【推荐2】A few months ago, I became attracted by a podcast (播客) series but I hesitate to recommend it to you. Every day on the way to and from work, Root of Evil filled my car with the voices of two sisters, Rasha and Yvette, as they uncovered four generations of terrifying secrets within their clan(宗族), the Hodels.

I’ll spare you the details here. But I won’t hold back on my own secret: I can’t get enough of well-told stories about unfathomable (深不可测的) evil like this.

I was absorbed when my class turned to the first Biblical murder of Abel by Cain. In college, I devoted my senior essay to In Cold Blood, Truman Capote’s attempt to make sense of the random murder of the Clutter family in their home on the Kansas plains. Perhaps my favorite film character is FBI trainee Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs, the very woman who hunts for one serial murderer with clues offered by another.

I may be defending myself, but I believe I am interested in these kinds of stories for a legal reason: They concern the search for the hardest truths imaginable. What kept me listening to the Hodel story, for instance, wasn’t just uncommon fascination. It was admiration. The voices of the family members taking into account the horrors caused by their loved ones carried a strong honesty that can’t be faked.

If you, too, are drawn to stories of ordinary people experiencing the worst their fellow humans have to offer and somehow coming out stronger, I do unhesitatingly recommend one recent source. As I read the 41 tales in our new True Crime collection, I felt each bringing me closer not only to crime fighters, survivors, and witnesses, but to humanity. The books are available at shop and I think you’ll find them thrilling reading.

【推荐3】HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF EVERY BOOK YOU READ

Reading books can be one of life’s greatest pleasures and learning experiences.     1    . Especially if you’re reading a book for more than just the pleasure of it, you have to do more than just turn over its pages. Here we will explore actionable ways to maximize the benefits of reading.

Understanding why you’re reading a book can significantly impact how you approach it. The right goal will help you pay attention to what’s most important. If you’re reading a book about photography, you may want to pay particular attention to the images.     2    .

After finishing a chapter, take a few minutes to summarize it in your own words.     3    . It also creates a handy reference guide for the future. Summarizing can be a creative process, too. Try using bullet points, mind maps, or one-liners to capture the essence of each chapter.

    4    . If a book teaches you a new approach to time management, try implementing it in your daily routine. If a novel provides a moral lesson, reflect on how it applies to your life. This active application ensures that the book leaves a lasting impact.

The process of reading doesn’t end when you turn the last page. Regularly revisiting your notes, summaries, and reflections keeps the material fresh and relevant. Consider setting aside time each month to review previous reads and reflect how they’ve shaped your thoughts and actions. Not for every book, of course, just for the most impactful ones.

【推荐2】New York’s Central Park has a statue dedicated to him, and there’s even been a movie about him: a sled dog named Balto. Now he is the focus of a DNA study, 90 years after he died, to see what made the dog so famously tough (坚韧).

In 1925, this Siberian husky was part of an expedition in Alaska called the serum run, the goal of which was to bring life-saving medicine to young people that were threatened by a deadly disease in the remote town of Nome, over 600 miles away. Balto led the long-distance stretch, and wound up getting most of the honor.

After Balto’s death in 1933, his remains were preserved and put on display at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

“Balto’s fame and the fact that he was taxidermized gave us this cool opportunity 100 years later to see what that population of sled dogs would have looked like genetically and to compare him to modern dogs,” said Katherine Moon, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California.

Her team took skin samples from the dog’s belly and reconstructed its genome — the complete set of genes in an organism. They compared this genetic material with that of 680 contemporary dogs from 135 breeds.

Contrary to a legend that thought that Balto was half wolf — as suggested in an animated Universal Pictures film that came out in 1995 — this analysis found no evidence he had wolf blood. It turned out Balto shared ancestors with modern day Siberian Huskies and the sled dogs of Alaska and Greenland.

Moon’s team also compared Balto’s genes with the genomes of 240 other species of mammals.

This allowed researchers to determine which DNA fragments (片段) were common across all those species and have not therefore changed over the course of millions of years of evolution. This stability suggests that these fragments of DNA are associated with important functions in the animal, and that mutations (基因突变) there could be dangerous.

The bottom line from the research was that Balto had fewer potentially dangerous mutations than modern breeds of dogs did, suggesting he was healthier.

【推荐3】Most of us want to be in peak physical condition, get in shape and be healthy. While some gym bunnies are more obsessed with looking ripped, for many of us nutrition and watching what you eat is a vital way to stay healthy. But when it comes to food, what is calorie counting, and what are the positives and negatives of it?

A law in the UK came into force in April 2022 that requires large businesses such as restaurants, takeaways, and cafes to display the calorie information of non-pre-packed food and soft drinks on their menus. It’s a strategy aimed to tackle obesity and give people a more informed choice of what goes down their gullets(食道). According to the NHS (National Health Service), generally, the recommended daily intake of calories for male adults is 2,500 per day, while female adults should consume 2,000 to maintain their weight levels. For those of us who wish to drop a few pounds, experts advise us to consume fewer calories than the recommended daily number, eat a balanced diet, and increase our levels of physical activity.

However, there are some skeptics when it comes to calorie counting. 200 calories of fresh fruit and 200 calories of junk food, for example cookies, have the same caloric value. However, there is a question of the health benefits of what you’re consuming, regardless of calories. While fresh fruit like apples contains things like vitamin C, junk food could contain an unhealthy level of sugar and fats. Likewise, fruit may fill you up and leave you not desiring more food for longer than a biscuit with equal calories - meaning, overall, you eat less. Simply counting calories, while useful for weight loss, doesn’t take into account your intake of good fats, carbohydrates, and proteins - things that your body needs. So, if you’re trying to stick to a low-carb diet, just looking at numbers of calories on a menu won’t be that useful. So, always be mindful that what you’re eating is part of a healthy balanced diet.