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Scientific American
2 days ago
- Science
- Scientific American
Summer Meteor Showers, Short Summer Days and Ancient Arthropods
Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American 's Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman. It's been a while, but we're finally back with our usual science news roundup. Let's catch up on some of the science news you might have missed in the last week or so. If last Tuesday seemed to fly right by, that's probably because it was a little shorter than usual. The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service says that July 22 was around .8 milliseconds short of the standard 24 hours. That's slightly less dramatic than the almost 1.4 milliseconds that were missing from July 10, and scientists anticipate another ever-so-slightly truncated day on August 5. Now, while there were plenty of headlines about these missing fractions of a milliseconds, it's not actually news that the Earth's rotation varies in speed. The length of a single rotation—also known as a day—is impacted by factors such as the movements of our planet's liquid core, variations in the jet stream and the gravitational pull of the moon. One 2024 study even suggested that melting polar ice has decreased Earth's angular velocity enough to slow rotations down. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. In fact, earth's days have generally been trending longer if you look back at the last few billion years. Research suggests that at various points in the time before our species evolved, days were minutes and even hours shorter. But we always get our shortest days in the summer, and there have been some especially short ones over the last few years. Scientists aren't totally sure why that's been happening, but they expect the spike to flatten back down soon, according to reporting by The Guardian. Speaking of the movement of celestial heavenly bodies: two meteor showers are set to peak on the same evening this week. In the overnight from July 29 to 30 both the Southern delta Aquariids and the alpha Capricornids will be reaching the height of their activity. While the alpha Caricornids aren't known for dropping loads of visible objects, they do sometimes produce bright fireballs—plus they can be seen from anywhere on the planet. Meanwhile, folks in the Southern Hemisphere will also get a great view of the Southern delta Aquariids, and people farther north could catch some activity if they look southward. There will also be some scattered meteors from the Perseids, which will ramp up in activity next month. With the moon in a waxing crescent phase, conditions should be good for spotting meteors—as long as it's not too cloudy. So set an alarm for the predawn hours on Wednesday and go outside to take a peek. Now let's head back down to Earth. Last Monday the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Urban Search and Rescue chief resigned. Ken Pagurek, who spent more than a decade with the FEMA branch and served as its chief for about a year, reportedly told colleagues that his decision was motivated in part by the delayed response to Texas's recent catastrophic flooding. The Department of Homeland Security recently implemented a policy that requires Secretary Kristi Noem to personally approve any spending over $100,000. CNN reports that Noem took more than 72 hours to provide authorization for Urban Search and Rescue teams to deploy in Texas. According to the New York Times, Noem also failed to renew agreements with call center companies whose contractors would have answered calls from disaster survivors. The contracts lapsed in the aftermath of the flood, when many people were still in need of help. The Times reported on July 5, FEMA received a bit more than 3,000 calls and answered about 99.7 percent of them. On July 6, with hundreds of the contractors responsible for answering phones suddenly fired, FEMA reportedly received 2,363 calls and answered about 35.8 percent of them. And according to the Times, those contracts weren't renewed until July 10. When asked for comment on Pagurek's resignation by ABC News, a DHS spokesperson doubled down on the new spending policy, defending the agency's decision not to 'hastily approve a six-figure deployment contract without basic financial oversight.' Let's pivot to some health news. According to a study of nearly 1,000 people published last Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, the COVID pandemic may have made our brains age more quickly—regardless of whether we got sick. First, the researchers analyzed imaging from more than 15,000 healthy individuals collected pre-pandemic to establish a baseline for normal brain aging. The team used this data to train machine-learning models to predict a person's brain age based on certain structural changes. The researchers then applied those models to brain scans from 996 other subjects, all of whom had received two brain scans at least a couple of years apart. About half of the participants had received both scans prior to the start of the pandemic, so they served as the control group. The scientists were then able to look at scans taken before and after the pandemic to assess the rate of brain aging. While only folks who got infected with COVID between their two scans showed a dip in some cognitive abilities, signs of brain aging, such as the shrinkage of gray matter, were accelerated across the board. The effects were most pronounced among men, older individuals and people from more socioeconomically deprived backgrounds. The study authors pointed to a number of aspects of the pandemic—including increases in stress, alcohol consumption and economic insecurity, along with decreases in physical activity and socialization—that they believe may have made our brains age more quickly. We don't yet know what the implications of these changes might be or whether they're reversible. Speaking of brains—and to end our show on a fun story because you know I love to do that—let's talk about ancient sea critters. A recent study focused on the extinct species Mollisonia symmetrica, which lived around half a billion years ago, suggests that the ancestors of spiders and other arachnids may have started out in the ocean. In studying fossilized remains of the tiny creature, scientists found that its brain was basically backwards—at least compared to other arthropods. The layout is more similar to the way modern arachnid noggins are arranged, which suggests that spider brains may have first evolved in the sea. That's all for this week's news roundup. We'll be back on Wednesday to talk about some of this summer's hottest topics in the world of weather. Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper and Jeff DelViscio. Shayna Posses 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.
