Short Stuff: Bengal Cats

Millions of Americans have a dog or cat at home and see their furry companion as part of their family. But your pet does more than bring a smile to your face: Scientists say that having a pet is good for your physical and mental health as well as your social life.

What lies at the core of human nature? If you stripped away civilization, would we be fundamentally compassionate creatures? Or would we cheat, lie, and steal, with only self-interest in mind? In Humankind, historian Rutger Bregman suggests that most of us think of humans as naturally deceitful and cruel, seemingly with a lot of evidence to back us up: Throughout history, groups of humans have gone to war, committed genocide, and owned slaves.

But despite our history of evil, Bregman argues that humans are fundamentally good. In this guide, we’ll go into detail on why he thinks this, explaining his claim that humans evolved to be kind, not to kill. We’ll discuss his critique of Killer Ape Theory and the Stanford Prison Experiment, two pieces of evidence that often justify the idea that humans are inherently evil. We’ll also compare his view of human nature with those of other authors such as Philip Zimbardo (The Lucifer Effect) and Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow).

In 1951, a 30-year-old African-American woman named Henrietta Lacks entered Johns Hopkins Hospital to be treated for cervical cancer. In a matter of months she was dead, overcome by her cancer’s malignancy. Her cancer cells, however, would prove immortal—and change medicine forever.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells the story of Henrietta, her family, and her incredible cells. Tracking both the scientific advances owed to “HeLa” cells and the struggles of Henrietta’s descendants, author Rebecca Skloot leads readers through the history of cell research, the ethical implications of scientific study, and the human story of a poor and ailing family whose matriarch contributed to some of 20th-century science’s greatest achievements.

Millions of Americans have a dog or cat at home and see their furry companion as part of their family. But your pet does more than bring a smile to your face: Scientists say that having a pet is good for your physical and mental health as well as your social life.

This week’s Conversation Starters (consequential but overshadowed news stories) include: cats using different nostrils for friends and strangers, fiber’s latest health benefit, self-healing concrete, “Type C” parenting, and “elderspeak.”

Millions of Americans have a dog or cat at home and see their furry companion as part of their family. But your pet does more than bring a smile to your face: Scientists say that having a pet is good for your physical and mental health as well as your social life.

A growing number of US cities and states are banning the sale of dogs, cats, and other animals in pet stores in an effort to curb puppy mills (large breeding operations) and animal abuse. But would such bans really stop mass breeding when it’s easy to buy puppies online, and can pet stores survive on leash and toy sales alone? This article looks at the potential impact of bans.

Guns, Germs, and Steel is Jared Diamond’s attempt to determine why societies historically took different paths. It was named one of TIME’s best non-fiction books of all time, awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and turned into a PBS documentary.

Diamond argues that differences between societies were caused by environmental factors that affected the historical development of those societies, not biological differences between the people of the societies. These factors led Eurasians (people from Asia, Europe, and North Africa) to historically have strategic advantages over non-Eurasians, including advanced knowledge, centralized governments, and immunity to infectious diseases.

With these advantages, Eurasian colonists came to dominate much of the world. Diamond believes Eurasians had these advantages primarily because their native geography supported bountiful food production, which allowed for the development of other advantages in technology, knowledge, and government. In our guide, we’ll see how Diamond draws the link between food production and these advantages, we’ll fact-check his ideas, and we’ll consider how Diamond’s view has been received by other experts.