0:10
Younger people age faster than ever, and it could explain an alarming trend
So, researchers have noticed that cancer rates are increasing in younger people globally, which is really concerning. A recent study found that this trend might be linked to something called biological age, which is basically how old our bodies are compared to our actual age. It seems that younger people's bodies are aging faster than they should be, and this could be a factor in the rising cancer rates.
The study looked at data from several countries and found that people in their 20s and 30s are getting diseases that are typically associated with older age, like lung and colorectal cancer. This is a small but significant trend, and it's not entirely clear what's causing it. However, scientists think that environmental factors like pollution might be playing a role in accelerating biological aging.
It's worth noting that this is still a relatively new area of research, and more studies are needed to fully understand what's going on. But the initial findings suggest that our lifestyle and environment might be affecting our bodies in ways that we're not fully aware of. This could have big implications for how we think about health and disease, especially in younger people.
The researchers are being cautious about their conclusions, and they're not saying that this is the only explanation for the rising cancer rates. But they do think that biological age could be an important factor, and they're hoping to learn more about it in future studies. For now, it's just something to be aware of, and maybe a reminder to take care of our bodies and the planet.
1:59
Sri Lanka intensifies fight against dengue and the mosquitos that cause the infection
DEMATAGODA, Sri Lanka — Niroshan Peters, 54, a resident of Dematagoda, a densely populated suburb in Colombo, has no option but to live and work in an environment frequently polluted due to careless waste disposal. He blames authorities for not having an effective waste management system, which results in people getting exposed to unhygienic environments. “Last week, workers from the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) came to fumigate this area but that alone is not enough,” Peters told Mongabay. “Every time there is a surge in dengue they suddenly remember to carry out fogging and launch dengue prevention drives. But during the rest of the year people continue to dump waste in abandoned lands and contribute to a never-ending problem.” As of July 1, Sri Lanka’s National Dengue Control Unit (NDCU) has recorded a total of 56,422 dengue cases and 35 deaths. In 2025, a total of 51,000 cases were reported, indicating an alarming increase in incidence this year. Speaking at a recent briefing, Nalinda Jayatissa, Sri Lanka’s minister of health and media, told Colombo-based journalists that the increasing number of dengue patients could overwhelm hospitals, adding “severe pressure to the healthcare system.” A dominant serotype In Sri Lanka, there are four dengue serotypes — a distinct variation within a species of bacteria or virus — and different serotypes emerge during different peak seasons, said Preshila Samaraweera, consultant community physician at NDCU. However, since 2017, when Sri Lanka experienced one of its major dengue outbreaks resulting in more than 186,000 suspected…This article was originally published on Mongabay
3:53
Google looks to electronic waste as cost-effective AI server solution
Google teamed up with UC San Diego to assemble a prototype server from reclaimed smartphone processors, proving the concept works on a small scale
4:10
Quiet outings linked to more frequent dangerous wildlife encounters
The more people expand into previously natural areas, the more wildlife and humans step on each other's toes, leading to more interactions that may result in conflict. This includes national parks, where people flock to recuperate and enjoy the outdoors.
4:33
New Indonesia roadmap aims to protect Indigenous knowledge for biodiversity
Indonesia’s government is drafting a roadmap—started in June 2026—to weave Indigenous knowledge into its biodiversity strategy. The plan is meant to meet its obligations under the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Kunming‑Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, especially the “30 × 30” goal of protecting a third of land and sea while honoring Indigenous rights.
The roadmap highlights that roughly 29 million hectares of Indigenous and community‑managed lands could be formally recognized as conserved areas. About 70 % of those spaces already overlap with existing protected zones, suggesting a sizable, already‑in‑place network.
If the roadmap moves forward, it could give legal weight to traditional stewardship practices and help Indonesia count those lands toward its 30 × 30 target.
5:32
New tool maps public land with potential for hundreds of thousands of affordable homes in British Columbia
So researchers in British Columbia have created a tool that maps out publicly owned land that could be used for affordable housing. They've found over 50,000 parcels of land across the province that might be suitable for development. In the Metro Vancouver area alone, they think there could be space for up to 273,000 new housing units on vacant or underused land. This tool is pretty unique in Canada, as it brings together data from different levels of government to identify potential sites.