Scientific American
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scientific American
Recommended Books to the Beach This Summer
Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American 's Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman. You might not know this, but Scientific American is a great place to go for book recommendations—and not just for nonfiction science titles either. Our team is packed with voracious readers, and we publish lists of our favorites at the end of each year. You can also get book recommendations every Friday in our daily newsletter, Today in Science. Now that summer is in full swing, we thought it would be fun to chat about some of our favorite beach reads. Today I'm joined by Bri Kane, Scientific American's resident reader, to go through some of her top picks for summer reading across a range of genres. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. Bri, thanks so much for coming on to chat with us. Would you start by just telling our listeners a little bit about what you do at SciAm and, of course, how it involves books? Bri Kane: Well, my day job is helping our contractors, writers and illustrators with their contracts and their invoices, but as everyone in the office knows, I'm constantly bullying people into reading more books and shoving books in their hand. Feltman: [Laughs] Yes, and we love it. We love that you do that [laughs]. Some of our listeners who read Scientific American might already know that you can get awesome book recommendations from there—and not just nonfiction science books: we also talk about science fiction and just our favorite books of the year—so we thought we would have Bri on to talk about some exciting summer reads as a way to give you some stuff to read this summer but also introduce you to the concept of getting book recommendations from Scientific American, because our editors and reporters read a lot [laughs]. Our expertise is: we're nerds [laughs]! Kane: Yeah, I mean, Scientific American has been reviewing books for over 100 years. I've been spending a lot of time in our archive this summer in anticipation of our 180th anniversary this August, and we've had some really spicy takes on books over the years, and I'm really excited to offer listeners my own spicy takes on books now. Feltman: Amazing, so why don't we start with the more obvious Scientific American book recommendations, the low-hanging fruit: those, like, nonfiction science books that we just have to read this summer. What do you have to recommend to us in that department? Kane: So the first one is Clamor by Chris Berdik. It's a really interesting deep dive into sound and hearing in a whole new way, beyond just the decibel count: how loud our human nature is and how loud we are making nature. It's a really interesting way to think about your own hearing, and as someone who is spending a lot of time on the New York City subway and trying to go to shows with my friends on the weekend, I've never been more aware of my long-term hearing health. Feltman: Yeah, that sounds great. And I think if listeners wanna get a little bit more information before they read it, I believe you recently reviewed this one, right? Where can folks find that? Kane: Oh, yeah, I'm reviewing books every Friday in our Today in Science newsletter. Feltman: So what else do you have for us today? Kane: The next one is Empire of AI by Karen Hao. It's a really buzzy book this year, but it's really good. It's an investigative reporter's deep dive into how AI and the companies that have built it have sprung up so fast and are making millions of dollars. I need to catch up on what's going on with AI in Silicon Valley, but this is a great one. Feltman: Yeah, I love when a book comes along that allows me to rectify the fact that I have been willfully trying to know as little about a subject [laughs] as possible. AI, I haven't quite been able to do that because it, it is too involved in my life and my job and this industry, but there are definitely things in the tech world where I'm like, 'Nope.' Everything I've learned about NFTs has been against my will. So when an incredibly talented science and technology reporter comes along and is like, 'Here, this is everything you need to know about this,' I'm like, 'Okay, great. Thank you.' [Laughs] Kane: I've never been to Silicon Valley, but I still wanna know what they're up to. Feltman: [Laughs] So what other recommendations do you have? Kane: I also wanted to recommend Waste Wars by Alexander Clapp. He spent two years living out of a backpack, traveling to the smelliest places of the most beautiful countries in the world, with hidden dump sites in jungles and millions of dollars being exchanged in black market economies just to move our garbage all around the world. Feltman: Wow, that sounds great. Do you have any fiction to recommend? Kane: There's a lot of really exciting fiction coming out this year, but one I wanted to talk to you [about], Rachel, is Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle. I know we're both big fans. Feltman: I love Chuck [laughs]. Kane: Lucky Day, coming out in August, is shockingly funny, and it's really scary. It's very existential: What is the meaning of life, and if there's no meaning in life, what's my meaning, and where am I going? It's really funny and really heartfelt in a way that Chuck Tingle can really handle: making you laugh and asking those big, existential questions. Feltman: Yeah, I haven't read that one yet. I know there are, like, ARCs floating around, and I'm, like, saving it, but I, I can't wait. I love all of his other books, so really excited. Kane: Yeah, another really weird and exciting fiction book out this year is Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert by Bob the Drag Queen. Feltman: Yeah, that one sounds really interesting. Kane: This one no one saw coming, but it's such a great take on historical fiction. I don't really read a lot of historical fiction, but I love the idea of taking a historical figure and bringing them to our modern world and [letting] the plot go from there. There's a lot of real history in this book, but Harriet Tubman has really been put on a pedestal for so long, and she's treated as a real person, with an incredible history and a searing, intense personality. It was so fun. This one is a great, really fast read—perfect for a beach day. Feltman: That sounds great. Kane: Another more interesting take on classic sci-fi is Metallic Realms by Lincoln Michel. It's a really funny and cringey story about someone who desperately loves their best friend and just wants to join their really cool science-fiction writing group—except he can't 'cause he's not really a writer and he's really annoying and weird. It's so funny to be stuck in this protagonist's head who just doesn't understand why they are being the cringey one, but they love science fiction, and it's a really creative version of the story within the story. Feltman: Yeah, that one sounds really interesting. Kane: And then for my own summer reading this year, I'm working on Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood series. My book club made me read the first