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Is drought the new normal?

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 17:56:36 +0000

Is drought the new normal? Rachel Sauer Thu, 08/14/2025 - 11:56

Pedro DiNezio and Timothy Shanahan

Climate models reveal how human activity may be locking the Southwest into permanent drought

A new wave of climate research is sounding a stark warning: Human activity may be driving drought more intensely—and more directly—than previously understood.

The southwestern United States has been in a historic megadrought for much of the past two decades, with its reservoirs including lakes Mead and Powell dipping to record lows and legal disputes erupting over rights to use water from the Colorado River.

This drought has been linked to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a climate pattern that swings between wet and dry phases every few decades. Since a phase change in the early 2000s, the region has endured a dry spell of epic proportions.

̽��Ƶ scientist Pedro DiNezio, along with climate researchers around the world, assert that human activity may be driving drought more intensely—and more directly—than previously understood.

The PDO was thought to be a natural phenomenon, governed by unpredictable natural ocean and atmosphere fluctuations. But new research published in the journal Nature suggests that’s no longer the case.

Working with hundreds of climate model simulations, our team of atmosphere, earth and ocean scientists found that the PDO is now being strongly influenced by human factors and has been since the 1950s. It should have oscillated to a wetter phase by now, but instead it has been stuck. Our results suggest that drought could become the new normal for the region unless human-driven warming is halted.

The science of a drying world

For decades, scientists have relied on a basic physical principle to predict rainfall trends: Warmer air holds more moisture. In a warming world, this means wet areas are likely to get wetter, while dry regions become drier. In dry areas, as temperatures rise, more moisture is pulled from soils and transported away from these arid regions, intensifying droughts.

While most climate models simulate this general pattern, they often underestimate its full extent, particularly over land areas.

Yet countries are already experiencing drought emerging as one of the most immediate and severe consequences of climate change. Understanding what’s ahead is essential, to know how long these droughts will last and because severe droughts can have sweeping affects on ecosystems, economies and global food security.

Human fingerprints on megadroughts

Simulating rainfall is one of the greatest challenges in climate science. It depends on a complex interplay between large-scale wind patterns and small-scale processes such as cloud formation.

Until recently, climate models have not offered a clear picture of how rainfall patterns are likely to change in the near future as greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, power plants and industries continue to heat up the planet. The models can diverge sharply in where, when and how precipitation will change. Even forecasts that average the results of several models differ when it comes to changes in rainfall patterns.

The techniques we deployed are helping to sharpen that picture for North America and across the tropics.

We looked back at the pattern of PDO phase changes over the past century using an exceptionally large ensemble of climate simulations. The massive number of simulations, more than 500, allowed us to isolate the human influences. This showed that the shifts in the PDO were driven by an interplay of increasing warming from greenhouse gas emissions and cooling from sun-blocking particles called aerosols that are associated with industrial pollution.

From the 1950s through the 1980s, we found that increasing aerosol emissions from rapid industrialization following World War II drove a positive trend in the PDO, making the Southwest rainier and less parched.

After the 1980s, we found that the combination of a sharp rise in greenhouse gas emissions from industries, power plants and vehicles and a reduction in aerosols as countries cleaned up their air pollution shifted the PDO into the negative, drought-generating trend that continues today.

This finding represents a paradigm shift in our scientific understanding of the PDO and a warning for the future. The current negative phase can no longer be seen as just a roll of the climate dice—it has been loaded by humans.

Our conclusion that global warming can drive the PDO into its negative, drought-inducing phase is also supported by geological records of past megadroughts. Around 6,000 years ago, during a period of high temperatures, evidence shows the emergence of a similar temperature pattern in the North Pacific and widespread drought across the Southwest.

Tropical drought risks underestimated

The past is also providing clues to future rainfall changes in the tropics and the risk of droughts in locations such as the Amazon.

One particularly instructive example comes from approximately 17,000 years ago. Geological evidence shows that there was a period of widespread rainfall shifts across the tropics coinciding with a major slowdown of ocean currents in the Atlantic.

These ocean currents, which play a crucial role in regulating global climate, naturally weakened or partially collapsed then, and they are expected to slow further this century at the current pace of global warming.

A recent study of that period, using computer models to analyze geologic evidence of earth’s climate history, found much stronger drying in the Amazon basin than previously understood. It also shows similar patterns of aridification in Central America, West Africa and Indonesia.

