike. You may have found it can be surprisingly hard to explain a skill that has become second nature to you. That kind of instinctive expertise, known as “tacit knowledge,” is the focus of a new MIT study that sought to understand how people learn skills that are hard to put into words — and how to potentially speed up the learning curve. In an experiment, participants completed a visual task on a computer while researchers tracked their eye movements and brain activity. Over time, the volunteers unconsciously shifted their focus to make the task easier, though they couldn’t articulate how they had managed to improve. Researchers then showed participants maps of their gaze patterns as they went from novices to experts and found that their performance improved further after they saw the tacit knowledge rendered visually. The takeaway: Seeing these unconscious, hard-to-articulate learning strategies can accelerate mastery across trades like crafts, sports, and even medical imaging. “We as humans have a lot of knowledge, some that is explicit that we can translate into books, encyclopedias, manuals, equations. The tacit knowledge is what we cannot verbalize, that’s hidden in our unconscious,” study author Alex Armengol-Urpi said in a statement. “If we can make that knowledge explicit, we can then allow for it to be transferred easier, which can help in education and learning in general.”
In Other News
A rare swan species, known for its “red lipstick” bill, was spotted in Brooklyn for the first time (read more)
NASA learned how to potentially redirect objects away from Earth — by crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid (read more)
Best date night? An art center in Massachusetts provides free day care while parents enjoy the theater (read more)
Psilocybin helped smokers quit more effectively than nicotine patches in a recent study (read more)
Hello, PlantGPT: College students developed an AI tool to help people “talk” to their plants(read more)
Inspiring Story
Fashionably early
Max Alexander sounds like a fashion designer’s name — and at 10 years old, he’s already living up to it. The fourth grader, who’s previously said he was Gucci in a past life, recently made history as the youngest designer to showcase a collection at Paris Fashion Week. See him (and his looks) on the runway.
Eyes on Milano Cortina
Maja Hitij/Getty Images
It’s been a nail-biting Olympics season for curling fans. Yesterday, China won the inaugural Paralympic wheelchair curling mixed doubles gold medal, defeating South Korea in a dramatic extra-end finish — and Latvia claimed bronze over the U.S. in a tense match that also went to extra ends. That marked the European country’s first-ever Winter Paralympics medal. “It was our goal to win a medal,” said Latvian curler Polina Rozkova, adding: “And we put so much work in, not only these last three years, it’s 10 years plus work.” With all that hard work having paid off, the six medal winners happily posed for a podium selfie after the competition.
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