Welcome to the week.
We’re back from spring break! In regular 2026 fashion, the news was bonkers while we were away, and undoubtedly some important news stories slipped by you amid the chaos. Or maybe you’ve just been deep in Bieberchella content and missed a few things. I get it. So let’s catch up!
But first! In a final push for Virginia’s legislature, the governor has a ton of super important bills on her desk to get signed TONIGHT. We’ve highlighted a handful of them in the What Can I Do section below. Let’s get to it!
Okay, back to the news.
This Week
And more.
Have a great week,
— Willow
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⚡️ Climate change:
The US just shattered climate records with a March so hot it wasn’t just the warmest March ever but the most abnormally hot month ever recorded, full stop. (The Guardian)
🌍 Asia’s gas crisis is hitting a critical point as Middle Eastern LNG shipments dry up, forcing countries to burn more coal and ration energy. (The New York Times)
The nuclear energy push is dismantling decades-old radiation safety standards, leaving workers and communities potentially exposed to far more radioactive risk. (Undark)
The fastest growing part of your electricity bill is the catch-all “other” category, which can include taxes, wildfire funds, EV chargers, and climate programs, which has ballooned 41% since 2021. (HEATMAP)
🦠 Health & Bio:
The anti-”gender ideology” executive order has torched a decade of NIH policy requiring researchers to study both sexes in animal studies, because apparently we hadn’t done enough damage to women’s health research already. (Undark)
American smoking rates just dipped below 10% for the first time ever, after 60 years of lawsuits, taxes, bans, and stigma that has saved 8 million lives. (Vox)
Scientists are split on whether social media is truly “addictive” or just expertly engineered to hijack your brain’s dopamine system, but either way, the slot-machine scroll is doing something, and kids are the most vulnerable. (Scientific American)
🌎 As foreign aid cuts threaten to unravel decades of TB progress, a WHO endorsement of cheap, portable, tongue-swab testing offers a lifeline, if it actually reaches people dying from a disease we’ve nearly beaten. (Think Global Health)
🗳 Democracy:
The US has pulled off the fastest democratic nosedive ever recorded, dropping 24% on the liberal democracy index and falling from 20th to 51st place in a single year. (V-Dem)
Colorado’s 2021 pay transparency law ignited a reckoning with salary secrecy, even though evidence is mixed on whether it actually closes the gender pay gap. (Governing)
Fantasies of the 25th Amendment are a feel-good impossibility that would require Trump’s own cabinet of loyalists to turn on him, then a two-thirds supermajority in Congress. (The Message Box)
Hungary’s 2026 election may be history’s first truly post-reality campaign, where Orbán, who faces years of documented corruption and poverty, responds not with policy but with AI-generated deepfakes of his opponents (and he ultimately lost the campaign). (The Atlantic)
💦 Food & Water:
A tiny farming community armed with petitions and outrage managed to outmaneuver Amazon and Talen Energy’s 800-acre data center land grab, and is now becoming a blueprint for rural communities facing the same fight. (Civil Eats)
🌎 Grasslands and wetlands are vanishing four times faster than forests, because policy treats them as expendable wastelands rather than carbon-storing, biodiversity rich ecosystems. (Mongabay)
🌍 In India’s tribal heartland, a low-tech rice method using just 2 kg of seed instead of 30 is doubling yields, cutting emissions, and resurrecting ancient varieties. (upBeat)
Your rising cheeseburger costs aren’t just about tariffs and war, but are a preview of your permanent grocery bill as climate chaos taxes every meal. (Bloomberg)
🦜 Biodiversity:
A Maine scientist has spent 20 years hand-planting salmon eggs into frozen mountain streams, and a $300 million dam removal project may finally give his restoration mission a fighting chance. (The New York Times)
🌏 A landmark 1991 extinction story that galvanized conservation biology turns out to have been largely a data gap: nearly all the plants declared lost at Ecuador’s Centinela ridge simply hadn’t been looked for anywhere else yet. (Mongabay)
🌎 The emperor penguin just got bumped to "Endangered” due to climate change dismantling the Antarctic food chain. (Earth.org)
🌎 Tropical insects make up the vast majority of animal life on Earth, and are already living so close to their heat limits that even modest warming could push them past the point of survival. (The Conversation)
👩💻 Beep Boop:
The AI data center backlash has escalated from zoning fights to bullet holes, as public opinion turns sharply against the faceless infrastructure powering AI’s ambitions. (Big Technology)
Anthropic’s “Mythos” model incited an emergency meeting with Wall Street CEOs over cybersecurity concerns, suggesting the AI is capable enough that top financial regulators are warning the banking sector to shore up defenses. (Bloomberg)
Car safety tech genuinely saves lives, but hands-free driving systems are introducing new dangers as drivers trust the automation more than they should. (Axios)
Governors and state lawmakers are barreling ahead with AI regulation, despite threats on the federal level. (The New York Times)
🌎 = Global news
🙋♀️ Vote!