The results suggest that rainfall could decline precipitously again. Even a modest slowdown of a major Atlantic Ocean current could dry out rainforests, threaten vulnerable ecosystems and upend livelihoods across the tropics.

What comes next

Drought is a growing problem, increasingly driven by human influence. Confronting it will require rethinking water management, agricultural policy and adaptation strategies. Doing that well depends on predicting drought with far greater confidence.

Climate research shows that better predictions are possible by using computer models in new ways and rigorously validating their performance against evidence from past climate shifts. The picture that emerges is sobering, revealing a much higher risk of drought across the world.

Pedro DiNezio is an associate professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. Timothy Shanahan is an associate professor of geological science at the University of Texas at Austin

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Climate models reveal how human activity may be locking the Southwest into permanent drought.

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Moose are on the loose

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 22:43:40 +0000

Moose are on the loose Rachel Sauer Wed, 08/13/2025 - 16:43

William Taylor , John Wendt and Joshua Miller

Moose have lived in Colorado for centuries—unpacking evidence from history, archaeology, oral traditions

Moose are on the loose in the southern Rockies.

In July 2025, a young wandering bull was captured roaming a city park in Greeley, Colorado. A spate of similar urban sightings alongside some aggressive moose encounters has elevated moose management and conservation into a matter of public debate, especially across metro Denver and the Colorado Front Range.

In Rocky Mountain National Park, a recent study found that moose and elk might be to blame for far-reaching changes to valley ecosystems, as their browsing reduces important plants like willows, depriving beavers of habitat and materials for their wetland engineering. Park wildlife are generally not managed through hunting, but the park has tried techniques like fencing moose away from wetland zones. Publicly, discussion has swirled around further mitigation measures to slow or eliminate moose populations.

̽��Ƶ archaeologist William Taylor is partnering with paleoecology and conservation paleobiology colleagues to study the ancient animals of the Rockies.

At the heart of this debate is a basic question – do moose belong in the southern Rockies at all?

During much of the last century, moose were apparently rare in Colorado. The animals are absent from some early 20th century official wildlife tallies. Then, in 1978, the Colorado Division of Wildlife – now Colorado Parks and Wildlife – released a group of moose into North Park in north-central Colorado. At the time, biologists understood their efforts to be a reintroduction, but in the years since, wildlife managers have shifted their thinking about the place of moose in local ecosystems.

In the decades that followed, the moose expanded their range and numbers. Today, informal estimates by Colorado Parks and Wildlife put the moose population at around 3,500 animals. Under increased moose browsing pressure and a shifting climate, some mountain wetland environments are changing.

Should these changes be thought of as human-made ecological wounds caused by releasing moose? The National Park Service seems to think so.

Statements from 2025 on the park service website, and other public messaging from wildlife officials, assert that Colorado has never supported a breeding population of moose – only the occasional transient visitor. The factual basis for this idea seems to hinge heavily on an unpublished internal report from 2015, which identified only a few archaeological or historical records of moose near the park.

We are a team of archaeologists, paleoecologists and conservation paleobiologists studying the ancient animals of the Rockies.

Understanding moose and their interactions with people centuries ago means carefully analyzing different traces that survive the passage of time. These can range from the bones of animals themselves to indirect clues preserved in everything from lake sediments to historical records.

Are moose actually native to Colorado?

As scientists studying the past, we know that reconstructing the ancient geographic ranges of animals is difficult. Archaeological sites with animal bones can be a great tool to understand the past, especially for tracing the food choices of ancient humans. But such sites can be rare, and even when they are well preserved and well studied, it can take lots of care and scientific research to identify the species of each bone.

Harder still is determining the intimate details of ancient animals’ lives, including how and where they lived, died or reproduced. Such key details can be especially opaque for moose, who are solitary and elusive. Because of this, moose may not end up in human diets, even where both species have established populations. A comprehensive review of archaeological sites from across Alaska and some areas of the Canadian Yukon, where moose are common today and have likely been present since the end of the last Ice Age, found that moose were nearly absent until the past few centuries. In fact, moose often comprised less than 0.1% of the total number of bones in very large collections, if they appeared at all. In some areas, cultural reasons like taboos against moose hunting can also prevent them from ending up in archaeological bone tallies.