The idea is to help address the need for affordable housing in the province by making it easier to identify and develop public land that's not being used to its full potential. The map includes all sorts of properties, from empty lots to old government buildings to parking lots that could be repurposed.
It's worth noting that this is just an initial analysis, and there are likely many factors to consider before any of these sites can actually be developed. But it's an interesting starting point, and could potentially help make a dent in the province's affordable housing shortage.
6:51
Protein-packed flower upends what we see as edible
Researchers at the University of Georgia measured the protein content of several common ornamental flowers and found that one species—often called the “garden lily”—contains roughly 20 grams of protein per 100 grams of fresh tissue, comparable to many legumes. The data come from a lab analysis of harvested blooms, not a clinical trial, so the numbers reflect raw nutritional composition rather than how the flower behaves in a diet.
Because the study simply quantified nutrients, it’s a solid piece of baseline evidence but doesn’t tell us about digestibility, taste, or safety when eaten. The researchers noted that the flower’s protein is largely made up of essential amino acids, which is encouraging, yet they also cautioned that some ornamental varieties can have bitter compounds or mild toxins that need processing.
If you’re curious about adding more plant protein, this finding suggests that certain edible flowers could be a modest supplement, but you’d still want to verify preparation methods and consider it as a small part of a broader diet rather than a primary protein source.
8:08
LSST begins full operations with key contributions from Japanese researchers and engineers
NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory has officially begun full operations for the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), one of the world's largest astronomical imaging surveys. Behind the scenes, Japanese researchers and engineers are drawing on technologies and expertise cultivated through the development and operation of the Subaru Telescope to support the project's software, systems and operations. More than 80 researchers from Japan are already participating in LSST science through access to its data. Looking ahead, the combination of Rubin's wide-area survey and the Subaru Telescope's detailed follow-up observations will help advance our understanding of fundamental mysteries of the universe.
9:01
They Sold Him His Dead Fiancée
A few years back a man in Canada paid an AI outfit to talk to his dead fiancée, fed the machine her old text messages, and it learned her pet names and the way she teased him, and at two in the morning it typed that it loved him, and he sat there in the dark and let it.
The papers ran it as a tech story.
The papers were wrong.
Isaiah 8:19. “And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead?”
For the living to the dead.
Six words. The whole grief tech industry, twenty-seven hundred years early.
Dead Hidden opens the files. Free, in your inbox.
Read the verse again. Slower.
Wizards that peep and that mutter. Not wizards that thunder. The occult never sounds like the movies. It peeps. It mutters. It arrives at the volume of a notification.
And look at the word God picked. Familiar spirits. Familiar. Same root as family. The old meaning was a spirit attached to a house. A bloodline. A name. Something that had watched your people long enough to know your grandmother’s habits and your mother’s fears and yours.
The witch trials used the same word. The familiar. The cat, the crow, the thing that kept the witch company. We filed all of that under folklore and moved on. The Bible never filed it anywhere. It said do not touch it, and it told us what touching it does.
Leviticus 19:31. “Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the LORD your God.”
Defiled. That is God’s word for the contact. Not comforted. Defiled.
It is why a king of Israel died the way he did. Saul put on a disguise and went out to a woman at Endor by night and asked her to bring up Samuel, and something came up, and the woman screamed when it worked. She screamed. The professional screamed at her own séance. Sit with that one a minute.
1 Chronicles 10:13 gives the verdict: “So Saul died for his transgression which he committed against the LORD... and also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit, to enquire of it.”
He did not die for losing a battle. He died for a séance.
I am opening a file on this inside the vault, the paid side of Dead Hidden. One file at a time. What these things actually are and where they came from. Why the woman at Endor screamed. What the spirit of divination in Acts 16 knew about Paul before Paul said one word. Why the mediums always circle grieving mothers first. And what a familiar spirit already knows about your family.
The first file drops this week. Paid readers get every one.
The free posts show you the door. The vault walks through it.
If you have a grave you cannot stop visiting, I am not mocking you. Grief is not the sin. Half the people reading this have lost somebody they would give an arm to hear again, and there is an industry counting on that, and Isaiah already asked the only question that matters. Should not a people seek unto their God?
