Imagine a town square. There are benches, a fountain, and enough room for people to argue, laugh, explain themselves, and change their minds. That is civic space. It isn’t just a physical place; it is the social space we share when we debate public life, when we call out injustice, when we meet someone different from us and still find a way to talk. The countries of the Western Balkans have spent decades trying to build that square. But something is going wrong. As Truthmeter argues in a recent piece, the square is shrinking. The reasons are familiar but no…

When Patients Arrive Bearing Search Results: The Nurse’s Role in Guiding Breast Cancer Care Every day, in oncology clinics around the world, a familiar scene unfolds: a woman sits across from her care team, phone in hand, a mixture of hope and worry in her eyes. She has spent late nights reading articles, watching short videos, and scrolling through comment sections, trying to understand her new diagnosis or her risk of recurrence. Friends have sent her miracle cures; family members have forwarded warnings against treatments. Some of what she has absorbed is sound, some is distorted, and some is dangerously…