one, Dawn, and I absolutely fell in love. It's a really brilliant and disturbing first-contact story. I've never really seen one that handles not only who am I when I interact with an alien, but what is humanity, and where does the line between human and alien blur once we start—copulating, I'll say? Feltman: Yeah, that series has been on my list for a long time. Over the last couple of years I finally picked up Parable of the Sower, also by Octavia Butler, and I was like, wow, I always knew this was a good book; everybody says it—it's a great book, and I believed them, but it's also so prescient, you know? Her speculative-fiction writing was just brilliant and forward-looking, so I'm also looking forward to reading more of her this summer, and you have inspired me. Kane: Yeah, I mean, Octavia Butler is awesome. The hype is real. Like, if you haven't checked her out yet, I really recommend checking out the backlist, and if you're more of a straight science-fiction reader, I highly recommend Dawn and the Lilith's Brood series; it's really unique science fiction. Feltman: Amazing, well, Bri, thank you so much for coming on and giving us these amazing recommendations. Would you remind our listeners where else they can find info on SciAm 's book lovers and the amazing stuff we do [laughs]? Kane: Yeah, I'll be reviewing books every Friday in our daily newsletter Today in Science. And keep an eye out later this year for our three end-of-year books lists: our staff favorites as usual, but we also have some best-of coming out. Feltman: And I am also participating in making that list, so—I'm constantly behind on my reading assignments for Bri, but I [laughs], but I'm working on it. And if listeners do wanna sign up for Today in Science, which they absolutely should, we'll have a link in our show notes today. Bri, thank you so much for coming on today. Kane: Thanks for having me, Rachel. I can't wait to see what you end up reading this summer. Feltman: That's all for today's episode. Don't forget to subscribe to Today in Science so you can get more of Bri's recommendations. Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses 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.
Scientific American
21-07-2025
- Science
- Scientific American
Were the Wright Brothers First in Flight? Inside a 1925 Dispute
Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American 's Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman. You may have noticed we've been taking a bit of a break from our usual Monday news roundup to make room for special episodes, including our bird flu series, as well as to accommodate some summer holidays and vacation plans for our small but mighty team. We'll be back to the news roundup format next week. For today I thought it would be fun to dip back into the Scientific American archives for a few minutes. Let's check in on what SciAm was up to exactly one century ago, in July of 1925. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. I'll start with the issue's cover story, which was contributed by the curator of marine life at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and seems to have been written, at least in large part, to introduce readers to the concept of tide pools. These are indents in rocky coastal areas that during high tide get filled with water, which remains trapped once the tide goes back out. The writer describes the abundant marine life that could be found in the high tide puddles of Woods Hole, Massachusetts and other Massachusetts tidal zones, waxing poetic about barnacles and sea worms, which he compares to 'acrobats' and 'Goddesses of the sea,' respectively. One hundred years later, scientists and laypeople alike are still quite taken with tide pools. They're really interesting environments: during low tide they're generally shallow enough that they can get quite warm, which can be challenging for the organisms living inside them. Other difficulties for these organisms include the fact that tide pools are easy for predators such as birds and crabs to access. On top of that, oxygen levels in the pool drop off between infusions of new seawater. Plus, tidal pool residents often have to withstand crashing waves when the ocean reaches them again. A lot has changed since 1925, but checking out tide pools is still a great pastime for anyone hanging around the coast. Depending on where you live, you can spot anemones, starfish, coral and even octopi, among other things. The issue also features a somewhat scathing assessment of the U.S. commercial aviation industry as it stood in 1925. According to Scientific American 's editors, someone visiting from abroad asked them whether one could travel from New York to Chicago by airplane. (He asked this question, by the way, by calling up the magazine's office. Life was hard before Google.) The editors told him that he'd have to hire his own airplane to make such a trip, which would be very expensive. But that got them thinking: Would this request have been reasonable in the traveler's home country? Thus began SciAm 's investigation into the world of commercial flight. RIP SciAM Editors, you would've loved The Rehearsal. The resulting article points out that in the U.S. in 1925 commercial aviation was mainly used to get mail from one coast to the other. Meanwhile, the article explains, countries in Europe were already in the midst of an aviation boom, using planes to move people and products all over the place. According to the article, one could travel from London to Berlin for $40, which amounts to about $753 today. That's not exactly bargain airfare, but it's not so far off from what a modern flier might pay to travel in business class, and one can imagine that most folks paying for the privilege of air travel in 1925 were either traveling for important business, flush with cash or more likely both. It's clear that the Scientific American editors were dismayed to find the U.S. lagging so far behind. In an inset titled, rather dramatically, 'Are We a Negligent People?' the magazine asks what has become of American aviation. 'We invented the airplane, neglected it, and left to Europe the task of putting it into widely extended commercial service,' the section reads probably in a transatlantic accent. 'As a people we are supposed to have a perfect genius for practising rapid-fire methods in our industrial activities. We are supposed to have developed time-saving into an exact science and have shown the world how to practise it. In the airplane, the Wrights gave us a time-saving machine which, if our business men had not been so possessed with the desire to make money and make it quickly, would today be one of our principal means of transportation for men, mail and light freight. Save for the fine work of the Army, the Navy, the Air Postal Service and a few private firms, we have done practically nothing, leaving to Europe the developing of commercial transportation.' That's not the only aviation tea in the July 1925 issue. In the magazine's 'Our Point of View' section the editors reflect on Orville Wright's decision to send the first power-driven, person-carrying aircraft to the British National Museum. If you're not familiar with this historical scandal, here's the gist: the Wright brothers are famous for making the first powered, controlled flight in 1903. But for decades the Smithsonian Institution tried to give that honor to Samuel Langley, its former secretary, whose own flying machine had crashed just days before the Wrights' aircraft succeeded. In 1914 the Smithsonian's director had Langley's aircraft retrofitted to prove it could have flown—if only it hadn't failed—and used that to award him the credit. The museum displayed the aircraft with a placard to that effect. Orville Wright was, understandably, displeased. In Scientific American 's July 1925 issue the editors say that the museum display is misleading and that Langley definitely did not beat the Wright brothers. 