The modern imagination is deeply mechanical. This is hardly surprising. We live among machines. We travel in them, work on them, communicate through them, and increasingly understand the world through metaphors borrowed from engineering. We speak of "inputs" and "outputs", "hardwiring", "programming", "fault finding", and "repair". It is difficult to think otherwise because the machine has become our dominant model of intelligibility. The trouble begins when we apply the same model to living...

Moving Well, Staying Strong, and Navigating Midlife with Confidence For many women, menopause arrives quietly at first. Perhaps sleep becomes lighter. Recovery from exercise takes longer. Joints feel stiffer in the morning. Energy fluctuates unpredictably. Strength seems harder to maintain. Weight gathers around the middle despite no major change in lifestyle. Then come the hot flushes, anxiety, brain fog, or the feeling that the body suddenly no longer responds in the same familiar way. Too...

Ibuprofen has become so woven into modern life that most of us barely think about taking it. Bad back after gardening?Headache after a stressful day?Sore knee after a run?Reach for the Ibuprofen. And to be fair, these medications can work remarkably well. Few drugs reduce pain and inflammation as effectively, as quickly, and as cheaply as NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs). But there is an uncomfortable truth sitting beneath their everyday familiarity: These drugs are far more...