Andy Ford

In 1986, a Texas psychologist told 46 students to write about the worst thing that ever happened to them, 15 minutes a day for 4 days straight. Over the next 6 months, those students went to the doctor half as often as the kids in the control group. The psychologist was James Pennebaker. He repeated the experiment, and so did other labs. Same answer every time: writing about pain in a notebook was changing something inside the body. Follow-up studies found improved immune cell counts, faster wound healing after surgery, lower HIV virus levels in blood tests, and better lung function in people with asthma. For years the mechanism was a puzzle. Pennebaker had stumbled onto a much bigger pattern than he realized. Making things of any kind does something to the body. Take painting. A 2016 study at Drexel University handed 39 random adults some markers, clay, and collage paper and told them to make whatever they wanted for 45 minutes. No rules, no skill required. 75% of them walked out with lower cortisol (the main stress hormone) in their saliva. Beginners and experienced artists got the same drop. Take dancing. Doctors at Einstein College of Medicine tracked 469 seniors over a 21-year period in a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2003. People who danced a few times a week were 76% less likely to get dementia than people who rarely did. That was the largest protective effect of anything they tested. Crosswords came in at 47%, reading at 35%. Swimming and cycling did nothing for the brain at all. Take singing. In 2004, researchers in Germany measured antibodies in a choir's saliva before and after rehearsal. The antibody count (the stuff that fights off colds and flu) rose significantly. A follow-up study on cancer patients and their caregivers found that one hour of group singing dropped cortisol and switched on their immune systems at a measurable, blood-test level. And just going to see art helps. University College London tracked 6,710 British adults over age 50 for 14 years. People who went to the theatre, a museum, or a concert every few months were 31% less likely to die during that window. Even going once or twice a year dropped the risk by 14%. Wealth, education, and starting health were all accounted for. The mechanism seems to live in a brain circuit called the default mode network, the part that wanders when you daydream. When you fall into the zone of making something, that network hooks up with the one that holds your attention, and the brain's stress system quiets down. Cortisol falls, dopamine climbs, and the slow-burn inflammation that eventually kills most of us calms down too. None of it depends on the quality of what you make. The Spanish tweet sounded like hyperbole. 40 years of peer-reviewed data says it's roughly right.

The atmosphere in Washington, D.C. is shifting right now because something historic is taking place. As we approach the 250th anniversary of this nation, we are returning to the only foundation that cannot be shaken. From April 18 through April 25, the entire Bible is being read aloud from Genesis to Revelation at the Museum of the Bible. For seven straight days, nearly 500 people from across the country are gathering to lift their voices for 12 hours a day. There is no human commentary, no political spin, and no personal interpretation. This is the raw, unfiltered Word of God being spoken over our capital and over our land. This is more than an event. It is a prophetic stand for spiritual renewal…in a time when America is statistically the most secular she has ever been! In a season of deep division, this is a moment of total unity where we declare the ultimate authority of Scripture. We are calling for a turning point in America, and that turning point always begins with the Word. The sound of Truth is being released into the atmosphere. Watch, listen, and share this everywhere. Let’s make sure the Word of God reaches every home in this nation.

Perhaps the cutest thing I've ever seen in Western North Carolina... A little baby bear running across the street to her momma gets the SWEETEST hug. Absolutely heart melting stuff!!! ❤️

How Morse Code works. Here’s the example :

Guy found an anthill in his garden. Poured gas on it. Lit it up. It did not go the way he thought 😬

The left can’t even begin to understand this level of personal responsibility

On this day 81 years ago, a man was shot and killed on a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean. He was not a soldier and he carried no weapon, just a notebook. His name was Ernie Pyle. He was a war correspondent. And by the time he died, he was the most famous journalist in the world. While other reporters covered generals and strategy, Pyle wrote about the ordinary soldier. The mud, the cold rations, the cigarettes shared in a foxhole, the letters from home that arrived weeks late. He did not write about the war from a desk. He lived in it. He slept in ditches, ate what the men ate, and shared their foxholes during shelling. He was once injured when a bomb hit the building he was in. His columns were published in over 400 newspapers and by 1944, more than 14 million people read him every day. He won a Pulitzer Prize and Hollywood made a film about him. But the soldiers did not care about any of that. They cared that he was one of them. He was the only journalist who bothered to ask their names. After covering the war in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and France, he went home. He was exhausted and afraid, and he told friends he did not think he would survive if he went back. But in early 1945, he went to the Pacific anyway. He said the soldiers fighting there deserved to have their stories told too. On April 17, he arrived on a small island called Ie Shima, off the coast of Okinawa. The next morning, he was riding in a jeep when a hidden machine gun opened fire. He dived into a ditch with an officer beside him, and a few moments later he raised his head. A bullet hit him just below the rim of his helmet. He died instantly at 44 years old. His fellow soldiers buried him between an infantry private and a combat engineer. They did not put him in a separate grave. They buried him exactly where he would have wanted to be, beside the men he wrote about. They made a wooden marker and it read: “At this spot, the 77th Infantry Division lost a buddy. Ernie Pyle. 18 April 1945.” Not a journalist. Not a correspondent. A buddy. In his pocket, they found the draft of a column he had been writing but never finished. In it, he wrote about the men who were still fighting, and how he wished he could have been there when it finally ended. General Eisenhower said: “The soldiers in Europe, and that means all of us, have lost one of our best and most understanding friends.” He had once described a scene on Normandy beach the morning after D-Day. Soldiers’ personal belongings were scattered across the sand and he wrote about toothbrushes, diaries, Bibles, and photographs of families. He wrote about a tennis racket that someone had packed, believing they would actually get to use it. He wrote about these things because he understood that the way to make people care about a war is not to describe the battles. It is to describe the men.

There was once a time when people made and sold Jack Buckby tee shirts. I guess I’m less cool now