'The whole matter, indeed, may be regarded as very much of a tempest in a teapot,' the editors wrote, 'and it could easily be set right if the Smithsonian Institution would remove the objectionable placard and change it so that there could be no possible misunderstanding.' That wouldn't actually happen until 1928, and the Smithsonian didn't get around to apologizing until 1942. But hey, we tried! Though the U.S. was lagging behind in commercial flight, a graphic from the 1925 issue shows we were leading the charge in at least one technological arena: gabbing on the phone. The infographic contends that 62.9 percent of the world's telephones in 1925 were located in the U.S. and that the country led the way in phones per capita as well. We also came out ahead in terms of how often people got on the horn: the average person in the United States apparently sent 182 messages via phone each year, with second place going to Denmark with 123. And Russians, the editors noted, were 'content with four and one-half calls' each. Sure we're talking a lot, but are we actually saying anything? That's all for today's archival adventure. We'll be back on Wednesday to talk about some of SciAm 's hottest summer reading recommendations. And tune in next week for a return to our good old news roundup. Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses 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.
Scientific American
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scientific American
The Surprising Science of Dungeons and Dragons
Brennan Lee Mulligan talks about the emotional and cultural importance of Dungeons and Dragons. By , Kelso Harper, Fonda Mwangi & Alex Sugiura Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American 's Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman. Last April I spent a harrowing hour of my life trying to get tickets to a show at Madison Square Garden in New York City. I walked away with the cortisol levels of someone who'd just been hunted for sport and feeling lucky that I'd only spent, like, twice what I'd expected to. And sure, that's a pretty typical story these days, but I wasn't trying to snag tickets to see Taylor Swift or Beyoncé—I was competing with tens of thousands of people to go watch other people play Dungeons & Dragons. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. [CLIP: Cheering] Brennan Lee Mulligan: No, I did not think that would happen! I did not think that I would be DMing at Madison Square Garden. How could you—imagine, ugh, the gall! Ten years ago I'm like walking past Madison Square Garden to hit up another frozen yogurt shop for free samples because I can't afford lunch. I'm like, 'One day, baby, I'll be in there playing D&D. Count on it. Bet on that.' No, I would never have anticipated. Feltman: That was Brennan Lee Mulligan, a professional dungeon master, or DM. That means his job is to facilitate the playing of D&D. Brennan has made a name for himself through his work in 'actual play,' which is an entertainment genre, mostly podcasts but also streaming shows like his creation Dimension 20 on where people actually play D&D—and other people just take it in. That might sound bizarre if you're not super familiar with D&D, so I asked Brennan to give us a quick crash course on the game. Lee Mulligan: D&D is, first of all, an acronym, which is short for Dungeons & Dragons. And it is a tabletop role-playing game, so it is a game in which players gather around a table, either virtually or in person, and play the role of heroic adventurers being led through a series of stories and adventures and encounters by a dungeon master, who is running all of the non-player characters: the monsters and allies and enemies that they might meet in their adventures. So it is a way of collaboratively telling a story while also engaging in a game of tactics and strategy and magic and puzzles and problem-solving. Feltman: Quick note here: Dungeons & Dragons is a specific gaming system and one of many tabletop role-playing games. People refer to individual games—as in, 'I'm playing a game of checkers'—as campaigns, and they usually play out over many sessions. Some campaigns have been running for years. And you can theoretically play campaigns with all sorts of themes and motifs using the D&D system, from the classic elves and wizards and bards and rogues high-fantasy stuff to, say, a story about superpowered animals living in the ruins of a nuclear research facility, which you can find on But there are also lots of other tabletop role-playing games—some of which are played with dice like D&D but have different mechanics, and some of which are totally different. Lee Mulligan: 'Tabletop role-playing game' is the broad category, of which there are vast and sundry brilliant and incredible—from huge, crunchy, sci-fi space-adventure games to beautiful, lyrical indie games to everything under the sun in between. There are so many amazing games to play, all of which center, again, around that tabletop, which is that communal, shared experience, and then also the RPG aspect, where you're playing some kind of role or character. Feltman: A lot of the research we're going to talk about today is probably applicable to lots of different tabletop role-playing games, or TTRPGs. But because D&D is far and away the biggest household name in TTRPGs, most studies have focused on that system, and I'll probably say 'D&D' a lot when I could say 'D&D and probably lots of other TTRPGs' because, unlike many sessions of Dungeons & Dragons, this episode can't be five hours long. Because D&D is designed to feature complex storytelling arcs and offers tons of opportunity for character development, all of which will be unique to a particular campaign, it's basically like improvised theater. So when you pair a talented DM with players who are great actors and improvisers, you end up with a really compelling show. According to Polygon, actual play as we now know it first cropped up on YouTube and Twitch in the early 2010s, and the show Critical Role made a big splash a few years later. Brennan created Dimension 20 for the late Internet comedy company CollegeHumor in 2018. But D&D lovers agree that actual play took off in a whole new way—like a selling-out-MSG kinda way—during COVID lockdowns. Lee Mulligan: What I think the innovation of actual play is, is it says, 'Here is a