To stop the spread of breast cancer cells, Priscilla Hwang isn’t focusing on attacking the tumor itself, but rather its means of communication. “What kind of signals are the tumor cells receiving that turn on that migration pathway, [that] tell them, ‘OK, now it’s time to go?’” //Virginia Commonwealth University Magazine

The sun rose on December 15, 1836, to find the entirety of the nation’s intellectual property records turned to ash: around 10,000 patents in total—every invention registered with the government since 1790.
//Smithsonian Magazine

Nearly 10 years after signing a treaty to ease access to braille and audio versions of printed works—and to allow nations to pool resources—the effort is finally bearing fruit in the U.S. with a surge of titles in almost any tongue. //The Washington Post Magazine

What began as a de facto orchestra of nine bored teenagers has grown to be the nation’s largest a predominantly Black youth orchestra.
//American University Magazine

One of the company’s best-selling items is a white card with painted sundrop blossoms that counsels, in all caps: “You will get through this s---.” But the fate of Second Story Cards may be less certain due to the pandemic’s squeeze.
//The Washington Post Magazine

It was something between a lark and a plan, and it rode in on a gust of chutzpah: One day in the car in 2012, Amy and Ronnie Wright began to talk about what it would take to launch a music television network.
//The Washington Post Magazine

For starters, it’s not empty. Riders pile on and squeeze in to avoid the pinch of the closing doors. Arms reach out like branches from the thicket of standees to cling to available pole space; one young woman, stranded, braces herself by pressing a hand against a low ceiling. Hip-hop spills from headphones, people inexplicably wear sunglasses, and there’s the occasional whiff of bad breath. This is rush hour aboard the city’s newly crowned best subway line. //The New York Times

On rare occasions —“when the vibe is right”—keepers of the Louis Armstrong Archives will wheel out three gold-plated trumpets on an unceremonious wooden library cart and hand them to schoolchildren to hold, or to trumpeters who, with awe, press their lips to history. //The New York Times

British mountaineer George Mallory, who died somewhere near the top of Mount Everest in 1924, once said that he was pursuing the world’s tallest peak “because it’s there.” Lulu Freer went to the mountain in 2003 because of what wasn’t there: a doctor. //GW Magazine

The way Frederick Gregory tells it, the date April 29, 1985—the day he first saddled half a million gallons of rocket fuel and rode it into space—was roughly the same for him as it was for the rest of humanity: Monday. (*Bonus: Ever wonder what “liftoff” feels like?) //GW Magazine

Three pages into Irvin Yalom's heady, 480-page Existential Psychotherapy, the author pauses, like a scoutmaster a few steps into the wilderness turning to make sure the troop is still behind him. "So far, so good," he writes. Then he plunges forward, carving a new path for exploring the deep, lush wilds of the mind. As he had for years before that 1980 book and has in the decades since, the soft-spoken Dr. Yalom manages to bring lucidity and calm to a topic that otherwise might seem like an abyss of searing dread. //GW Magazine

Absent an official tally on this sort of thing, the Grove Street Stompers say that, in a town brimming with performers who come and go nightly, their 45-year streak is the longest-running jazz gig in New York City, a claim some of their fellow jazz performers support. //The New York Times

He was the fifth American into space—but then again, the first four were astronauts and riding in a spacecraft. Bob White was neither. //GW Magazine

On a summer morning in 1945, a fireball erupted and rode a column of white-hot violence into the New Mexico dawn, twisting and folding into itself as it climbed tens of thousands of feet. The blast vaporized a 100-foot steel tower and punched a dent in the earth hundreds of feet across, fusing the desert surface into a glassy, jade-like glaze. More than five miles away, the blast threw a man off his feet. //GW Magazine