Brad Barrish

As of September 2025, approximately 170 million Americans spend, on average, one hour every day in an app that is designed to maximize psychological grip. While Congress fixates on TikTok’s data collection usages, what hasn’t received enough attention is how the platform has successfully industrialized human attention itself.

We know these platforms are bad for us, so why are they still so widely used? They tell a compelling story: that all of your frantic tapping and swiping makes you a key part of a political revolution, or a fearless investigator, or a righteous protestor – that when you’re online, you’re someone important, doing important things during an important... See more

The climate of respiratory health in the United States—which the CDC defines as “influenza-like illnesses” (ILI)—has crossed the “epidemic” threshold and is growing. The trend seems to be tracking exactly with the 2019-2020 respiratory season.