🌲 Spending time with trees can boost your health

🤑 Plus: Save money at the library; what to do if you stumble during a speech

View this email online This week’s newsletter is brought to you by Life Kit producer Clare Marie Schneider Santiago Urquijo/Getty Images The healing power of the forest If you’re looking for a new activity this fall, consider “forest bathing” — the act of immersing yourself in an outdoor environment, slowing down and connecting with nature through “our senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch,” says Qing Li, a researcher on this topic and a professor at Nippon Medical School in Tokyo.  Decades of studies have shown that spending time in the forest is good for your health. It can boost your immune system, lower blood pressure and help with depression. It can also reduce the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline and turn down the dial on your body's fight-or-flight response.  The science of forest bathing Li shares simple, research-backed ways you can reap these health benefits.   🌲 Find a location where you're surrounded by trees. The ideal place to forest bathe is in a forest. But if you live far away from one or don't have the means to get there, any place that has a lot of trees and quiet spaces will do.  "You can also get beneficial effects from a city park," says Li, but they won't be as significant as walking in the deep woods. A 2022 study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that walking in a forest park had a greater impact on cardiovascular function than doing so in an urban park. 🧘 Aim to reduce your heart rate. Your forest bathing session is a good time to sit or walk or do some gentle yoga or tai chi. It's not the time to squeeze in your hardcore cardio for the week. Forest bathing is about calming your nervous system and reducing your heart rate and blood pressure.  If you overexert yourself, your "tiredness will reduce the effect of forest bathing," says Li. Your body will produce more stress hormones such as adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol, which studies have shown that forest bathing can help decrease. ⏲️ Set aside a good chunk of time. To reap the ultimate rewards, plan to spend two to six hours in the woods, says Li. His research showed that forest bathing for about that time helped boost immunity. One study found that participants who walked in the forest for two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon saw an increase in anti-cancer proteins and immune cells that kill tumors, with the effects lasting for at least seven days after.   Learn more about the healing power of the forest Adjust your body clock to winter Photo Illustration by Becky Harlan/NPR Daylight saving time officially ends this Sunday at 2 a.m. local time. With the clocks falling back, you’ll gain an extra hour of sleep but lose some daylight. Here’s how to prepare for the darker days ahead.  ☀️ Make sure you’re getting enough natural light: Shorter days mean fewer opportunities to get outside before nighttime hits. But it’s important to prioritize getting outside — even if it’s only for a short walk or to take the dog out. Experts say at least 20 minutes of natural light in the early to mid-morning hours can help you adjust to the time change and improve your sleep.   🥩 Stock up on foods that nourish. Our moods can take a turn south during the cold dark months, and we tend to eat more too. Think about adding protein sources as a way to increase your satisfaction. "There definitely seems to be more fullness associated with protein," Janet Polivy of the University of Toronto at Mississauga told us in 2011. 🎳 Join a club or group activity. Winter can bring social isolation. "Some people tend to hibernate," says Sanam Hafeez, an adjunct assistant professor of psychology at Columbia University. So try to stay socially engaged. Join a book club or find people with a shared hobby. Group exercise classes are also effective at combating the winter blues.   More tips on adjusting your body clock Random tip of the week What do you do if you’re giving a speech in front of an audience and you get tongue-tied? In our episode on public speaking, speech coach Eva Margarita says to pause, take a deep breath and go back to the beginning of a sentence or restate the word you stumbled on.  Don't worry, people don't notice those pauses as much as you think they do, says speechwriter Lauren Dominguez Chan. "Even if someone does notice, that's OK too." Read the story and listen to the episode here. Newsletter continues after sponsor message Listen Sponsor-Free Support public media while getting expert advice on health, finance, relationships and more with Life Kit+. You'll get sponsor-free listening AND that warm fuzzy feeling that comes with making a difference. You can also check out loads of other NPR+ podcasts with benefits at plus.npr.org. Explore Life Kit+ Weekend project ideas     luchezar/Getty Images 🍲 Make a great soup. Soup can be a flexible, cozy meal that allows you to experiment in the kitchen. But to make a delicious one, you need to get some fundamentals down first. Chef Sohla El-Waylly offers her best tips on everything from creating a yummy broth to ensuring you get your cook time right. Listen to the episode here. ⚕️ Decide on your health insurance plan. Picking health insurance takes a lot of work. It's not a one-size-fits-all type of situation, and there are a lot of confusing terms that come up every year. You also need to consider your general health and finances. So how can you make sense of it all? Read the story here. 