high-octane, epic, fantasy-genre fiction story like the ones you grew up loving that is going to be profound, it's gonna say things, and you will fall in love with these characters—and it will, because of the nature of how it's being played, you will set-dress it yourself in your own imagination. You will be able to get lost like you did when you were, like, reading under a tree as a kid. And it is also going to have this other show, which is a reality show about a group of friends who genuinely love playing together.' I said one time, like, 'Imagine being, like, a groundling at the Globe Theatre and the first time Juliet dies, the other actors onstage go, 'Oh, shit, we didn't know that was gonna happen!' You know, like, that idea of that other level, which is this reality show—I think that moment during lockdown when a lot of people wanted storytelling but also wanted to feel like they had people on their side, didn't want to feel alone. Feltman: And actually playing D&D became really popular during the pandemic, too. The game's parent company, which is now owned by Hasbro, reportedly saw a more than 30 percent jump in D&D-related sales in 2020. Digital tools and platforms designed to help people play the game remotely already existed, and joining a campaign was a great way to socialize with your friends and add some routine back into your life during lockdown. That got a few tabletop-loving scientists thinking: Could they bring their favorite pastime into their research? Órla Walsh: I was interested in the mental health aspect of playing D&D and how playing impacted players' lives outside of the game, as well as while they were playing. Feltman: That's Órla Walsh, a fourth-year Ph.D. researcher at University College Cork in the south of Ireland. In 2024 she published a study on D&D after interviewing 10 players from Ireland, the U.K. and the U.S. Those players said D&D had a positive influence on their mental health, which tracked with Orla's own experience with the game. She also noticed a trend of players using their D&D characters to explore aspects of their own identities. One of her interviewees said D&D helped them come out to their fellow players. Walsh: They made a character who was coming out and used that to explore how it would feel to have people react to you coming out and was able to do that and afterwards say to their friends, 'Hey, that was actually real for me. That was actually me coming out,' and they found that that really just gave them the tool to do it. Feltman: She says that another player had just started a new job where she was the only woman, and she felt her confidence waning. She created a super confident, super assertive character, and when things got tough at work she'd ask herself what that character would do. Walsh: So they used role-playing as a tool for practicing skills or navigating real-world problems. And for me, that was the standout thing that was maybe unique to role-playing, or fantasy role-playing. Feltman: The world of D&D science is still small, but it's absolutely surged since the pandemic began. Alyssia Merrick, a Ph.D. candidate at James Cook University in Australia, published a tabletop study of her own in 2024. Her team recruited 25 community members to play eight-week campaigns. Alyssia Merrick: While they were completing their sort of mini campaign they were filling out surveys that looked at their mental health, and by about the eight-week mark, so when they finished the whole intervention, we saw improvements in all of the scales that we were looking at. Feltman: A month later scores from participants who followed up were still generally above baseline, though the researchers saw the biggest impact while the campaign was ongoing. Other studies published in recent years have suggested that TTRPG players are more empathetic than most and that these games can help people build group cohesion, improve their communication skills, enhance their critical thinking and explore aspects of their personal identities, including gender and sexuality. I've always been impressed with Brennan's ability to pull really deep emotional issues and profound conversations into his campaigns, so I asked him to tell us a little bit more about that aspect of the game. Lee Mulligan: For me, I often think about things I'm wrestling with, so it's not that I'm going to, like, a deep and profound point of, like, psychological pain to, like, put forth and be like, 'This is all your problem now!' but instead looking at, like: I will find creative fuel in building a character around something that I am struggling with or thinking about or an interesting ethical problem. I played a character called Evan Kelmp in a game who was a cursed, haunted wizard who wanted to be heroic, and that struggle between, 'Here's what my innate gifts are like: they are pretty bleak and haunting. Here's what my inner desire is: it is a desire for warmth and closeness, connection and belonging,' that struggle will keep being interesting because it's not resolvable. And the parts of that that feel real to me in terms of my own life and being like, 'I so desperately want to be social and be a part of things and be useful and helpful and constructive, and at times I don't always feel like I belong,' and that is a contradiction, and how do you navigate that? And so that does feel like a personal thing that you can, like, use games to explore, which is, like, what art is for, for me, what storytelling is for, for me. Feltman: Some researchers have looked at D&D as a therapy tool for people with autism spectrum disorder and found that the game allows players to practice recognizing social cues, having conversations and considering other people's points of view. Studies have also suggested that having a character as a buffer helps people with autism spectrum disorder feel more comfortable expressing their feelings. Orla says those findings resonate with her own experience. Walsh: I just finished a series of co-design sessions with autistic people and with experienced D&D players. Interestingly, I recruited for experienced players and there's only one neurotypical person in that group. There must be something drawing us [laughs] to the game. I'm autistic myself, and I like routine, and I find the game does have structure, and you have freedom, but you also have a structure that feels safe. And that's something that I find really beneficial, and I know others do as well. Feltman: So what is it about D&D that makes it good for us mentally and emotionally? Orla and Alyssia are part of a growing group of researchers who are working on figuring that out. Alyssia's Ph.D. project involves a randomized control trial designed to get into the nitty-gritty of D&D's benefits. And Orla is digging into which elements of gameplay are most important for helping players improve their mental health. But the two of them do have some instincts about what's going on. Merrick: I've spoken with other colleagues, mostly within Australia, and we're all sort of looking at two major theories. Looking at self-determination theory, so, you know, the idea that we need to be related to others, you need to have autonomy and freedom in