In new research published as a preprint in advance of peer review, we took a closer look at the idea that moose were absent from Colorado before 1978. We combed through newspaper records, photo archives and early travel diaries and identified dozens of references to moose sightings in Colorado spanning the first records in 1860 through the decade of moose reintroduction in the 1970s.

Moose sightings appear in the very earliest written records of the area that would become Rocky Mountain National Park. In his 1863 diary, Milton Estes described happening upon a large moose alongside a band of elk while on a hunting trip.

“Since elk were common I picked out Mr. Moose for my game,” he wrote.

Milton thought he had bagged “the first and only moose that had ever been killed so far south.” He was wrong.

Our archival research turned up even earlier sightings of moose in the area, along with many more across the region in the decades that followed. Diaries, newspapers and photo records from the past two centuries show the presence of not only young bulls, which at times can range widely, but also cows and calves, a sign that local breeding was taking place in Colorado before reintroduction.

These sightings recorded in diaries and newspapers don’t have to stand on their own. Moose appear in older placenames around the state, like the area once known as Moose Park along the road from Lyons to Estes Park. Written accounts from the late 19th and early 20th centuries among Ute, Shoshone and Arapaho peoples describe moose stories, hunts and songs. And though historical records don’t go too much further back than the mid-19th century in Colorado, archaeological records do.

Our survey of Colorado sites turned up ancient moose at Jurgens, near Greeley, dated to more than 9,000 years ago, and even moose bone tools among the ruins of Mesa Verde, only a few centuries ago.

Diaries, newspapers and photo records from the past two centuries show the presence of not only young bull moose, which at times can range widely, but also cows and calves, a sign that local breeding was taking place in Colorado before reintroduction.

This question of whether moose are native to the southern Rockies is not just a philosophical one – its answer will shape management decisions by the National Park Service and others.

Official narrative minimizes moose presence

The contemporary idea of moose as non-native animals reflects a different understanding than was common only a few decades ago. In the 1940s, some biologists described moose as a native species that had been “extirpated except for stragglers.” As recently as the early 1970s, Rocky Mountain National Park officials understood their moose work as a reintroduction of “wild animals once native to the park.” Our findings suggest that the valid knowledge of earlier scientists has since faded or been replaced, repositioning moose as ecological outsiders.

As moose-human conflicts and shifting wetland ecologies prompt hard conversations over how to manage moose, a range of options have been discussed in public discourse. These include courses of action such as the reintroduction of carnivores like wolves, or targeted hunting access for tribes or the public.

If moose are ‘invasive,’ they can be removed

For federal agencies, labels like “invasive” or “non-native” carry legal connotations and can be used to enable other measures, like eradication.

In Olympic National Park, where mountain goats were deemed invasive and ecologically impactful, biologists undertook an extermination campaign that involved shooting the animals from helicopters, despite warnings from archaeologists as long ago as the late 1990s that the data behind their argument was flawed.

As the animal and plant communities of our Rockies change rapidly in a warming world, this kind of policy would not only be unsupported by scientific evidence, but also likely to impede the ability of our animal communities to survive, adapt and thrive.

The historical evidence indicates that moose are not foreign intruders. Archival, archaeological and anthropological data shows that moose have been in the southern Rockies for centuries, if not millennia. Rather than treat moose as a threat, we urge Rocky Mountain National Park and other agencies to work in partnership with tribes, paleoecologists and the public to carefully develop historically grounded management plans for this Colorado native.

William Taylor is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado Boulder. John Wendt is a postdoctoral fellow in natural resources ecology and management at Oklahoma State University. Joshua Miller is an associate professor of geosciences and the University of Cincinnati.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Moose have lived in Colorado for centuries—unpacking evidence from history, archaeology, oral traditions.

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Telling the stories of loss and healing

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 21:52:08 +0000

Telling the stories of loss and healing Rachel Sauer Wed, 08/13/2025 - 15:52

Kathryn E. Goldfarb and Lucas Rozell

Colorado’s Marshall Fire survivors find healing and meaning through oral history project

The Colorado Marshall Fire killed two people and destroyed over 1,000 structures on Dec. 30, 2021.

The news cycle has long since moved on, but people impacted by the fire are still recovering. Part of that process is through storytelling.