🕯️ Create an altar for your ancestors. Spiritual practitioners and Indigenous educators explain how to set up a special place to honor your loved ones. Read the story here. This week on Life Kit Kaz Fantone/NPR Surprising ways your local library can help you save money. Baking pans, legal help, language classes and more — libraries can provide so much more than books. See if your local branch offers these free or discounted resources and services.  Read the story here.        athima tongloom/Getty Images How to save a life with CPR. Every year, more than 350,000 people go into cardiac arrest outside of a hospital setting in the United States. CPR, or cardiopulmonary resuscitation, can help double or triple survival rates. In this episode, we'll explain the basics of this emergency procedure so you can feel empowered to help in a life-or-death situation. Listen to the episode here. Stream your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to find your local station stream. What do you think of today's email? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: LifeKit@npr.org Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here. Looking for more great content? Check out all of our newsletter offerings — including Daily News, Code Switch, Health and more! You received this message because you're subscribed to Life Kit emails. This email was sent by National Public Radio, Inc., 1111 North Capitol Street NE, Washington, DC 20002 Unsubscribe  |  Privacy Policy

Plus: Siskel and Ebert, Alexander Payne and 'Frasier'

View this email online by Linda Holmes Welcome! It was the week when Hasan Minhaj elaborated. It was the week when friendships were in demand. And it was the week when the actors' strike carried on. (Lots more at the news quiz.) Let's get to it. In defense of a juvenile joke — now and then A note: This piece contains explicit language and detailed discussion of body parts. The absolute, unrelenting grimness of the news is a given. There are weeks when something comes to mind to talk about in this space that is an edifying source of uplift in such a time. But there are also weeks when you just have to share a flood of blissfully corny, utterly juvenile jokes. This week on Pop Culture Happy Hour, we covered the new dating show Naked Attraction. Everyone in it gets extremely and completely naked, and you get close-ups, and there is no blurring, and there is no coyness. If you are asking, "Does that mean you see people's [blank] up close?", the answer to that question is "yes." We wound up having a pretty interesting chat about the show, to be honest, and there are some things about it that I genuinely think are pretty cool and thought-provoking. Anna Richardson hosts the Channel 4 reality dating show, Naked Attraction. Channel 4/Nicky Johnston However, when we publish an episode, we brainstorm headlines for that episode on Slack, and that's when things got silly. When we asked NPR's managing editor of standards and practices whether we could share these headlines with you, he gave us (via email) that look that your parents give you when you misbehave but not so badly, and said editor decided to allow it, but took the position that we might be "enjoying this far too much." Au contraire! I would argue we gained precisely the correct amount of enjoyment from headline-writing for a show called Naked Attraction. (Said editor's contribution: The Great British Take-Off. Not bad! And, as you might expect, far less juvenile than ours.) Now, before I present these to you, I want to emphasize that they are naughty. In official terms, they contain punny references to body parts and sex acts. I will not specify which member of our team came up with which headline, although if you are a close follower of Pop Culture Happy Hour, you will have guesses, and they will be mostly correct. We present them as a respite, a retreat to the times when you sit around with your friends, for a moment ignoring everything except your friends, trying only to make each other giggle. With that ... 