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Scientific American
16 hours 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
4 days ago
- Science
- Scientific American
What It's Like to Live and Work on the Greenland Ice Sheet
This story was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center. This story was made possible through the assistance of the U.S. National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs. Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American 's Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman. Five and a half trillion tons. That's how much ice has melted out of the Greenland ice sheet since just 2002. 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. It's a number almost too large to wrap your head around. But if you took that much water and used it to fill Olympic-size pools—which hold [about] 600,000 gallons, by the way—you'd have a lap pool for every person living in Africa and Europe, all 2.2 billion of them. The reason we know this is that for more than 20 years, satellites have been watching and measuring the so-called mass loss from Greenland's ice sheet—one of only two ice sheets in the world. Antarctica is the other one. What science doesn't know is how the Greenland ice sheet might come apart. And that's a really important question to answer, since it has a total of 24 feet of sea-level rise still locked up in its icy mass. Today on the show we're talking to one of our own: Jeff DelViscio, the head of multimedia at SciAm and executive producer of the podcast. Last year Jeff ventured out onto the ice sheet for a month. He went with members of a scientific expedition whose sole goal was to drill through the ice to get the rock below, and he's going to tell us why that matters when it comes to Greenland and the future of the ice sheet. Thanks for coming onto the show, Jeff. Jeff DelViscio: Thanks for having me, Rachel. Feltman: So why did you go to Greenland? What was this expedition all about? DelViscio: This was a project called GreenDrill, and GreenDrill is primarily based out of two institutions, where there are two co-PIs—so principal investigators—who are working on it: one at Columbia University and one at the University at Buffalo. And they have pulled this project together that was meant to go into different parts of Greenland and selectively sample the ice sheet to be able to figure out what was going on with it: its state, its health and how they could push the science forward on what they understand about the Greenland ice sheet and how it's built and, ultimately, how it comes apart. Feltman: What was life actually like on an ice sheet? Do you feel like you were prepared, or were there any surprises that came your way? DelViscio: I was absolutely not prepared. This was my first reporting in a polar zone, and once you get there you realize that a big part of your safety and well-being really depends on the people who are there with you ... Feltman: Mm. DelViscio: And there was decades' worth of experience out there on the ice sheet, and we can talk about this, but it took a long time to actually get to where I was going, and that was a whole part of the process. But once I actually arrived on the ice sheet proper, I think the first day I was there, temperatures were right around –20 degrees Fahrenheit [about –28.9 degrees Celsius]. Feltman: Wow. DelViscio: And the first night I slept on it, I actually was at a place in the middle of the ice sheet, at a Danish ice-coring camp, in transit over to the, the final location where the GreenDrill team was doing their work, and they had these 6x6 [foot] tents called Arctic ovens—it was not an oven inside. But those were out right on the ice sheet. And they said, 'Well, camp is pretty full. You should probably go out and sleep in a tent because you need to get used to it. You're gonna be out here for a while.' And so I did that, and it was a real experience, that first night. DelViscio (tape): So I guess I kind of asked for this. I wanted to go here and do this story. It's fine [laughs]. It's just maybe a rough first go, but I can try to go to bed, see if I can get some sleep. This is what it is right now. This is good practice. There's actually a station here, so if I really get uncomfortable, I suppose I could go inside. That's not gonna be the case if we hit the field camp. Um, yeah, glorious reporting work in the polar arctic. Here we are. Goodnight day one on the Greenland ice sheet. DelViscio: It was about –20 outside and maybe about 10 degrees, 15 degrees better in the, in the tent, so all night about zero [degrees F, or about –17.8 degrees C], –5 [degrees F, or about –20.6 degrees C], –10 [degrees F, or about –23.3 degrees C], and it was also at about 8,500 feet [2,590.8 meters] on the top of the ice sheet ... Feltman: Mm. DelViscio: Which, you know, you're kind of on a mountain already; it's like being in the Rockies but on the top of a big, wide ice sheet. In every direction you look there's nothing—there's no features; there's nothing—and you're just laying on ice all night, and it, it was painful ... Feltman: Yeah. DelViscio: I'm not gonna lie about it; it was painful. And you have a sleeping bag that's rated at –40 degrees [F, or –40 degrees C], and you have a hot-water bottle that you put in to, to try to warm yourself up, but my face was sort of sticking out of the mummy-bag hole, and I would breathe and there would just be ice crystals forming on my beard and face ... Feltman: Wow. DelViscio: As I breathed out, so a little bit of a rough intro. But I did question why I was there. DelViscio (tape): Well, I made it through my first night. I wouldn't say it was pleasant—really cold the whole time [laughs]. That's—tough to get comfortable at any point. I don't know how people do this for long periods of