Perspectives

The third season of the “This is Cancer” podcast, from Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and the School of Medicine, launched this month. Episodes share honest and inspiring stories from cancer patients and the remarkable physicians who treat them.

Through the miracle of modern technology, you can simply skip the two hours a day of swiping and messaging. Instead, you can just go on whatever dates your AI sets up for you after flirting and texting, probably with the other person’s AI, writes Liberty Vittert.

Trivializing COVID-19 as an inconsequential cold or equating it with the flu does not align with reality, writes Ziyad Al-Aly.

In these unprecedented times for public health, it is critical that the profession move outside of its comfort zone and allow for its members to fully realize the knowledge and wisdom that has been there all along, writes Hannah Szlyk.

“WashU and St. Louis share a powerful potential for progress when the people of this region work together,” Chancellor Andrew D. Martin writes in an op-ed focusing attention on the university’s “In St. Louis, For St. Louis” initiative and marking the 150th anniversary of the Eads Bridge.

The imagined community that American fans feel part of when they root for Team USA is no accident. The alluring dynamics of fandom, nationalism and dramatic storytelling have been carefully orchestrated to capture our attention, for better or worse, writes Noah Cohan.

To the extent that doctrinal rules do make a difference, however, the result of the court’s decision will be that judicial interpretations in regulatory cases will be less insightful, less predictable and more dependent on the preferences of lifetime-appointed federal judges who are in no way accountable to the electorate, writes Ron Levin.

Our recommendations are largely aimed at governmental agencies overseeing public health at the local, state, tribal, and federal levels, but they can apply to other aspects of the system, from the political leaders who oversee these entities to the other governmental and private organizations whose work affects population health, wrote Ross Brownson, along with Jonathan Samet.

As museums around the world celebrate the centennial of the birth of surrealism, it’s important to recognize that embracing randomness allowed these artists to think outside the box, writes Mark Rank.

Andrew Reeves, director of the Weidenbaum Center in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, writes ahead of Thursday’s debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump about what the candidates may promise — and how little power a president really has over areas that matter to voters.