Welcome back to our weekly behind-the-scenes glimpse at what’s getting our team talking. Tell us what you’ve been reading at info@reasonstobecheerful.world and we just might feature it here. Filthy clean energy Denver’s goal is to reduce its greenhouse gases to zero by 2040, which means throwing everything it possibly can at the problem — and apparently, that includes sewage. According to an NPR story shared by Contributing Editor Geetanjali Krishna, the Colorado capital will pilot a “thermal energy network” to heat and cool some of its buildings. These buildings will be linked together by a loop of circulating water that will be warmed, in part, from heat drawn from the city’s sewage system (yes, sewage is hot — try not to think about it.) Geetanjali says: It feels like the kind of innovation Indian cities should be experimenting with instead of endlessly installing air-conditioners (although as temperatures in New Delhi are hitting 110 F and up, the AC is my best friend these days!) Suddenly I See Flooding neighborhoods with cops may cut down on crime, but the tactic comes with consequences. What if crime could be zapped with something much simpler: light? An Atlantic story shared by Executive Editor Will Doig delves into the evidence showing that good urban lighting doesn’t just make crime move to darker places — it reduces it. Will says: I’ve always been a little creeped out by the anti-crime flood lights installed on certain blocks by the New York Police Department, which somehow feel menacing in and of themselves. But we had a fatal late-night shooting down the block from my apartment a few weeks ago, and it’s hard not to wonder whether the death might have been prevented with something as simple as better lighting. What else we’re reading  A Cattle Ranch Is Doing What the Ivy League Can’t — shared by Contributing Editor Michaela Haas from the New York Times  Come for the Biking, Stay for the Otters — shared by Founder David Byrne from Bloomberg News (subscription required)  “This May Well Be the Most Consequential Case in the History of Humanity” — shared by Contributing Editor Michaela Haas from Meditations in an Emergency Meet the “Hyper A.D.U.” — shared by Will Doig from the New York Times In other news… Last week, RTBC Founder David Byrne performed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert — one of the show’s last musical acts before it went off the air forever. Watch the performance here. The post What We’re Reading: Denver’s Newest Clean Energy Source Will Be Sewage appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.

We all know that Americans pay more for healthcare than every other country in the world. But how much more? According to an American student who shared the story of his ER visit in a Taiwanese hospital, Americans are being taken to the cleaners when we go to the doctor. We live in a country that claims to be the greatest in the world, but where an emergency trip to the hospital can easily bankrupt someone. Doctors race through a corridor. Photo credit: Canva Kevin Bozeat, a 25-year-old student at the time, had that fact in mind when he fell ill while studying in Taiwan and needed to go to the hospital. He didn’t have insurance and he had no idea how much it was going to cost him. He shared the experience in a now-viral Facebook post he called “The Horrors of Socialized Medicine: A first hand experience.” It started with a stomach ache Bozeat’s stomach began to hurt. Not thinking much of it, he went home to rest. Then, he started vomiting and couldn’t stop, unable to even keep water down. “My symptoms showed no signs of abating,” he wrote. “At this point I had to seek medical treatment, I knew I had to go to the hospital.” “I wanted to avoid it,” he added. “I had no idea how different Taiwanese hospitals would be, whether I would be able to find an English speaking doctor, or what it would cost me (my US health insurance has lapsed and I don’t qualify for Taiwanese NHI).” Taiwan’s National Health Insurance (NHI) is a single-payer system that covers all residents of Taiwan. Foreigners can take part in the system immediately upon obtaining a work permit, or after six months of living in the country. As a student, Bozeat hadn’t lived there long enough to be eligible yet. But he needn’t have worried. Bozeat’s bill for his entire hospital stay was a fraction of many insured Americans’ copays for emergency services. And it’s not like he received substandard service for what he paid. “My Taiwanese roommate called a taxi and took me to the ER at NTU Hospital,” Bozeat wrote. “I was immediately checked-in by an English speaking nurse. Within 20 minutes I was given IV fluids and anti-emetics. They took blood tests and did an ultrasound to ensure it wasn’t gall stones or appendicitis. From there I was given a diagnosis: a particularly severe case of Acute Viral Gastroenteritis (aka the stomach flu). After about 3 hours on an IV, I began to feel slightly better, my nausea disappeared and my stomach began to calm down.” The bill arrived and he could not believe it Bozeat was discharged with a prescription for anti-emetics and pain medication, and after a few days he was back to normal. This is when most of us would start panicking as we wait for the hospital bills to arrive. But Bozeat was pleasantly surprised: “The bill for the ER visit?