time. Brutal, yeah. But I made it. DelViscio: But I did get through it, and there was a lot of experience, like I said, people who knew what they were doing, which really helped. Feltman: Yeah, well, you mentioned that getting out there took a really long time. How did you get there, and where did you end up? DelViscio: Yeah, so it's a process, and I had no idea how any of this worked before I, I got on the expedition, but typically, the U.S. military actually flies a lot of the science flights because there's a bit of history, and I—i n my feature you can read a little bit about that—because the U.S. military's been out on the, on the ice for decades for other reasons than ice-core research and climatology research but I went to a base in upstate New York, got on a big cargo plane ... Air Force announcer: In the event of a loss of pressurization issue, if you're to look over your left or right shoulder, there's a vertical rectangular panel on the wall ... DelViscio: Which flew to Kangerlussuaq, basically a staging location where all the science people kind of come in from all different parts of the world. You sort of sit there and you wait until the conditions are right so you can get onto another cargo plane ... DelViscio (tape): So this is it. We're in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, and today we're shipping out to the ice. [CLIP: Sound of a Hercules C-130 cargo plane throttling up] DelViscio: Which then takes you and your whole crew out to, for us, a staging location, the Danish ice-coring site I mentioned, out in the middle of the ice 'cause it's too far to go directly to the site. DelViscio (tape): Okay, here we are: Greenland ice sheet. This is the EastGRIP [East Greenland Ice-Core Project] Danish site. It is cold. My camera's not loving this, but here we are. There's a station behind me and the sun just trying to peek through. Just came in on the Air National Guard C-130. They're pulling our stuff over. Here we go. DelViscio: Once you get on that smaller plane and, you know, manage all the weather and get out there in time, you sort of sit there and you kind of load up a smaller cargo plane ... [CLIP: Sound of a Twin Otter cargo plane throttling up] DelViscio: To take you yet another step, the final leg, to the GreenDrill site, which is out in the northeast part of Greenland—literally the middle of nowhere: hundreds of miles in every direction, there's just ice and you. [CLIP: Sound of wind blowing across the ice sheet at the GreenDrill camp] DelViscio: So it's a real production. It took about 20 flights for all ... Feltman: Wow. DelViscio: Of the people, logistics and gear. There's probably about 20,000 pounds' worth of gear, including the drilling equipment that we had to take. So it takes a week just to get there, and then you're sort of flat-out working once you actually do get there; the team knows that there's only so much time and there's a closing window, so it's kind of a scramble, but it's a long scramble just to get to there. Feltman: And where exactly are all those planes and gear going to? DelViscio: So they're going to a totally unpopulated part of the northeast Greenland ice sheet, but it was a really important location, and it was picked for a reason. Imagine this sort of large dome of ice. The way in which it actually moves—and it does move—is that snow falls on the top and sort of compresses, then spills out across the ice sheet, and part of that spill-out happens through these things called ice streams. And they're like a stream you would imagine in the water world, but they're just made of fully solid ice, and they're literally flowing away from the top of the ice sheet at a speed that's a lot faster than the surrounding ice, so you can actually see them in satellite data. And so we were positioned right at the edge of something called the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream, which drains about 12 to 16 percent of the ice sheet, so, like, basically over 10 percent of the water that's kind of going out and moving to the sea, getting into glaciers and then going into the ocean comes through this massive ice stream, which is really just this big tongue of ice moving faster than the surrounding parts of it. That location is really important to understand how the ice sheet loses its mass, and if you sample at just the right point, then you can understand, in this really critical portion of the ice sheet, exactly how that ice stream works in terms of keeping the ice either growing or shrinking, and right now it's really shrinking, so they wanna understand how these streams can play a part in pulling the ice sheet apart itself. Feltman: Yeah, let's talk more about the science. What kind of experiments are going on here? DelViscio: Yeah, so there's all of this ice, right? And in the past 60 years or so people have gone to the Greenland ice sheet to basically pull these long tubes of ice out of the ice sheet itself and use the ice as a record of climate change because ice is laid down yearly and it's basically like a tree ring ... Feltman: Mm-hmm. DelViscio: But in an ice sheet. And if you pull out large sections of it from the middle of the ice sheet, you can get up to [roughly] 125,000 years of climate: the snow falls, it compresses it captures the air that was above it at the time in little air bubbles, so the ice cores are these records of climate going into the past. Everyone was always focused on the ice, since the, like, '60s: 'What can the ice tell us about climate? How can we connect it up to other records of climate change and paleoclimate in the other parts of the world?' But no one, or very few people, looked underneath it. And the important part about being underneath the ice sheet is that the rock itself that's under the ice sheet tells you something about when it's had