In The Land Of Hope And Grief
An art therapy project in an Alaska Native village helps teens talk about suicide in their community. By offering helping hands to their peers, these young people are learning to believe in themselves and preparing to guide their communities and cultures into a new era.

What Happens After Stealing A Van Gogh Painting
Thieves stole an 1884 oil painting by Vincent van Gogh called “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring” from the Singer Laren art museum near Amsterdam. What do the criminals do with a stolen painting, and how could they get caught?

Why So Many Americans Are Turning To Buddhism
There are now dozens of Buddhist podcasts, among many more apps and playlists geared specifically toward personal, non-Buddhist meditation. Four in 10 American adults now say they meditate at least weekly. The ancient Eastern religion is helping Westerners with very modern mental-health problems.

The Great Fitness Scam
A new report found that Americans spent $264.6 billion dollars on physical activity in 2018, far more than any other nation. And yet, according to the academic journal The Lancet, for all of this spending, we rank 143rd globally for actual participation in physical activity.. How do we break the cycle?

Motorized Photographs Of Sunset Blvd. And Other L.A. Streets
Commissioned by The Getty Museum to the painter, draftsman, photographer, and bookmaker, Ed Ruscha. Utilizing The Getty Research Institute’s preservation and digitization of over a million images from Ed’s Streets of Los Angeles photo series, and excerpts from Jack Kerouac’s “On The Road.”

The Dark Side Of Charisma
Charisma is a force that can rally people during difficult times, but it can also blind people and lead them to accept unwise actions, policies or conditions. And when it comes to leadership, political and professional, charisma matters more than we’d probably like to admit.

Why Vitamin Pills Don’t Work, And May Be Bad For You
We dose up on antioxidants as if they are the elixir of life. At best, they are probably ineffective. At worse, they may just send you to an early grave.

Nao Tatsumi Paints From Google Street View For Its Neutral Gaze
Looking at Nao Tatsumi’s tranquil paintings, it’s evident that the Japanese artist has a background in architecture. The Tokyo-based illustrator and artist turns to the web rather than the outdoors for inspiration, fascinated by the impartial gaze that Google’s location tool offers.

Art Detectives Go Deep Inside The Criminal Underworld On Hunt For Stolen Van Gogh
When a thief stole a multimillion-dollar painting by Vincent van Gogh from a small museum in the Netherlands, Octave Durham almost immediately found himself a person of interest. “It’s not a coincidence, because most of the time I did it. But now I’m retired.”

The Curse Of America’s Illogical School-Day Schedule
The average start time for public high schools, 7:59, requires teens to get up earlier than is ideal for their biological clocks, meaning many teens disrupt their natural sleep patterns every school day. The world, apparently, does not revolve around parents either. Their lives also tend to be mismatched with school-day schedules.

A Simple Formula For Changing Our Behavior
Identify the problem. State what needs to happen. Offer to help. Simple, right? If we want to learn, we need to tolerate the feeling of inauthenticity long enough to integrate the new way of being. Long enough for the new way of being to feel natural.

My Journey Through Tijuana For The Best Surgery $2,000 Can Buy
We ended up living in northern Baja, joining the millions of people who commute between Tijuana and San Diego at the busiest international border crossing in the Western Hemisphere. Medical tourism is one of the leading industries connecting the two regions.

We Are Living In A Failed State
When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills—a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public—had gone untreated for years. We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms.

Retiring Retirement
We’re going to see something we’ve never seen before—people in their 60s, 70s and 80s functioning at an exceptionally high level who want to continue working and remain connected. The question is whether society will adapt to make the most of this new labor pool.

The Lonely City: Adventures In The Art Of Being Alone
Loneliness is difficult to confess; difficult too to categorize. Like depression, a state with which it often intersects, it can run deep in the fabric of a person, as much a part of one’s being as laughing easily or having red hair.

When A Performance Expert Battles Mental Illness
Brad Stulberg literally wrote a book on peak performance, but he had to reconsider everything after an unexpected battle with mental illness: “I felt detached from my body, as if I was in a virtual-reality video game. Soon I was completely paralyzed by the sense that I was losing my mind.”

What It’s Like to Live In A California Ghost Town
To be an off-season caretaker of Bodie, California (winter population: 5), you need a high tolerance for cold, solitude, and two-hour grocery runs.

The Key To Good Luck Is An Open Mind
What do these people have that the rest of us don’t? It turns out “ability” is the key word here. Beyond their level of privilege or the circumstances they were born into, the luckiest people may have a specific set of skills that bring chance opportunities their way.

The Law That’s Helping Fuel Delhi’s Deadly Air Pollution
The World Health Organization reported last year that 11 of the 12 cities in the world with the most pollution from PM2.5 were in India. A policy to conserve water resources led to the rise of a major source of air pollution, making breathing Delhi’s air as bad as smoking 50 cigarettes.

The Dutch Solution To Busyness That Captivated The World
Niksen – a Dutch wellness trend that means “doing nothing” – has caught the attention of the world as a way to manage stress or recover from burnout. Whereas mindfulness is about being present in the moment, niksen is more about carving out time to just be, letting your mind wander wherever it wants to go.

Confused About What To Eat? Science Can Help
Potent societal powers create a culture of nutrition confusion that not only obfuscate the truth about diet, they undermine science as a whole. Begin by asking critical questions when digesting diet news. Does the writer have an advanced degree in nutrition, or does she or he have expertise in science journalism?