…US $80.00. Eighty. American. Dollars. Out of pocket. Full cost. No discounts. No insurance. At one of the best hospitals in Taiwan. And if I had NHI, it would have been a fraction of that. This could have easily cost me hundreds or even thousands in the US without insurance. But here in Taiwan I was able to receive speedy, quality care comparable to what I would have gotten in a US hospital for relatively small amount of money.” I did some research, and the cost of living overall in Taiwan has historically been significantly lower than in the U.S. There is not a hospital that I know of in the U.S. where you can be admitted and discharged for anything close to $160, even for something as simple as a bee sting. (Seriously, an ER visit for a bee sting can set you back $12,000 in the U.S.) What would it actually cost you each month? Bozeat also pointed out that the taxes that pay for Taiwan’s health system are not that high. View this post on Instagram Responding to the common complaint that we’d have to raise taxes to pay for universal healthcare, Bozeat addressed that with a listicle: “Yes, taxes pay for the healthcare here. No, they are not high. Try for yourself: The formula for the NHI monthly premium contribution for a single employed adult is: [your monthly income] x 0.0517 (5.17%) x 0.3 (30%) = Your monthly out-of-pocket healthcare premium. I did the math for a $60,000 per year income at the current rate, and it comes to about $77.55/month. [Sigh.] But Bozeat wasn’t done: “It’s not perfect. Not everything is 100% covered. I had a good experience, but I’m sure many people have had [non-financial] medical horror stories here. This system exists because the Taiwanese government believes that healthcare is a right for all of its citizens, rather than a privilege for those who can afford it. Those aren’t my words, that’s what the Ministry of Health said in its English language brochure. Every Taiwanese citizen and foreign permanent resident is entitled to, and required to enroll in the National Health Insurance Program (NHI). Everyone is covered, regardless of employment status, no one is uninsured, no one ever goes bankrupt due to medical bills.” The quality of care does not appear to be compromised in this system, either. “I have yet to meet a Taiwanese person who wasn’t satisfied with, or even outright proud of their healthcare system,” Bozeat wrote. “My expat friends praise it, even those from countries with universal healthcare systems of their own. “ This article originally appeared six years ago. The post He went to the ER in Taiwan, then his ‘Horrors of Socialized Medicine’ post went viral appeared first on Upworthy.

“Run the dishwasher twice” might sound like strange mental health advice, but a viral post is proving that it’s actually quite helpful. Danielle Wunker, a Licensed Professional Counselor and Supervisor, shared a story on her Facebook page that is resonating with people who struggle with mental health issues. It originally came from an answer from Kate Scott on Quora to the question “Has a therapist ever told you something completely unexpected?” It reads: “When I was at one of my lowest (mental) points in life, I couldn’t get out of bed some days. I had no energy or motivation and was barely getting by. I had therapy once per week, and on this particular week I didn’t have much to ‘bring’ to the session. He asked how my week was and I really had nothing to say. ‘What are you struggling with?’ he asked. I gestured around me and said ‘I dunno man. Life.’ Not satisfied with my answer, he said ‘No, what exactly are you worried about right now? What feels overwhelming? When you go home after this session, what issue will be staring at you?’ A woman is unhappy at a party. Photo credit: Canva She almost didn’t say it out loud I knew the answer, but it was so ridiculous that I didn’t want to say it. I wanted to have something more substantial. Something more profound. But I didn’t. So I told him, ‘Honestly? The dishes. It’s stupid, I know, but the more I look at them the more I CAN’T do them because I’ll have to scrub them before I put them in the dishwasher, because the dishwasher sucks, and I just can’t stand and scrub the dishes.’ I felt like an idiot even saying it. What kind of grown ass woman is undone by a stack of dishes? There are people out there with *actual* problems, and I’m whining to my therapist about dishes? But he nodded in understanding and then said: ‘Run the dishwasher twice.’ A woman loading the dishwasher. Photo credit: Canva I began to tell him that you’re not supposed to, but he stopped me. ‘Why the hell aren’t you supposed to? If you don’t want to scrub the dishes and your dishwasher sucks, run it twice. Run it three times, who cares?! Rules do not exist.’ There are no rules It blew my mind in a way that I don’t think I can properly express. That day, I went home and tossed my smelly dishes haphazardly into the dishwasher and ran it three times. I felt like I had conquered a dragon. The next day, I took a shower lying down. A few days later. I folded my laundry and put them wherever the f**k they fit. There were no longer arbitrary rules I had to follow, and it gave me the freedom to make accomplishments again. Now that I’m in a healthier place, I rinse off my dishes and put them in the dishwasher properly. I shower standing up. I sort my laundry. But at a time when living was a struggle instead of a blessing, I learned an incredibly important lesson: There are no rules. Run the dishwasher twice.” The comments took it even further “For me it is not exactly that there are no rules, but I ask myself ‘Whose rules are these?’ ‘Do I want them to be mine or can I come up with better ones?’ No rules might work for some folks, but I like a little structure, the structure I supply and can alter if it is not working.” Sam wrote in the comments. “That is brilliant! Thank you for sharing that profound story. Isn’t it amazing how often we miss the faulty assumption that is stymying us? I’m glad to hear you are in a much better place now,” Charlie added. Motivation often follows behavior The therapist’s advice to the woman follows a psychological principle: motivation often follows behavior. So, when you don’t feel motivated to scrape off the dishes, by simply doing part of the act, putting them in the dishwasher, you are promoting your rewards system to create genuine motivation. Simply taking one step can motivate your nervous system to go further or help you rebuild a healthy routine. Anyone who has been in a mental or emotional place where even the most basic, mundane tasks feel overwhelming understands the wisdom of this lesson. Dishes might seem like such a minor detail of life, but those kinds of minor details can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back mentally. If you’ve never stared at a basket of laundry that would take three minutes to fold and thought, “Nope, can’t do it. Not now. Maybe not ever…” then you may not need this lesson, but there are millions of people who appreciate the express permission to let go of the rules in our heads about how things have to be done. Adjusting expectations and arbitrary ideas about how something works is incredibly freeing and can provide a seemingly temporary fix for a seemingly insurmountable problem. Oddly enough, that temporary fix can be the bridge that moves someone from being unable to cope with daily life to functioning on a somewhat normal level. Why this advice works, according to psychology Mental health is such a tricky thing to manage, and many of the tools for managing it run counter to what we might expect. That’s what therapists are for—to help us step outside the box of our own brains, adjust our thoughts and behaviors to create greater possibilities for ourselves, and give us permission to reject the negative voices in our heads try to keep us locked in unhelpful or unhealthy patterns. Even when that unhelpful pattern is as simple as letting the dishes pile up instead of running the dishwasher twice. This article originally appeared five years ago. It has been updated. The post Woman shares her therapist’s life-changing mental health advice: ‘Run the dishwasher twice’ appeared first on Upworthy.

Sir David Attenborough turned 100 on May 8, and people want to know how he did it. Fair enough. A century is rare. A century of active fieldwork, narration, and travel across every ecosystem on earth is something even rarer. When someone who has spent his working life watching the natural world reaches that milestone, you start wondering whether the subject of his attention had something to do with it. His answer is modest, specific, and something almost anyone can do. What Attenborough actually does for 10 minutes In a conversation with podcast host Cel Spellman on Call of the Wild, Attenborough described the practice: find somewhere in nature, sit down, stay still and quiet, and wait. Not for anything in particular. Just wait, without impatience, for 10 minutes. In a woodland setting, he said, something fascinating almost always reveals itself when you stop pushing the experience to happen. In a statement to Butterfly Conservation, he put it plainly: “Spending time with nature offers us all precious breathing space away from the stresses and strains of modern life. It enables us to experience joy and wonder, to slow down, and to appreciate the wildlife that lives side by side with us.” He doesn’t dress it up much. The practice is genuinely straightforward. What it asks of you is patience. In 2021, he narrated a 10-minute virtual reality meditation for BBC Sounds, walking listeners through an exercise built around close attention to the living world. Different format from sitting in a woodland, but the same basic instruction: stop, pay attention, and let something come to you. The science connecting nature, wellbeing, and longer life Harvard Medical School estimates that roughly 25 percent of the variation in human lifespan comes down to genetics. The other 75 percent comes from lifestyle and environment. That’s a large window to work with. One of the more consistent findings in longevity research is the link between happiness and life expectancy. People who report higher wellbeing tend to live longer, across cultures and study designs. For Attenborough, whose sense of wonder has stayed visibly intact across a nine-decade career, this probably isn’t news. When curiosity is inseparable from