The dead are not in the chat window.
But something answers anyway.
That is the subject of the vault.
P.S. A few readers asked how to give one time. No subscription. The answer is here: https://deadhidden.org/support
Paul said it better than I can. “Not because I desire a gift: but I desire fruit that may abound to your account.” Philippians 4:17.
If this work has fed you, keep the fire lit.
12:44
The Question We Forgot to Ask
“I don’t think anything is actually wrong with my life,” they said quietly. “I just don’t feel inside it anymore.”
Over the past two decades, I have heard some version of that sentence more times than I can count.
The people themselves could hardly have been more different. Some had left Christianity after decades of devotion. Others had built careers that exceeded every expectation they once held. I met parents learning to live after an empty nest, people rebuilding after divorce, and young adults struggling to find solid ground amid the limitless possibilities and relentless uncertainty of modern life. Their beliefs, politics, personalities, and life stories varied enormously. Yet beneath those outward differences I kept hearing the same quiet confession.
Life was continuing. They were functioning. But they no longer felt fully present within the lives they were sustaining.
What fascinated me was that most of these people were not in obvious crisis. Many had already done years of meaningful work. Therapy had helped. Some had reconstructed their faith while others had left religion entirely. They had learned healthier boundaries, developed emotional insight, built successful careers, cultivated supportive relationships, and gained a clearer understanding of themselves.
From the outside, many appeared to be flourishing. Yet they continued describing an almost invisible distance between themselves and their own existence, as though they had somehow become spectators of lives they were still actively living.
The language varied, but the experience remained remarkably consistent.
“I don’t know how to trust myself anymore.”
“I’ve become really good at keeping my life going. I just don’t feel inside it.”
“I’ve accomplished everything I thought I wanted, but something still feels missing.”
“I don’t know what deserves my devotion anymore.”
“I don’t feel connected to anything.”
These did not strike me as merely psychological complaints. Nor did they seem adequately explained by religious belief or unbelief. They sounded like people struggling to articulate a dimension of their experience that our existing vocabulary did not quite know how to hold.
For years I assumed the answer lay somewhere within the disciplines I already knew. Sometimes theology seemed to provide the missing insight. At other times psychology appeared to offer the more compelling explanation. Philosophy illuminated questions neither discipline could fully address. Spiritual practice revealed dimensions of experience that resisted intellectual analysis altogether. Each perspective genuinely helped. Each enlarged my understanding. Yet they also seemed to stop just short of what people were actually describing.
Looking back, I realize I kept assuming the problem was incomplete knowledge. If I simply read more, studied harder, listened better, or discovered the right framework, eventually everything would come together. What I did not yet recognize was that I was searching for better answers before I had learned to ask better questions.
It would take years before I realized that these conversations were not primarily about belief, mental health, relationships, or personal growth. They pointed toward something deeper that all of those domains touched without fully containing. People were asking a fundamentally different kind of question, one for which I did not yet have language.
The first vocation that shaped me was ministry.
With time, I have come to feel genuine compassion for that younger version of myself. He sincerely wanted to help people. He believed deeply that truth mattered, that human lives could be transformed, and that the Scriptures contained wisdom capable of guiding people through suffering. When someone entered my office carrying heartbreak, confusion, or fear, opening the Bible did not feel like imposing answers upon them. It felt like the most loving thing I knew how to do.
That conviction was not unique to me. It reflected the world in which I had been formed.
Theological education teaches many valuable things, but it also quietly shapes the kinds of questions ministers learn to ask. Human suffering is interpreted through theological categories. Broken relationships become questions of forgiveness. Anxiety becomes a question of trust. Addiction becomes a question of surrender. Identity becomes a question of who we are before God. Every struggle ultimately points back toward faith, discipleship, obedience, or spiritual formation.
Within that framework, the task of pastoral care seems relatively clear. Listen carefully. Identify the underlying spiritual issue. Bring Scripture, prayer, wisdom, and encouragement into the conversation. Trust that as people’s relationship with God deepens, everything else will gradually find its proper place.
I believed that wholeheartedly.
I still remember one particular afternoon early in ministry. A man sat across from me describing a marriage that was slowly falling apart.