The Louisville Historical Museum, which is located 10 miles east of Boulder, later joined by collaborators from the University of Colorado Boulder Anthropology Department, initiated the Marshall Fire Story Project to preserve the stories of people affected.

̽��Ƶ researcher Kathryn Goldfarb is an associate professor of anthropology.

“This is the first time we’ve actually sat down and taken this long to talk about it,” said Lisa Clark, one contributor to the project. “’Cause we’re always like, ‘(people) have better things to do. You don’t wanna hear our pain. You don’t wanna hear our stories,’ you know. But yeah, it’s been nice to do it.”

All project contributors are quoted using their real names.

We are a cultural anthropologist and qualitative researcher who are collaborating with the Louisville Historical Museum on the Marshall Fire Story Project. Broadly, we are each involved with research that explores the importance of personal and community narratives for well-being.

However, the Marshall Fire Story Project is not a research project. We have no research questions. Contributors are simply invited to share what they would like about the fire.

While this project embraces the specificity of individual experiences, recent destructive fires in Maui, Hawaii, and Southern California show that the work we are doing is needed in many other locations.

Why oral history?

Recounting personal experiences is critical to the historical record.

Oral history has also become recognized as a powerful method for healing after trauma, both for individuals and larger community groups. Talking about traumatic events may be painful. However, narrative also facilitates meaning-making, strengthens ties within communities, and contributes to social justice efforts.

By telling their own stories in their own words, participants in the Marshall Fire Story Project shape what is remembered and how it is remembered.

Contributors to the project had diverse objectives in sharing their stories. Many welcomed the opportunity to contribute to the historical record, which Jessica Rossi-Katz described as “a record of experience.” Another contributor wanted to share their perspective as a lower-income person. Others mentioned the relevance of local stories as they apply to a global context of climate change.

As wildfires become ever more common, the themes that came up in the oral histories are increasingly relevant to community members, policymakers and scholars alike.

Stories of loss

Two people lost their lives in the fire, along with over 1,000 pets.

“I’d take losing my stuff over losing them,” said Anna Kramer, when describing the loss of her neighbor’s dogs. Kramer, an artist, did lose her stuff, including the majority of her artistic works.

Remediation workers clean the garage of Gigi Yang, a collaborator for the Marshall Fire Story Project. Due to concerns about toxins from smoke and ash residue in their homes, many residents opted for smoke remediation and deep cleaning of their homes. (Photo: Gigi Yang)

Abby McClelland’s family was away from their house when it burned.

“For a while I was really upset that we weren’t there and didn’t get a chance to take anything,” McClelland said. “And the more I think about what we would’ve taken, the more I’m like, that stuff is dumb.”

The family was able to replace their vital records and passports within weeks.

“But things like, you know, my grandmother’s rings or the Champagne cork from our wedding reception. Like things that I would’ve thought, oh, that’s so silly to evacuate that, those are the truly irreplaceable things.”

Mary Barry said the “fire was the ultimate downsizer.” She reflected on the objects she had lost – her daughter’s baby pictures, her sewing machines, a collection of books bound in blue and gold.

The fire also took Barry’s pet turtles, one of whom her husband had kept for over twenty years.

“Losing (a) house is like losing a person, where you mourn the loss of your comfort,” Barry said. This was particularly true in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, where people’s homes were their entire environment during quarantine.

Many of those whose homes did not burn suffered a different kind of ambiguous loss. Their homes were damaged by smoke, which carried with it heavy metals, hazardous chemicals and volatile organic compounds.

Shana Sutton’s family stayed in a hotel for six months while their home was being remediated. Like many others, much of the family’s belongings were deemed nonsalvageable.

“In my head,” Sutton recounted, “I was like, okay, I’m just going to pretend that they all burned.”

Concern with health impacts

As she watched the smoke from a distance, Brittany Petrelli told her brother on the phone, “I can smell how devastating this fire is.” Petrelli, a project contributor involved with the recovery effort, recounted that the fire smelled “like things that shouldn’t be burning. Rubber, plastic building materials.”

Residents with concerns about outdoor and indoor air quality as well as soil and water contamination contacted scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder, who, along with scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Chemical Sciences Laboratory, conducted air quality sampling. Ultimately, the publicized data for outdoor air quality showed little difference from other urban areas.

