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BLURRING THE LINE BETWEEN
LIFE AND DEATH

Friday, November 4, 2022

In today’s newsletter, we cover researchers saving ‘nearly dead’ organs to ease a transplant crisis; consider who will pay for the compounding cost of climate change; discover the mysteries still swirling around King Tut; swim in a lake filled with millions of jellyfish … and meet the other King Tut buried in the U.S. capital.

A picture of a brain in a jar next to bags of medical fluid

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MAX AGUILERA-HELLWEG

What is dead and what is living?

Scientists are figuring out how to rescue and resurrect mostly dead organs for transplant. They have to—more than 6,000 patients in the U.S. alone are waiting for a transplant. These preservation strategies may not only ease the organ shortage, but they will open up the broader existential questions. (Pictured above, a blue bag of hemoglobin is used the slow the death of “barely alive” pig brain cells.)

Read the full story here.

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A picture of an operating room

Getting the heart beating: In this Yale med school operating room, a pig’s heart spontaneously started to beat, hours after the time of death. Read more.

STORIES WE’RE FOLLOWING

A picture of floodwaters washing away a road

PHOTOGRAPH BY ABDUL MAJEED, AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Human-caused climate change worsened floods (pictured above) that swept away a chunk of Pakistan’s GNP. Will the nations behind those emissions pay?

Why are so many teen girls getting long COVID? Related: What doctors didn’t tell you about COVID, vaccines

Free Solo, the Panda Helper, and other top photos of this century

These twins may make you rethink your views about race

Famine threatens 37 million people in the Horn of Africa

The teenage brain: Figuring out how and why teens think

Trash the pumpkin? Here’s how our readers help curb pumpkin pollution

What we still don’t know about Tut (Who was his mom? How’d he die?)

Why do we even have daylight savings time?

PHOTO OF THE DAY

A picture of water filled with golden colored jellyfish about the size of a teacup

PHOTOGRAPH BY ENRIC SALA, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

Sun-lovers: Dive into a lake with millions of golden jellyfish? Each year, tourists from around the world choose to do just that in Palau’s Jellyfish Lake. Every day the jellies migrate from one side of the lake to the other, following the arc of the sun to power the algae-like organisms in their bodies. In 2014, Nat Geo Explorer in Residence Enric Sala took the plunge on the Pacific island and captured the image above. Hear about Sala’s mission to save the world’s oceans on Nat Geo’s podcast, Overheard.

NO BRAINS, NO PROBLEM

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

A photograph of dirty hands working with dirt on a tray

PHOTOGRAPH BY NIVAL ANNE-SOPHIE, HANS LUCAS/REDUX

Problematic ‘soil’: It’s called potting soil but in fact, the products gardeners often use to raise beds or start seeds (pictured above) rarely contain actual soil or compost. Instead, most potting soil is a sterile blend of ingredients that contain a whopping carbon footprint. Nat Geo reports on the top three problematic components of potting soil—and how to find alternatives.

SOIL’S DIRTY SECRET

LAST GLIMPSE

A black and white picture of a man smiling while holding the front paws of a dog

PHOTOGRAPH BY HERBERT E. FRENCH, NATIONAL PHOTO COMPANY COLLECTION, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

The other King Tut: Political advisers thought a picture with King Tut would make the reserved U.S. presidential candidate Herbert Hoover seem more approachable. So they snapped a photo (above) with Hoover’s “Belgian police dog,” Tut, and mailed it to potential voters across the country. As the world notes the 100th anniversary of discovering the pharaoh Tut’s tomb in Egypt, Nat Geo looks to another Tut who now rests in the U.S. capital—in the back yard of Myanmar’s embassy.

Related: Why everyone was so obsessed with the Egyptian pharaoh
And: What we still don't know about the boy king

A PRESIDENT’S BEST FRIEND

Correction: Yesterday’s newsletter missed the last letter of the author of our story on kids and long COVID. Her name is Priyanka Runwal.

This newsletter has been curated and edited by David Beard, Sydney Combs, Jen Tse, and Heather Kim. Have a great weekend!

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