As a doctor, I’ve spent years learning to read symptoms, interpret test results, and understand the complex machinery of the human body. But more and more, I’ve come to realize that the deepest wounds and the hardest obstacles to healing often live somewhere else entirely—in the quiet places where people feel unheard, unseen, and alone. That’s why, when I see the latest findings on why people trust or reject medical guidance, I’m always a little concerned, but never truly surprised. Over and over again, the same pattern appears: people yearn for empathy, humility, and active listening. They want to know…

In the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, many experts braced for what they called the “first AI election.” The warnings were everywhere: generative AI could flood voters with deepfakes, fabricate evidence of fraud, and make it impossible to tell what was real from what was manufactured. U.S. intelligence officials declassified reports about foreign influence operations already experimenting with these tools, and major AI companies made grand pledges to keep deceptive election content off their platforms. Yet when the voting actually happened, the feared AI-driven deluge never quite arrived. Foreign nations faced real barriers—technical, organizational, and practical—that limited their ability…