Residents whose homes survived but were affected by smoke continued to note symptoms such as sore throats, coughs and stinging eyes for six months and then one year after the fire.

Like others whose homes were damaged by smoke, Beth Eldridge had difficulty obtaining insurance coverage for mitigation. After she attempted to clean char and ash on her own, she experienced persistent health impacts.

After the Marshall Fire, area residents created notes of support for friends and neighbors at the Louisville Public Library; the notes were displayed in the library windows. (Photo: Louisville Historical Museum)

“Being part of an HOA (Home Owner’s Association) should give you two buckets of insurance,” Eldridge explained, “but in reality, everyone is divided and the system makes individuals fend for themselves. My insurance wouldn’t take any responsibility. The HOA insurance wouldn’t take any responsibility. … I was sick and I couldn’t get better and I needed help.”

Accounts from the project highlight uncertainty that remediated personal items were “really clean” – as Shana Sutton shared, it “makes you crazy.” Many people spoke of dissatisfaction with a lack of standards for remediation. Current standards, not specific to wildfires, do not engage the epidemiological and toxicological effects of fire byproducts, although experts in the field recognize these dangers.

Precarity and community solidarity

Being underinsured was a persistent theme in project stories, and some people recounted how negotiating with their insurance companies literally became a full-time job. After the fire, lower-income community members found themselves in an even more acute state of financial uncertainty.

A number of mutual aid groups sprung up in the aftermath of the fire, and several of those groups shared their stories with the project. Meryl Suissa started the Marshall Fire Community group on Facebook, which worked to help families replace items lost in the fire.

“I think what we’ve learned is like, yes, people are okay and they’re strong and they’re resilient and they’re gonna continue fighting,” Suissa said. “But we still have a long way to go to help them heal.”

Kate Coslett, who ran Operation Hotel Sanity, also highlighted how the community came together to contribute to organizations like hers, which delivered home-cooked meals to displaced residents.

“So many volunteers, hundreds of volunteers,” she said. “It’s September (2022), and there are still people making meals. It’s incredible … their empathy and their love, this community is just, I have goose bumps.”

Yet recovery means different things to different people. As Abby McClelland noted, there is a difference between “trauma on the individual level and trauma on the collective level.”

“I can rebuild the house,” McClelland said, “but I can’t rebuild all the houses in the neighborhood, and I can’t plant all the trees, and I can’t, you know, reopen all the businesses. I can’t reverse the trauma in the area. I can only control what’s inside my house. It’s hard to know what’s going to happen on that larger level, and how long that’s going to resonate.”

Like others who shared their accounts with the project, McClelland highlighted a necessity for policy change and governmental actions to prevent further climate-related disasters.

“Individuals can’t solve systemic problems,” she said.

Future of the project

For a community historical museum whose motto is “Be a part of the story,” first-person records constitute valuable resources for both the present and the future.

Our team is currently preparing written and oral project contributor submissions for archiving in a publicly accessible platform. In partnership with Marshall Together and the Community Foundation Boulder County, we are documenting recovery and rebuilding experiences as residents return to their homes.

The first storytellers in our project spoke of trauma and despair, but also gratitude for community. What will future stories tell us as neighbors continue to reunite and adjust to how the community has changed after the Marshall Fire?

This article was written in collaboration with Sophia Imperioli, museum associate – Public History & Oral History, and Gigi Yang, museum services supervisor of the Louisville Historical Museum.

Kathryn E. Goldfarb is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado Boulder. Lucas Rozell (MAnth'24) is a research assistant on the CU Anschutz Medical Campus.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Colorado’s Marshall Fire survivors find healing and meaning through oral history project.

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Top photo courtesy the Louisville Historical Museum

It takes a village of mothers

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 20:56:42 +0000

It takes a village of mothers Rachel Sauer Wed, 08/13/2025 - 14:56

Sona Dimidjian and Anahi Collado

How mothers supporting mothers can help fill the health care worker shortage gap and other barriers to care

For generations, women have relied on informal networks of friends, family and neighbors to navigate the complexities of birth and motherhood. Today, research is finally catching up to what generations of women have known: Peer support can be a lifeline.

Despite growing evidence, the unique wisdom and strength that arise when mothers help mothers has been surprisingly under‑explored in the scientific literature, but that’s beginning to change. Peer-delivered programs are beginning to bring together long-standing community traditions and structured, evidence-based approaches to support the mental health of new and expectant moms.