your actions, and you need to feel competent in what you're doing. And then the other one is flow theory, so where you're so, you know, focused on the activity that you're doing that you just forget everything that's happening in the real world. But for some people it is really more beneficial just to take that time away and ingrain yourself in that character's mentality and fight whatever they're going to be fighting. Feltman: Or maybe D&D just brings together the benefits of lots of different types of hobbies all in one place. Walsh: One of the people that I interviewed had a really nice description of what it is about D&D that he finds so amazing. He described it as a bee going around to lots of different flowers getting pieces of pollen and said you could have a bunch of different hobbies that you can get different things from—so you could get creative expression from one place, you could get social support from another place—but D&D, as the player described it, was going straight to the honeypot. Feltman: I also asked Brennan to weigh in on this because while he might not be a psychologist, he's definitely a D&D expert—and he also plays a really good guidance counselor on TV. Lee Mulligan: Without necessarily going out on a limb and being like, 'This game will heal you—guaranteed!' I think that really what it comes down to is: storytelling obviously serves a profound psychological, cultural need. And I say this as—let me be very clear—a, like, philosophy-flavored comedian, you know? [Laughs] Like, I am not an academic or a doctor by any means. But I'll speak to my own personal experience, which is that, yeah, these games were transformative to my life and my mental health, right? And the way I relate to storytelling is often as a zip file for hard-won lessons and cultural information, for values, for ethics, right? How do we talk about what matters to us in a way that is—forget being persuasive to other people—that is persuasive to us. How do I tell myself what matters to me in a way that makes it cohere into a set of values? Often I think storytelling, even self to self, is how we do that. And here's, like, the real beauty of tabletop role-playing games: I am simultaneously audience and storyteller. I am gasping at a choice being made across the table and then able to share my reaction to it. There is an incredible democratization of the values that we encode into a story. Feltman: While there's still plenty of research to do, therapists are already working on harnessing the potential benefits of D&D for their patients. So-called therapeutic DMs, many of whom are licensed therapists, psychologists or other mental health professionals, run campaigns meant to help players gain confidence in their social skills, work through anxiety, manage PTSD symptoms and more. Donny Youssef, a licensed marriage and family therapist and licensed professional clinical counselor based in California, has been running therapeutic campaigns for a while now. They say that as a longtime player of D&D they weren't surprised when they found out therapists were using it to help patients. Donny Youssef: I've heard from so many friends in a lot of groups that I've played with, they're like, 'Yeah, D&D is therapy,' right? Even before I went to grad school, I was hearing that kind of, like, phrase that, you know, 'D&D is therapy.' And a lot of, like, the D&D shows that I watch, they kind of talk about that, too—that, like, this is a place to explore these identities and worlds. Feltman: Donny runs therapeutic campaigns for a few different groups of patients. They have sessions for community members with mental health conditions that are designed to help with building life skills and managing symptoms. They also run campaigns for trans and gender-questioning folks that give them a safe space to explore their identities. Donny says it's a great opportunity for people to get comfortable engaging with conflict and other unavoidable aspects of the real world. For instance, rolling a nat 1—which, if you don't know, is an absolute disaster—might lead the game in an unexpected direction, but things can still work out okay in the end. That experience may help people learn that adversity can be an opportunity for creativity and sometimes even playfulness. As for how therapeutic D&D works Donny says it's really just another modality of group therapy. Youssef: So the structure of it is: we have, like, an hour of gameplay, and then we have 45 minutes to an hour of debrief, processing. If we're doing more of a focus on group skills, then we're doing like, 'Okay, what skills did you notice?' I've heard people really explore things in ways that they never thought they would be able to do—even, like, for example, something that comes up a lot is being able to explore conflict within, like, family dynamics, right? Like, being able to create a character that is very reminiscent to your real-life experience and then doing something that you've always wanted to do, which might be coming out to a family member, coming out to a parental figure. And in therapy already, outside of D&D, a therapist sometimes becomes that and will say, 'Okay, so what would you like to say to your parent, to your guardian, to your best friend, to your partner? And pretend that I'm that person,' right? In D&D we're just creating a character—the DM creates a character that is like that, and the player kind of role-plays and imagines what it would feel like to say what they've been wanting to say. And then the debrief is like, 'Okay, how does that feel? How can you play your character this week, right? How can you embody your character?' I mean, we do tons of play therapy with children, right? We're just the same children that we were [laughs] back then, you know? We need that imagination and that play. Feltman: Donny says colleagues outside the tabletop realm have expressed a lot of excitement about their work using D&D. Given the boom in interest and research it seems likely that clinical uses of tabletop gaming are only going to get more common. If you wanna check out D&D therapy for yourself, you can search provider platforms like Psychology Today for group therapy sessions built around tabletop gaming. But you don't necessarily need a clinician's help to enjoy D&D. Even though we're still unpacking all the potential benefits of Dungeons & Dragons, one thing is already very clear: you can turn it into whatever game you need it to be. Lee Mulligan: What tabletop lends itself to is telling the exact story that you and your friends need. Feltman: So call up a few of your favorite people, get some good snacks, and dive into a campaign of your own—or go watch or listen to one. It might be just what the doctor ordered. That's all for today's episode. Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Special thanks to Orla Walsh, Alyssia Merrick, Donny Youssef and Brennan Lee Mulligan for lending us their expertise, and thanks to the folks at for coordinating our chat with Brennan. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news. For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman, wishing all you weary adventurers a wonderful weekend.
