A note from the editor.
I read a letter this morning from a sixteen-year-old in Phoenix who said our work made her feel less broken. That sentence undid me a little.
The whole reason I make this magazine is for that exact sentence to be true. Not that I am right about every detail of the neuroscience — though I try — but that someone reads it and feels, for a moment, like the body they live in was actually designed on purpose.
If you are reading this and you have not written to me, please write to me. I read every letter. I will not publish your last name without asking. And I will, almost certainly, learn something from you that I did not know yesterday.
In their own words.
I read your sleep piece and put my phone in the kitchen. I have slept eight hours every night for two weeks. This has never happened before.
My biology teacher used your dopamine lesson in class. The whole class actually paid attention. He has been teaching for twenty-three years and he said this was the first time.
I sent in a question at midnight not expecting anything. Ana answered it in three weeks. I read it on the bus and cried a little, in a good way.
The physiological-sigh thing actually works. I have done it before three job interviews now and it has, in a small specific way, changed my life.
Letters wall.
“My phone is the first thing I touch in the morning and the last thing I touch at night. I'm not proud of this. I know all the things you're supposed to know. I …”
“My mom calls me lazy. I'm not lazy. I'm awake at twelve-thirty in the morning because something inside me will not switch off until then. I have tried. I have t…”
“I cried at a song in the car yesterday and my dad asked if something happened. Nothing happened. The bridge happened.”
This week, around the magazine.
Three ways in.
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Mondays only. The mini lesson, the mailbag pick of the week, and what I’m reading.