by Manoush Zomorodi, NPR’s TED Radio Hour host and NPR’s Body Electric podcast creator
Here's a question nobody had to ask for most of human history: "Did you move enough today?"
There was no need to ask because you moved to get food, to go anywhere, to exist! No need to build a habit or schedule time: Movement was part of being alive.
But then came the desk, laptop, smartphone and delivery apps. As innovation kept making our lives more efficient, we engineered our bodies out of the equation. The average American now sits for the equivalent of 187 days a year, whilethree out of four adults have at least one chronic illness.
No wonder so many of us have a vague, hard-to-describe feeling that something is off. We feel drained and can’t focus.
Fiona Geiran
How can we stay connected without destroying our health?
That was the question I asked Columbia University Medical Center physiologist Keith Diaz a few years ago. In his lab, he had found that five minutes of gentle walking every 30 minutes slashed the health risks of prolonged sitting, dramatically lowering blood sugar, blood pressure, and fatigue. But could people take these “movement breaks” in the real world?
In October 2023, Columbia and NPR issued a challenge to public radio listeners: Help us find out if we can live better with our technology. Pick a dose — five minutes of movement every 30, 60, or 120 minutes — and try it for two weeks. More than 20,000 people signed up. After two weeks, participants reported that their fatigue had dropped by up to 28%, moods lifted, focus returned, and productivity rose.
One participant was 43-year-old HR specialist Dana Lopez Maile. She had recently suffered a stroke from a genetic illness. As part of her recovery, she was eating well and walking her dog every morning, but still felt so tired. "Why am I so mentally drained," she kept asking, "when I'm doing everything right?" She joined our study, and by the end, she said that her blood pressure had dropped 40 points and her cholesterol had gone into the healthy range. Today, she's off all her medications, down 35 pounds, and just earned her Health Coach Certification. The participant is now the practitioner.
Dana's experience stayed with me, as did thousands of others. I spent the last several years combing through the stories of our 20,000+ participants. What I found, across every age group, was the same pattern: People stopped listening to their bodies because their screens made it so easy to tune out.
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➡️ Over the past two decades, the Stillaguamish Tribe in Washington state has been actively purchasing land and removing levees within its traditional territory. Their goal: to transform farmland into wetlandsand revive the Chinook salmon population. In 1855, the tribe signed a treaty with the U.S. relinquishing almost all of its land, but retaining its rights to fish and hunt. Decades of environmental damage have pushed many salmon to the brink of extinction. In 2025, so few salmon returned to the Stillaguamish River that the tribe was only allowed to catch 26 fish. With the restored floodplains, the tribe hopes to restore essential fish habitats and reduce future flood risks to the area.
➡️ Minneapolis immigrant communities are still feeling the effects of the Trump administration's Operation Metro Surge, three months later. Earlier this year, masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents descended on the Twin Cities as part of the Trump administration's largest and most aggressive crackdown on immigrants to date. Since then, arrests of immigrants have decreased by 12% and neighborhood watches that tracked ICE vehicles are no longer active. But there are some statistics that enforcement cannot capture. Many immigrants who went into hiding or shut down businesses because of ICE's presence are now at risk of losing their homes and livelihoods. NPR spoke with nine immigrants about how the operation disrupted their lives. Their stories highlight families rationing groceries, accumulating debt, battling mental health struggles and contemplating seriously leaving the U.S. to return to their home countries.
➡️ The Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network (DIAN) provides scientists with a unique opportunity to study Alzheimer's, but federal funding cuts threaten its future. The network includes people with rare gene mutations that cause the symptoms of the disease to appear in middle age or even earlier. Studying the more than 200 families across more than 40 sites in 18 countries has allowed scientists to make key discoveries about how Alzheimer's begins and how drugs may slow its progress. But after federal officials rejected a grand renewal application for $13 million, the network is now maintaining only essential functions.
➡️ Polymarket claims it’s based in Panama, but the office of the popular prediction market app is difficult to find. NPR recently visited the law office listed on government documents as Polymarket's official address, but there was no sign that the company does business in the country. NPR instead found a generic corporate lobby that led into a large room filled with unoccupied computer stations. After the Biden administration cracked down on Polymarket for operating without a license in 2022, the company wound down its U.S. operations and relocated. Billions of dollars are now traded every week on things like elections, wars and assassinations, which are illegal under U.S. commodities law.
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Today, we're listening to an episode of StoryCorpsthat could be a heartwarming touch to your Mother’s Day. Being a mom isn’t easy, from giving birth to preparing your child to one day walk out of the door to start adulthood. ThIs episode takes a look at the work mothers do by diving into the StoryCorps archive. Hear stories about moms bringing their children into this world, as well as stories about moms letting their kids go. Listen to the episode here.
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And, on this week's episode of The Sunday Story from Up First, NPR’s Pallavi Gogoi provides listeners with stories from her conversations with more than 60 women who have embraced single motherhood. A growing number of women are working to shed the stigma around deciding to have children on their own.
Words in a country
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It's time for the Sunday Puzzle! For this week’s on-air challenge, NPR's Puzzlemaster Will Shortz will provide you with some four-letter words. You have to determine which countries contain the words hidden in their names. For example, if you are provided with the clue “CHIN,” the answer would be “CHINA.” Test your skills here. Check the page later to hear the answers, or catch them live on Weekend Edition at 8:41 a.m. ET.
This week's online challenge comes from Joshua Green, of Columbia, Md. Think of a popular film franchise with many sequels. Hidden in consecutive letters inside its name is a place mentioned multiple times in the Bible. Replace that place with a single letter and you'll name a Major League Baseball team. What franchise and team are these? Submit your answer here, and you could win a chance to play next Sunday's on-air puzzle.
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