ice on it and when it hasn't, and when it hasn't is a really important part of that because if we're wondering about how the ice sheet breaks up, we really have to know how quickly that's happened in the past. And at this point science has very little idea about how that actually works. So what they did was: We were out there with these small drills, packed up in kind of containers. You take the drill and you drill all the way through the ice ... [CLIP: Sound of the Winkie Drill drilling through the ice sheet] DelViscio: And you're not happy when you get to the bottom of it—you stop, and then you keep going, and you pull the rock out from underneath the ice. The game here is to do measurements on that rock and see what it will tell you about when this place had ice and when it didn't. There is kind of a great quote from one of the co-principal investigators on the project that really kind of summed up why they started doing this. Here's what he had to say. Joerg Schaefer: [In] 2016 was the first study that was led by us that shows that you have these tools, these geochemical isotopic tools, to interview bedrock, and the bedrock actually talks to us. Since then it's clear to us, at least, that that's a new branch of science that is absolutely critical—it's really at the interface of basic geochemical and climate science and societal impact. It's one of these rare occasions that there is direct contact between basic research and scientific impact and questions like climate and social justice, so it's a very—scientifically, an extremely exciting time. [In] the same moment I must say that everything we have found out so far is very scary. And I kind of have, [for] the first time ever in my career, I have datasets that I—take my sleep away at night, simply because they are so direct and tell me, 'Oof, this ice sheet is in so much trouble.' DelViscio: That's Joerg Schaefer from Columbia University. Feltman: What was it about those datasets that he found so troubling? DelViscio: Sure, so I just talked about that long ice core that they pulled from the middle of the ice sheet and using that as a record. In the 1990s one of those was pulled at a place called GISP2, which is the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 site. It was an American site, and they went further than anybody else had in the past, and once they got through the entirety of that ice, about 10,000 feet worth of ice, they pushed the drill farther, slammed it down into the rock and pulled some rocks out. Now, the ice core went off to be in thousands and thousands of other papers connected to records all over the world; the rock underneath went to a freezer and got stored, and people basically forgot about it. Joerg Schaefer and Jason Briner of the University at Buffalo, in the early 2010s they realized that that rock could tell you something, and now they had chemical tools to analyze that rock in a way that it hadn't [been] before. And so they went back and got that rock, they tested it, and in 2016 they published a paper that showed: at that site in the middle of the ice sheet, their chemical tests told them that it was ice-free within the last million years. That means the whole ice sheet was gone. Feltman: Wow. DelViscio: And that was way quicker than anybody thought was possible. And so that spurred this whole next step, which was: 'If we got more of these rocks from different parts of the ice sheet, what else will it tell us about how quickly this happens?' Jason Briner: The bed of the ice sheet contains a history of the ice that covers it—basically the words, the stories of the history of the ice sheet. It's a book of information down there that we want to read if we can get those samples. DelViscio: That's Jason Briner. So that was the seed of this whole thing. So if you stick this soda straw down into the rock and you pull it back out, you can test multiple locations, and it could tell you, 'Here there was no ice then. Here there was no ice then. Here there was no ice then,' around the ice sheet as a way to sort of test ... Feltman: Hmm. DelViscio: How it sort of shrinks back to its teeny-tiny state. Feltman: And how do you get that kind of signal out of a rock? DelViscio: It's complicated [laughs]. It—you know, I wasn't a chemistry major in, in school; I was a geology major. But one of the researchers in the field, Allie Balter-Kennedy, you know, she has a good way of thinking about it. Why don't I just pull Allie in to talk about how this signal comes into the rock? Allie Balter-Kennedy: So there's cosmic rays that come in from outer space at all times, and when they interact with rocks they create these nuclear reactions that create isotopes or nuclides that we don't otherwise find on Earth. And we know the rate at which those nuclides are produced, so if we can measure them, we can figure out how long that rock has been exposed to these cosmic rays—or, kind of in our field, how long that rock has been ice-free. And so when you do that underneath an ice sheet, you get a sense of when the last time the rock was exposed and also how long it was exposed for, so it's a pretty powerful method for learning about times when ice was smaller than it is now. DelViscio: These nuclides are the signal inside the rock. If you can tell how much of it is in the rock and how quickly those signals should decay, if you see jumps in that signal, you can tell that ice was over top of it and it stopped the barrage from the universe, so it turned the signal on and off. Feltman: Hmm. DelViscio: And that's sort of how they look at the signal, is like: 'Is it on; is it off? Is it on; is it off?' And that tells you, in a way: 'There was ice over top, or there wasn't. There was ice over top, or there wasn't.' Feltman: Wow, yes, that does sound very complicated [laughs] but also very