Scientific American
14-07-2025
- Health
- Scientific American
Bariatric Surgery Does Not Resolve Weight Stigma for Everyone
Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American 's Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman. While the use of weight-loss drugs is on the rise, they join a suite of already-common interventions known as bariatric surgeries. The procedures used vary, but generally, bariatric surgeries involve removing, restricting or rerouting parts of the gastrointestinal tract to change the amount of food the stomach can digest or absorb. More than half a million people undergo bariatric surgery globally each year. The reasons for pursuing surgery are complex. But a quick Google search makes one thing clear: these procedures are most often framed—and marketed—as tools for weight loss. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. That framing matters because in the U.S. research suggests that more than 40 percent of adults report experiencing weight stigma, or discriminatory attitudes or behavior based on body size, at some point. Such discrimination can obviously impact a person psychologically, but it can also make it harder for them to access good health care. You might assume that weight loss would reduce that stigma—or even make it disappear entirely. And while that's true for some people who undergo bariatric surgery, a significant number don't have that experience. Our guest today is Larissa McGarrity, a clinical associate professor for the School of Medicine at the University of Utah. She followed people after surgery to get a better understanding of how weight stigma impacted their lives. Thanks so much for coming on to chat today. Larissa McGarrity: Thank you. I'm excited to be here. Feltman: So how did this study come about? What led you to research the question of how weight stigma intersects with recovery from bariatric surgery? McGarrity: Sure. Really, it was inspired by my clinical work. I'm the lead psychologist at the University of Utah's comprehensive Weight Management Program, and after seeing hundreds of patients with severe obesity for assessments and therapy it's just so clear to me that the way these patients are treated in the world and the resulting way that they see themselves is a key factor in their overall mental and physical health. And this research really helps to support that growing body of literature that suggests the same thing. Feltman: Yeah, so can you walk us through how the study works and what your findings were? McGarrity: Sure, so we studied 148 patients who had had surgery at the University of Utah, and we repeated some psychological and social measures on these patients before surgery and then one and a half to three years after they underwent bariatric surgery in our program. And what we looked at for this study was the amount of weight stigma that they reported experiencing. And by weight stigma, I mean experiences of being devalued socially—experiencing judgment, discrimination and other mistreatment—as well as challenges physically and emotionally with being able to fit into public spaces and feeling like they belong in the world. And we looked at the difference from before surgery to after surgery and saw that there was an improvement for patients in the amount of weight stigma that they experienced, which is a good thing, and that that improvement was associated with some of the mental health outcomes we're really interested in: so depression, anxiety, binge eating, disordered eating—also, actually, lower weight in this case. But what we also saw on the flip side is that a significant proportion of patients, about 42 percent of them, still reported experiencing weight stigma at this [roughly] two- to three-year time point post-surgery. And for patients who did, they were at elevated risk for these mental health concerns, so stigma continues to be important in the years after bariatric surgery. Feltman: Mm, obviously, these results might sound counterintuitive to some people. What do you think is behind the continued stigma people are facing and the impacts that that seems to have on their health? McGarrity: Well, stigma doesn't just go away with weight loss, and I think there's a couple pieces to this. One piece is that bariatric surgery does not typically result in patients suddenly being in what we'd consider to be the typical BMI range. It results in significant weight loss. It's the leading evidence-based treatment for severe obesity. But really, bariatric surgery is about the metabolic effects and improvements for their function; their quality of life; remission of diabetes, hypertension, other medical issues. And so in our sample for this study we saw that the BMI change was significant but still resulted, on average, in patients still being in a category that's technically considered obesity if we were looking at BMI alone. So the fact that their bodies do not conform still, years after surgery, to what society would deem to be this unrealistically thin ideal makes it so that they are certainly still susceptible to these experiences of weight stigma and discrimination. And then the other piece to it is: a big piece of weight stigma is the way we see ourselves. Feltman: Mm. McGarrity: It's not just the way that we're treated but the way we internalize those messages in ways that are harmful for our mental and physical health, and bariatric surgery does not automatically make that disappear or change someone's body image and perception of themselves. Feltman: Could you unpack some of the ways that stigma could be driving poor health outcomes? McGarrity: Absolutely. Well, we know from the general literature, outside of bariatric surgery specifically, that weight stigma is related to a variety of negative mental and physical health implications. We know that independent of a person's baseline BMI and dependent on where their weight starts, their risk for the development of obesity, the exacerbation of obesity over time is predicted by weight stigma. And this probably happens in a few ways. We know that when people experience stigma it is a chronically stressful experience, and the effect of chronic stress on inflammation in the body and our physical health is significant. Another piece of it is health behaviors. So when you think about the health behaviors most people are trying to encourage when they inadvertently make some of these stigmatizing comments, [people] like health providers, it tends to result in being more demoralized and less likely to be motivated to engage in healthy physical activity or adaptive eating behaviors. And so those health behaviors then impact our weight and our health. And then there's also just aspects of social disconnection. When you experience stigma it often affects your entire social network and the interactions that you have interpersonally with the people around you, and we know social