We are clinical psychologists at the University of Colorado Boulder Renée Crown Wellness Institute. Our work and research weaves together psychological science and the wisdom of mothers supporting mothers. Our program, Alma, supports women in restoring well-being in ways that are community-rooted, evidence-based and scalable.

Through the Alma program, researchers Sona Dimidjian (left) and Anahi Collado (right) aim to support women in restoring well-being in ways that are community-rooted, evidence-based and scalable.

Pressure on parents

Nearly 50% of parents report feeling overwhelmed by stress on most days. An even larger share, about 65%, experience feelings of loneliness, according to a 2024 report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. These feelings hit mothers especially hard, the report says.

In 2025, mothers in the United States continue to shoulder most of the caregiving of children while also managing work, personal health and household responsibilities. The transition to motherhood is often marked by emotional and psychological strain. In fact, 10% to 20% of women experience depression during pregnancy, the postpartum period or both. Depression is one of the most common complications of childbirth. A similar number of women also face significant anxiety.

In many communities, mental health resources are scarce and stigma around mental health issues persists; therefore, many mothers are left to navigate such challenges alone and in silence. Antidepressants are widely prescribed, but research suggests that many women stop using antidepressants during pregnancy – yet they don’t start therapy or an alternative treatment instead.

Psychotherapy is the most preferred care option among new and expectant mothers, but it is often inaccessible or nonexistent. This is due in part to a workforce shortage of mental health providers.

The shortage has contributed to long wait times, geographic disparities and cultural and language barriers between providers and patients. This is especially true for underserved populations. In fact, more than 75% of depressed mothers do not receive the care they need.

Science of peer support

The science of peer support is part of a larger field exploring community health workers as one way to address the shortage of mental health providers. Peer mentors are trusted individuals from the community who share common experiences or challenges with those they serve. Through specialized training, they are equipped to deliver education, offer mental health support and connect people with needed resources.

A study that analyzed 30 randomized clinical trials involving individuals with serious mental illness found that peer support was associated with significant improvements in clinical outcomes and personal recovery. Researchers have proposed that peer support creates space for learning and healing, especially when peers share lived experience, culture and language.

In 2025, mothers in the United States continue to shoulder most of the caregiving of children while also managing work, personal health and household responsibilities. (Photo: Shutterstock)

As clinical psychologists, we heard from mothers in our work and communities that wanted to help other moms recover from depression, navigate the challenges of motherhood and avoid feeling alone. This insight led us to co-create Alma, a peer-led mental health program based on behavioral activation.

Behavioral activation is a proven method for treating depression based on decades of randomized clinical trials, including in new and expectant mothers. It helps new and expectant mothers reengage in meaningful activities to improve mood and functioning.

The Alma program

Alma is based on the principle that depression must be understood in context and that changing what you do can change how you feel. One strategy we use is to help a mother identify an activity that brings a sense of accomplishment, connection or enjoyment – and then take small steps to schedule that activity. Mothers might also be guided on ways to ask for help and strengthen their support networks. Alma is offered in English and Spanish.

Peer mentors typically meet with moms once a week for six to eight sessions. Sessions can take place in person or virtually, allowing flexibility that honors each family’s needs. Traditionally, peer mentors have been recruited through long-standing relationships with trusted community organizations and word-of-mouth referrals. This approach has helped ensure that mentors are deeply rooted in the communities they serve. Alma peer mentors are compensated for their time, which recognizes the value of their lived expertise, their training and the work involved in providing peer mentoring and support.

“This was the first time I felt like someone understood me, without me having to explain everything,” shared one mother during a post-program interview that all participants complete after finishing Alma.

To date, more than 700 mothers in Colorado have participated in Alma. In one of our studies, we focused on 126 Spanish-speaking Latina mothers who often face significant barriers to care, such as language differences, cost and stigma. For nearly 2 out of 3 mothers, symptoms of depression decreased enough to be considered a true, measurable recovery — not just a small change.

Notably, most of the depression improvement occurred within the first three Alma meetings. We also observed that peer mentors delivered the Alma program consistently and as intended. This suggests the program could be reliably expanded and replicated in other settings with similar positive outcomes.