your work and awe is a regular occupational byproduct, the biology tends to follow. Studies on awe, the feeling that comes from encountering something vast or wondrous, have found associations with lower inflammatory markers and improved mood. Time in natural settings has been shown to reduce cortisol, lower blood pressure, and restore attention. Whether any of this explains a century of good health is impossible to say. But it doesn’t hurt the argument. The longevity industry and what Attenborough chose instead There’s a large industry built around the question of longevity. Cold plunges, supplement stacks, stem cell therapies, continuous glucose monitors. Some of this is backed by emerging science. Almost none of it involves sitting under a tree. Attenborough’s recommendation doesn’t dismiss any of it. What he describes is not a health protocol so much as a way of paying attention. The 10 minutes aren’t for optimizing anything. They’re for being present long enough that something worth noticing has time to show up. He’s an unusual person to offer this kind of advice, obviously. Someone who has spent decades in the most remote ecosystems on earth alongside the finest wildlife photographers and field scientists of his generation. The habit he keeps pointing to is the one available in any park or patch of trees. The only thing left to do is to try it out and draw your own conclusions.The post The 10-minute habit that helped David Attenborough reach 100 years old first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.

Every remyelination drug candidate tested in multiple sclerosis research has failed. A doctoral thesis from the University of Helsinki, defended earlier this month, reports two that didn’t. Tapani Koppinen, working in Associate Professor Merja Voutilainen’s research group, identified two separate drug molecules that successfully triggered myelin regrowth in MS disease models. Both reduced neuroinflammation. Both crossed the blood-brain barrier in laboratory animals. They work through entirely different mechanisms and yielded strikingly similar results. The problem they’re targeting MS affects approximately three million people worldwide, with the highest rates in Northern Europe and Canada. The disease occurs when the immune system attacks myelin, the protective sheath around nerve fibers, disrupting signaling throughout the brain and spinal cord. Current treatments suppress that immune response but none of them repair damage that has already occurred. What remyelination is Remyelination is the process by which myelin, once damaged, grows back. Specialized cells called oligodendrocytes generate new myelin sheaths around exposed nerve fibers, restoring the insulation that allows electrical signals to travel efficiently along them. In a healthy nervous system, remyelination is an active repair mechanism, the brain’s way of recovering from injury. In MS, that capacity becomes increasingly impaired as the disease progresses, particularly in areas where repeated damage has accumulated. That gap is most consequential in progressive MS, where injury accumulates over years and immune suppression does little to slow it. Researchers have searched for ways to restart remyelination. Every drug candidate tried for that purpose has fallen short. Part of the obstacle is structural. In later-stage MS, damaged areas of the central nervous system develop local tissue conditions that actively block repair, at both the cellular level and through physical scar formation. Two mechanisms, one outcome Koppinen’s first approach targets the unfolded protein response, a stress mechanism inside brain cells that stays chronically overactive in MS-damaged tissue, preventing repair-promoting cells from doing their job. Blocking it with the new molecule increased remyelination and accelerated the process in tissue showing MS-like damage. The results appeared in Molecular Therapy in October 2025. The second approach targets scar tissue that forms around damaged areas and creates a physical obstruction to nerve repair. A different molecule changes the composition of that scar, allowing remyelination to proceed. That work was published in Neuropharmacology in November 2025. Both molecules successfully crossed the blood-brain barrier in laboratory animals, addressing one of the core technical challenges for brain-targeted drugs. What comes next The findings are from animal and cell models. Human MS involves considerably more complex tissue conditions, and no candidate has yet entered clinical trials specifically for remyelination. “The goal is to enable the molecules we have developed to reach clinical trials, which could one day produce the first drugs that enhance remyelination in MS,” Koppinen says. “In the meantime, our findings can help in investigating the pathogenic mechanisms of MS that inhibit remyelination.” Three million people with MS have treatments that slow disease progression. None have a treatment that repairs what the disease has already taken. These molecules don’t change that yet. They are, however, the furthest along that any remyelination candidate has come.  The post Two drug molecules achieve myelin repair in MS disease models first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.