The strange saga started with a simple question: Where is James Talarico? It ricocheted across rightwing echo chambers, ballooned into a full-blown conspiracy theory, and became an accidental case study in how dangerously easy it is to turn a mundane human illness into a political weapon during an election year. Talarico, the Democratic candidate for the United States Senate in Texas, had vanished from public view for nine days. His campaign was slow to explain why, and in the suffocating vacuum left by silence, rumors began to crawl. He was sick, his team eventually said. He had been diagnosed with…

In a world where every scroll, every conversation, and every well-meaning piece of advice seems to carry a conflicting opinion about ADHD, autism, and other neurodivergent conditions, parents are drowning in confusion. The noise is relentless: a fellow parent at soccer practice insists that a stricter diet will fix everything, a smiling influencer on TikTok promises a miracle supplement, and even an artificial intelligence voice chirps confidently with advice that sounds scientific but isn’t. For moms and dads trying to do right by their children, sorting through this chaos can feel impossible. This is precisely why Understood.org, a nonprofit dedicated…