39 Headlines For Our Naked Attraction Episode Naked Attraction goes balls out Naked Attraction is fun; that’s the schlong and short of it You can’t spell Naked Attraction without DICK Naked Attraction put the luv in vulva Naked Attraction: The naughty bits of naughty Brits Naked Attraction: rude nude lewd pubes, dude Naked Attraction: Their neck, their back … Naked Attraction: Sacks of gold Naked Attraction: Parting glanses Naked Attraction: Some of these foreskins are fiveskins Naked Attraction: Bigger longer and uncut Naked Attraction: Is in-scrote-able Naked Attraction: Bodies bodies bodies Naked Attraction: No prudes, all pubes Naked Attraction: I’m just talkin’ ‘bout shaft Naked Attraction: peen-age dream Naked Attraction: labial tires Naked Attraction: bush, babies Naked Attraction: truly, truly, truly vulvageous Naked Attraction: is causing a flap(s) Naked Attraction: It taint necessarily so Naked Attraction: Tempus pubis Naked Attraction: A pubic shame Naked Attraction: when privates ... aren't Naked Attraction: We don’t make the nudes, we just report them Naked Attraction: the vagitarian option Naked Attraction: It’s their dick in a [see-through] box Naked Attraction: Wang wang wang went the telly Naked Attraction: Pussy galore Naked Attraction is all a-titter Naked Attraction? It's a slot Naked Attraction has Prince Alberts in a can Naked Attraction gives you an eyefull-frontal Naked Attraction: penis, and penisn't Naked Attraction offers low-hanging fruit Naked Attraction: knob's yer uncle Naked Attraction: Out: Boob tube. In: Pube tube. Naked Attraction: The miracle of girth Naked Attraction: A garden of girthy delights You can see which one we chose here. Have a good weekend. Newsletter continues after sponsor message We Recommend Matt Singer's new book Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel and Ebert Changed Movies Forever is a delight, a labor of love that traces one of the most significant forces in film criticism in the 20th century. For those of us who grew up learning about movies from these guys on this show, it's a necessary and lovely read. This week, I caught up with a complicated, thoughtful story from Lila Shapiro that Vulture ran in September about the lawsuit filed by the two then-teenage stars of Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet. It raises a host of questions and is well worth a read. I was very curious about Pain Hustlers, yet another based-on-a-true-story film about the evils of the pharmaceutical industry. It stars Emily Blunt as a single mom who gets a job as a rep for a new pain med and Chris Evans as her dirtbag boss. The reviews have been, at best, mixed. I think Blunt and Evans are both good -- this is the most convincing dirtbag turn of his career, I'd say -- although the story ends up retracing a lot of now-familiar ground. It's now on Netflix. They're just beginning a limited rollout of the Alexander Payne film The Holdovers, which we'll be covering on an upcoming episode of PCHH. (It opens wide on November 10.) Mild spoiler alert for that episode? I really liked it. Listen to the Podcast Sponsor-Free Support your favorite pop culture junkies AND listen without sponsor interruptions with a subscription to Pop Culture Happy Hour+! Learn more and sign up at plus.npr.org/happy. Learn More What We Did This Week Jack Cutmore-Scott as Freddy Crane and Kelsey Grammer as Frasier Crane. Chris Haston/Paramount I was delighted to chat with All Things Considered host Juana Summers and culture desk reporter Andrew Limbong about both the reboot of Frasier and original Frasier. We like one a lot more than the other. Glen, Greta Johnson and Ronald Young, Jr. talked about the Netflix series Bodies. In honor of the return of HBO's The Gilded Age for a second season, we revisited the chat I had about it with Greta Johnsen (double Greta week!) and Christina Tucker. And for Friday's big episode, Glen, Stephen, Aisha and I all gathered for a discussion of one of the most important topics of our time: Max's dating show Naked Attraction. You should also know that, motivated by the surprising romantic successes of Big Brother, I wrote about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Believe me, I had my reasons. And finally, I neglected to note two things Stephen did last week at NPR Music: he was on New Music Friday, and he talked to All Things Considered about Blink-182. (That's right: Blink-182.) What's Making Us Happy Every week on the show, we talk about some other things out in the world that have been giving us joy lately. Here they are: Stephen Thompson: Sampha's new album Lahai Aisha Harris: Tori and Lokita Glen Weldon: A Doctor Who rewatch Linda Holmes: post-season baseball, SOB, but here's to the himbos Stream your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to find your local station stream. Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+. Your support helps make our show possible and unlocks access to our sponsor-free episodes. What do you think of today's email? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: pchh@npr.org Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here. Looking for more great content? Check out all of our newsletter offerings — including Music, Books, Daily News and more! You received this message because you're subscribed to Pop Culture Happy Hour emails. This email was sent by National Public Radio, Inc., 1111 North Capitol Street NE, Washington, DC 20002 Unsubscribe  |  Privacy Policy