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There’s a beautiful old live oak outside my window that’s always filled with birds and occasionally squirrels running up and down its branches. It’s loaded with something else this time of year, too: pollen. Lots of it.
On windy days, that pollen can be an allergy sufferer’s nightmare. On top of that, allergy seasons seem to be getting worse.
To understand why, I talked with Christine Cairns Fortuin, a pollen ecologist at Mississippi State University. In a story today, she explains how trees spread their pollen, the ways a warming climate affects pollen seasons, and why so much of that pollen gets into the air, our homes − and our lungs.
It turns out that those strong winds do more to exacerbate allergies than just blow pollen around, as she explains.
[ This newsletter and the stories in it are made possible by support from readers like you. ]
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Stacy Morford
Senior Environment, Climate and Energy Editor
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Windy days can mean more pollen and more sneezing.
mladenbalinovac/E+ via Getty Images
Christine Cairns Fortuin, Mississippi State University
From sending more pollen airborne to breaking up pollen grains, which lets them penetrate deeper into your lungs, the wind is not the allergy sufferer’s friend.
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Ethics + Religion
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Craig Considine, Rice University
Francis’ approach to Christian-Muslim dialogue differed notably from his predecessors, writes a scholar who studies interfaith dialogue.
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Neomi De Anda, University of Dayton
As the first non-European pope in centuries, Francis was especially aware of colonialism’s impact and the need to embrace many cultures within the church.
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Politics + Society
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Gregory F. Treverton, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
In foreign affairs, the national security adviser plays a coordinating role, setting the flow of recommendations to the National Security Council and the president.
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Chimene Keitner, University of California, Davis
The Trump administration claims that judges’ orders in the cases of immigrants deported to a prison in El Salvador intrude on the president’s right to conduct foreign policy.
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Chris Lamb, Indiana University
Turns out, presidents − just like the rest of us − sometimes say embarrassing things. Or mean things. Or clueless things. Certainly things they regret.
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Economy + Business
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John M. Longo, Rutgers University - Newark
The investor has already given much of his $169 billion fortune to charity and has pledged to donate nearly all of the rest.
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International
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Charles Walldorf, Wake Forest University
History is full of examples of what happens when airpower takes on a logic of its own.
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David Smith, University of Sydney
The Coalition should resist seeing Trump as a natural disaster over which they had no control. Peter Dutton made many other missteps that doomed his party’s chances.
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Education
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Jordan Batchelor, Arizona State University; Charles Max Katz, Arizona State University; Taylor Cox, Arizona State University
Nationally, about 11 male educators die by suicide for every 100,000 people, compared with a rate of almost 23 for all Americans.
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Environment + Energy
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Chris Vagasky, University of Wisconsin-Madison
A meteorologist explains three essential components of NOAA hurricane data collection that forecasters everywhere rely on yet are being targeted for federal cuts.
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Arts + Culture
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Geoffrey Baym, Temple University
Philadelphia was the birthplace of Bread and Freedom, a weekly anarchist paper published by Jewish immigrants who felt their peers in New York were too moderate.
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Science + Technology
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Alexander E. Gates, Rutgers University - Newark
The Earth started as a mixture of gas and dust around the Sun and grew as it collided with asteroids and dust particles.
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