Do you think that Section 230 (a law written in 1996 before smartphones, algorithms, and behavioral science shaped platform design) should still govern platform liability today?
Last week, we asked: Would you rather your weather app showed uncertainty (like alternate forecast lines) or just gave you its best guess?
You said:
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Show me uncertainty (40%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Just commit to a forecast (14%)
🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ I want both options (38%)
“Can give me best case with alternative models like in winter storms or hurricanes with probability for each model.”
“It's about CHOICE - the freedom to choose, with all of it's options. I "would rather" be given the information that leads me to what I think is the best option for me (i.e. should I go outside today or should I not).”
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ I hadn't thought about this (8%)
Last week’s most popular Action Step was checking out this Abortion Fact Sheet to get all the facts and stats you need to better show up for abortion care activism.
🌎 Donate to The Nature Conservancy to preserve oceans and land worldwide.
🌏 Volunteer with Goonj to help build a sustainable, dignified response to climate emergencies across India.
Get educated about the surveillance tech being used in your community using the Atlas of Surveillance.
Be heard about housing in Virginia! The governor has until midnight TONIGHT to sign some super impactful bills into law, including SB531 to legalize ADUs, HB888 to reduce excess parking mandates, and HB1279 to unlock faith-based housing. Let’s get it done!
Invest in infrastructure improvements across Latin America and the Caribbean using IDB Invest.
🌎 = Global Action Step
👉 NEW: Find every action recommended in It’s Called Science. right here.
Together With Incogni
Unknown number calling? It’s not random.
The BBC caught scam call center workers on hidden cameras as they laughed at the people they were tricking. One worker bragged about making $250k from victims. The disturbing truth? Scammers don’t pick phone numbers at random. They buy your data from brokers.
Once your data is out there, it’s not just calls. It’s phishing, impersonation, and identity theft. That’s why we recommend Incogni: They delete your info from the web, monitor and follow up automatically, and continue to erase data as new risks appear. Try Incogni today and get 58% off annual plans with code INI58.
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Life Under A Microscope
Since the dawn of recorded history, our living earth has been changed by everyone who spends time on it or in it from the smallest bacteria to the largest animals.
But like the brain-gut axis inside of us that we still barely understand, we've really never had the ability to see and document and even begin to ask questions about the smallest among us out in the world. In the soil, in the air, in the mud, and, of course, all the different kinds of water on this very, very watery planet. Until recently.
Thankfully, there are scientists and documentarians among us who can see and share and spark joy in a simple tablespoon of water. Who can help so many more of us who don't have access to those things, see and understand what's around us every day.
And as the world has changed so much faster than ever before, it is vital we support as much of this work as possible. Just when it is most possible.
My returning guest today is the great Ariel Waldman.
Ariel is a National Geographic Explorer, a documentary filmmaker, an Antarctic researcher, a TED main stage speaker, NASA advisor, YouTube host, producer, and an author. Her solo expeditions in science exploration work have earned her global recognition for bridging adventure, storytelling and cutting edge science.
I'm so thankful for making all this for coming back on the show today to share news about her wonderful new six part series, Life Unearthed with Ariel Waldman, premiering in April on PBS.
📖 Prefer to read? Get the transcript here.
▶ Or watch the full episode on YouTube.
The ‘Burn’ Science You Need to Watch Starfleet Academy
Around 3069 in the Trek timeline, all of the dilithium in the galaxy suddenly went inert, triggering a rash of warp core failures across the galaxy. Millions of lives were lost, Starfleet was decimated, and warp travel—the FTL glue holding the Federation together—became impossible.
This event, known as the Burn, unraveled the galactic order.
That is pretty much all the context you need to start watching Starfleet Academy. But if you’ve read this far, chances are you are a nerd who craves the technobabble-laden details. So let’s get into them—starting with the (semi-real) science of warp drive before moving on to the (entirely fictional) science of dilithium.
Where the wild things are walled out
In this issue, Syris Valentine writes about what happens when you try to wall out migration, a biological imperative that species from salmon to jaguars to humans rely on for survival.
While border walls claim to stop human migration, they are devastatingly effective at blocking wildlife. And as climate change forces both animals and people to move further in search of resources, those walls will determine who survives and who doesn’t.
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