News Sidequest

The Council on Criminal Justice released a comprehensive mid-year crime report Thursday showing homicides are down 18% across 30 cities compared to 2025, on track for the lowest annual rate in over a century — and the drop is happening in cities with different political leadership, different policing strategies, and different economic conditions. Also: Wharton researchers led by Adam Grant just published a three-study investigation into why some leaders resist remote work — and the answer across all three studies was the same: narcissism. Not productivity concerns. Not collaboration. Power and status. And Japan's meteorological agency has formally adopted the word "kokushobi" — pronounced koh-koo-shoh-bee, meaning "cruelly hot day" — for temperatures above 40°C, after 200,000 people voted on it and Tuesday saw 260 people hospitalized with heat stroke symptoms around Tokyo alone. Plus a Pennsylvania fortune teller's witch trial, a McDonald's hot fries lawsuit, a bear on a utility pole, and 30% of Americans who've shoplifted.

The BMO Real Financial Progress Index finds the all-in average cost of a date in the US hit $189 in 2026 — up 12.5% in a year, with Millennials averaging $252 — and 47% of singles say dating is no longer financially worth it. Also: a new Global Burden of Disease study published in The Lancet finds the US has the largest "morbidity gap" in the world — 14 years of life spent in poor health — and the bad news is it's not just happening at the end of life. And a new West Health-Gallup survey finds 24% of US employees — roughly 23 million people — are staying in unwanted jobs specifically to keep their health insurance, up from 16% in 2021. Plus the easyJet mid-air brawl, Luke Skywalker's lightsaber, the Pan Am plane found after 74 years, and a Florida man with a flamethrower at a Walmart.

Wang Jibing is 56 years old, left school at 14, spent decades doing odd jobs, became a food delivery rider in 2019, wrote poems on scraps of paper between orders, and just won the Lu Xun Literary Prize — China's top literary honor — for his collection Low Flight, based on interviews with 200 fellow couriers. Also: the Wall Street Journal published a piece asking whether therapists are to blame for the rise of family estrangement — with researchers on both sides of a genuinely complicated question. And Yosemite dropped its reservation system in 2026 at federal direction, hit 90-minute entrance waits and full parking lots before noon, and became the most concentrated expression of what happens to affordable leisure when everything else gets too expensive. Plus a robot decapitated in combat, Australian identical quadruplets, the Baseball Spy, and deeply discounted Taylor Farms lettuce.

The American Heart Association just published its most comprehensive position statement on coffee in years, and the verdict is: up to five cups a day is safe for most healthy adults, with cardiovascular benefits at moderate consumption. Also: a man in Ohio bought a house sight unseen in a competitive market, arrived with a moving truck, and found three decomposed human remains inside — and the story underneath it is really about what the housing market has pushed buyers to do. And Silicon Valley is actively pitching the Pentagon on armed autonomous robots, and the Washington Post got inside several of the pitches. Plus three bodies in a house, the David Rush toilet paper record, a dog rescued from a Scottish mountain after finding someone's stash, and pizza traded for pythons in Florida.

A new CNN/Federal Reserve investigation finds that nearly half of adults aged 18-29 received assistance from someone outside their household to cover recurring expenses last year — and the people who got early inheritance aren't feeling good about it, they're feeling guilty and relieved simultaneously. Also: the average adult makes approximately 35,000 decisions per day, decision fatigue is real and measurable, and the research on how to fight it is more specific and actionable than "simplify your life." And on July 15, China's new AI companion regulations took effect — ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent all shut down their AI persona features, and the grief on Chinese social media was immediate and genuine. Plus two babies switched at birth 38 years ago, a man suing his bank for lending him money, an Alabama husband committed to a remarkable relationship, and the firefighting donkeys of Spain.

Astronomers analyzing new James Webb Space Telescope observations of LHS 1140b — a "super-Earth" just 49 light-years away — are now reporting the strongest evidence yet for a nitrogen-rich atmosphere on a habitable-zone exoplanet, and models suggest it may have a liquid ocean roughly the size of half the Atlantic. Also: a Pew Research/Newsweek survey of 5,119 Americans finds Gen Z uses AI more than any other generation and is simultaneously the most worried about where it's heading — 66% use chatbots regularly, up from 55% in 2024, and they're more concerned than older generations about job loss, AI's reliability, and its environmental impact. And scientists from institutions around the world just published predictions for life in the 2100s. Plus a bored pilot who skytyped it, the Florida woman betrayed by a cat, the Ohio lottery voice winner, and a pole dancing sprinkler flood.

Enrollment at public two-year vocational schools is up nearly 20% since 2020, Gen Z is nearly evenly split between four-year college and trade school when asked what they'd choose today, and the math — sub-$25,000 programs leading to $80,000-plus jobs — is hard to argue with. Also: the felt-tip pen that Buzz Aldrin jammed into a broken circuit breaker on the lunar surface in 1969 to save the Apollo 11 crew sold at Sotheby's today alongside the snapped-off switch for $857,600. And a new Japanese study of 1,899 adults tracked over time finds that regular moviegoers, museum visitors, and theatergoers have bodies that function like people three years younger. Plus the 1,700-pound great white shark heading to Cape Cod, the bank robber's borrowed kitten, the deer in the antique store, and wildfire smoke rolling across the Midwest.

About 90% of Americans say they want to die at home. Only about 35% do — and the median hospice enrollment in 2024 was 19 days, meaning most people get palliative care so late it barely functions as a transition. Also: Taskrabbit data shows a 23% jump in quick-move bookings and a 19% increase in same-day moves year-over-year, with the "micro-move" trend driven by smaller spaces, lighter lives, and a housing market where staying flexible is more important than putting down roots. And University of Reading research shows clear-air turbulence — the kind you can't see coming, that doesn't show on radar — has increased 55% since 1979, is projected to double or triple by 2050, and is being driven entirely by climate change. Plus the dog who caused a $200K fire, the peanut butter museum floor, the robotaxi sleepers, and the Taco Bell investigation.

NPR spoke with five music influencers who say they regularly accept payments from record labels to post about songs without disclosing it — and when they reached out to Interscope, Republic, Atlantic, RCA, Sony, Universal, and Warner for comment, none responded. Also: a Boston College Center for Retirement Research study finds that since ChatGPT launched, older workers in AI-exposed jobs — coders, accountants, tax preparers — are leaving the workforce significantly faster than before, reversing a long-standing trend in which those jobs actually extended careers. And a new service in Russia allows lonely people to rent a companion specifically to share a barbecue and beers with. That is the entire service. Plus the Airbnb family who found their own photos on the wall, Ontario's grenade advisory, Zara's dangerous pants, and sugar discovered in space.