cool. Did the team end up actually getting what they were after? DelViscio: Yeah, so it was kind of down to the line. After all the traveling and all the logistics, and there was some weather and delays, and there [were] cargo flights that couldn't land, basically, everything got compressed into about three weeks on the ice at the site. That's not a whole lot of time to do what they were trying to do. It's a spoiler alert, but if you read the feature, you'll hear about exactly how this happened, but they did end up getting not just one of these samples, but two ... Feltman: Hmm. DelViscio: From two different sites, which you can sort of test against each other to make sure you got the right stuff. All the way to the last few days before extraction they were drilling, trying to get the rock samples. But there was this moment out on the ice, right towards when we sort of wrapped up, where I remember it felt unseasonably warm. [CLIP: Sound of the members of the GreenDrill team around the Winkie Drill] DelViscio: It was about 25 degrees [F, or about –3.9 degrees C], which is balmy ... Feltman: Yeah. DelViscio: On the ice sheet. And honestly, the, the drill was just, after going through a couple rounds where it was tough going, sort of sliced like, you know, a knife through hot bread down to the ice and got the rock out, and they got this beautiful long core. Caleb Walcott-George: Heavy! Elliot Moravec: That there's genuine rock core. Walcott-George: Oh, baby. DelViscio: I just remember, Caleb Walcott-George, who was one of the scientists on the expedition, just, like, hoisted it like it was, like, this prized bass. Feltman: Yeah. DelViscio: And there was sort of this shout all around the camp. Walcott-George: Oh, too late [laughs]! Tanner Kuhl: I was just baiting ya. DelViscio: And when they closed the hole they had this liquor called Gammel Dansk, which is this Danish liqueur, but they call it 'driller's fluid.' Moravec: There it is. Forest Harmon: You gotta lace it right down in the casing, dude. DelViscio: And they poured one down the hole to close it out as a way to sort of give the hole something back. Moravec: Bottoms up. Walcott-George: You wanna see something I made? Moravec: That's all she wrote. Kuhl: Well-done. DelViscio: It was this really clean finish to what had been a pretty stressful couple weeks, just trying to get samples back with the window of time closing. So it was a, a nice moment out on the ice and, you know, just had music playing, and it felt like not the end of the world in the middle of an ice sheet but a tight-knit science camp where things were going right. Feltman: Yeah, that must've been really cool 'cause I feel like there's not a lot of field work where, when you get the thing you're looking for, it's, like, sturdy and hoistable [laughs], so that's fun. DelViscio: For sure. Feltman: And I'm sure, you know, there's gonna be years of follow-up research on this data, but what are they learning from their time in the field? DelViscio: They had a, a site in another part of Greenland from the year before where they did the same kind of work, and they're just at the point at where they're publishing that. And what it looks like is that there's this place called Prudhoe Dome, which is in the northwest part of Greenland, where there was this big ice dome, and what those tests told them was: it looked very probable within the Holocene, so in the last 10,000 years, that the ice was completely gone there. Feltman: Hmm. DelViscio: And it was a lot of ice to take away that quickly. Again, it's, you know, you're sort of going from this 2016 paper, which says a million years ago it was ice-free—a million years is a long time. Feltman: Yeah. DelViscio: But even a sample in a place where there's a whole lot of ice in the northwest of Greenland and having it gone within the last 10,000 years, with climatic conditions that are close to what we're experiencing now, that puts it on a 'our threat' kind of level. Feltman: Yeah. DelViscio: Because ultimately, you know, if the whole of the ice sheet melted, that's 24 feet of sea-level rise. That means massive migration, totally changes the surface of the planet. But you don't need 24 feet to really mess some stuff up. So even five inches or 10 inches or a foot and a half is kind of life-changing for coastal communities around the world. Every amount of exactitude they can get on how this thing changes, breaks up and melts is just a little bit more help for humanity in terms of planning for that kind of scenario, which, given the state of our climate, seems like we're gonna get more melt before we get it growing back, so it's definitely coming—the, the melt is coming; the flood is coming. Feltman: Well, thanks so much for coming on to share some of your Greenland story with us, Jeff. DelViscio: Of course, I was happy to freeze my butt off to get this story for our readers and listeners [laughs]. Feltman: 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 and reported by Jeff DelViscio. You can check out his July/ August cover story, ' Greenland's Frozen Secret,' on the website now. We'll put a link to it in our show notes, too. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Special thanks to the whole GreenDrill team, including Allie Balter-Kennedy, Caleb Walcott-George, Joerg Schaefer, Jason Briner, Tanner Kuhl, Forest Harmon, Elliot Moravec, Matt Anfinson, Barbara Olga Hild, Arnar Pall Gíslason and Zoe Courville for all their insights and support in the field. Jeff's reporting was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center and made possible through the assistance of the U.S. National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs. For Science Quickly, this is Rachel Feltman.
Scientific American
6 days ago
- 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.