disconnection has a big impact on our overall health. And then the last area I would say is health care avoidance. When we think about having these experiences, especially in health care settings, it doesn't really promote wanting to then go to providers where you know you might be judged before you even speak. So several pathways that I think really influence our over—overall mental and physical health. Feltman: What do you think the takeaway should be here for people who might be considering bariatric surgery or providers who counsel patients on getting this kind of treatment? McGarrity: I think an important component is that the bariatric surgery clinical team can't directly change the amount of stigma that patients face out in the real world or in their personal lives. A little bit of a picture of what the experience is like for patients by the time they present for surgery—I think it can be helpful to sort of imagine this experience, imagine spending your whole life dealing with weight struggles and associated physical health challenges, in many cases. You undergo 10 or more serious attempts to lose weight through various fad diets that feel like starving yourself, exercising consistently, meeting with doctors and dieticians and psychologists, sometimes taking medications to assist. And with each attempt you usually regain all the weight, plus 8 to 10 percent. And you keep hearing the same message: 'Just eat less. Just exercise more. Just try harder.' This leaves you each time feeling more like a failure, blaming yourself for not having enough, quote, 'willpower' and experiencing stigma from your loved ones, your health care providers, strangers alike—just this idea that something's wrong with you or that you're lazy because of a chronic health condition. And it's not hard to imagine under those circumstances that mental health challenges would arise and, for many people, an unfortunate self-fulfilling prophecy: this idea that, actually, we have worse eating and sedentary behaviors when we're stigmatized, sometimes binge eating or other eating disorders, and ultimately risk for further weight gain and the development of comorbid medical problems. I think it's important to know that this cycle's not the exception; it's actually the norm for patients we see. This clinical picture's so common, and by the time a patient comes to surgery they've usually had many years of these negative messages from the people around them and society in general about their bodies and what that means about their value. The stigma's pervasive and harmful, and the key takeaway here is that it doesn't just go away with weight loss, it doesn't just go away after bariatric surgery, and that stigma may actually be a more important component of patient mental health in the years after surgery than weight or weight loss is. But what we can do is not be one more place where that stigma is perpetuated. We can provide accurate information about weight and how complex it is and that it's not as simple as this 'Just eat less; just exercise more' message that patients get constantly for years by the time they've come to an office to consider bariatric surgery. We can really focus on treating the whole person and their whole health and I think really [focus] on weight stigma as a core piece of that health picture, the same way we would consider any other risk factor for their health. We should have those conversations explicitly with patients. We should acknowledge the experiences that they've had and [that] that's been a piece of their mental and physical health currently and will likely continue to be a piece of it, even in the years after surgery. So I think the emphasis on the kinds of conversations we can have with patients so that they know we see them as a whole person, they know that we see the complexity of what has contributed to weight gain over time and that we wanna work with them on not just their physical health but also their mental health and how they've internalized some of these messages over time to make surgery most successful for their quality of life. Feltman: And what about the implications for health care for higher-weight patients outside of bariatric surgery? McGarrity: I think an important message is: you know, to the extent possible, even though these messages and stigma are everywhere—they're in the media, they're in public health messaging, they're in their doctors' offices—a really important aspect is recognizing that we do have some control over the extent to which we internalize those messages and some control over the conversations that we can have with friends and family members who may be perpetuating some of this. And it shouldn't be on the person who's struggling with their weight to educate everyone around them, but the reality is that sometimes that does fall on the person who has the weight challenges, right? That it's important to have conversations to educate the people around you and also for yourself to know that you have worth and value as a person that has absolutely nothing to do with what your weight or shape or size is. Feltman: Given the really long-term relationship with weight loss that patients tend to have before turning to bariatric surgery and the connection you saw between weight stigma and negative outcomes, what do you think could change about health care to maybe help some of these patients get better health outcomes before getting to the point where they're considering bariatric surgery? McGarrity: Yeah, that's a great question. A lot of researchers have been advocating for a weight-neutral approach to health care, even in weight-management clinic settings. Bariatric surgery is a metabolic surgery; it's much broader than just weight loss and results in improvement in medical conditions, in overall health and function, and so we don't need to focus on the number on the scale. We don't need to focus so much on weight, whether it's in a bariatric surgery setting or primary care or any other health care setting. It's completely possible to work with patients of all shapes and sizes on overall healthy behaviors—and by that I don't mean a fad diet; I mean eating and exercising in a way that makes your body and mind feel good—without weight needing to be the focus. Feltman: Thank you so much for coming on today to chat. McGarrity: Thank you, I appreciate it. Feltman: That's all for today's episode. For more on the topic of weight stigma and health, check out our November 8 interview with Ragen Chastain. We'll be back on Wednesday with something super special: an inside look at the MIT lab where scientists are working to detect gravitational waves. And tune in on Friday for a deep dive on the psychology of Dungeons and Dragons, featuring bona fide D&D celebrity Brennan Lee Mulligan. Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses 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.