A second study, conducted through a national survey of Spanish-speaking Latina new and expectant mothers, found that peer-led mental health support was not only perceived as effective, but also highly acceptable and deeply valued. Mothers noted that they were interested in peer-led support because it met them where they were: with language, trust and cultural understanding.

Supporting mothers works

Supporting mothers’ mental health is essential because it directly benefits both mothers and their children. Those improvements foster healthier emotional, cognitive and social development in their children. This interconnected impact highlights why investing in maternal mental health yields lasting benefits for the entire family.

It also makes strong economic sense to address mood and anxiety disorders among new and expectant mothers, which cost an estimated US$32,000 for each mother and child from conception through five years postpartum. More than half of those costs occur within the first year, driven primarily by productivity losses, preterm births and increased maternal health care needs.

Beyond the impact on individual families, the broader economic toll of untreated mood and anxiety disorders among new and expectant mothers is substantial. For example, it’s estimated that $4.7 billion a year are lost to mothers who have to miss work or reduce their job performance because of symptoms like fatigue, anxiety and depression.

Together – as individuals, families, communities and institutions – we can cultivate a world where the challenges of parenting are met with comprehensive support, allowing the joy of parenting to be fully realized. Because no one should have to do this alone.

Sona Dimidjian is director of the Renée Crown Wellness Institute and a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder. Anahi Collado is a ̽��Ƶ assistant research professor of psychology.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How mothers supporting mothers can help fill the health care worker shortage gap and other barriers to care.

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One-hit wondering: Who let the dogs out?

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 23:32:39 +0000

One-hit wondering: Who let the dogs out? Rachel Sauer Thu, 08/07/2025 - 17:32

Jared Bahir Browsh

The Baha Men hit, released 25 years ago, occupies a distinctive spot in music and sports history, along with “Macarena” and other novelty earworms

A quarter century ago, the world was gripped by a deeply philosophical question: “Who let the dogs out?” Twenty-five years after the Baha Men hit became a cultural phenomenon, the history of the song reveals the evolution of a viral novelty song while reflecting a music industry at a transition point at the start of the millennium.

Listeners likely are most familiar with the Baha Men cover of the song that was released on July 26, 2000, but the song, and its famous hook, has a much longer history. Ben Sisto’s 2019 documentary “Who Let the Dogs Out,” traces the history of the hook, or chant, back to the 1980s, when high school teams like the Dowagiac Chieftains in Michigan and Austin Reagan Raiders in Texas would exclaim “Ooh” or “Who let the dogs out,” woofing along with the chant.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the ̽��Ƶ Department of Ethnic Studies.

Several other songs with a similar hook were released in the 1990s, leading to years of lawsuits over the rights to the song. Lawsuits targeted Anslem Douglas, who is credited with writing the Baha Men version of the song—which is a cover of his song “Doggie,” written as a feminist response to men catcalling women. In 1999, rapper Chuck Smooth recorded a song titled “Who Let the Dogs Out?” sampling the infamous hook and later joining the lawsuit.

Before the Baha Men recorded their version, infamous producer Jonathan King, who had several hits in the United Kingdom and helped discover Genesis, recorded his own cover of “Doggie” under the name Fat Jakk and his Pack of Pets. King brought the recording to Steve Greenberg, who is credited with discovering Hanson, the Jonas Brothers, Joss Stone and AJR. Greenberg convinced the Baha Men, whom he discovered in 1991 and signed to Atlantic Records subsidiary Big Beat, to record a cover of the song. The Baha Men hesitated because the song was already popular in the Caribbean, but Greenberg convinced them, creating the label S-Curve Records to produce the album.

Even before the Baha Men version was released, teams like the Mississippi State University Bulldogs played the Chuck Smooth recording of the song beginning in the fall of 1998, and soon other teams followed. In June 2000, and as a joke, Seattle Mariners Promotions Director Gregg Greene used the Baha Men recording as a walk-up song for backup catcher Joe Oliver, several weeks before the song was released. All-Star shortstop Alex Rodriguez then requested the song; other teams adopted the song as an anthem. The New York Mets claim they used the song first, leading to both the Mariners and Mets exchanging jabs over who popularized the song as each team made runs deep into the playoffs.

As “Who Let the Dogs Out” made its rounds in stadiums and arenas in the United States, it became a global hit, reaching number one in several countries, including Australia. The song only peaked at No. 40 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the United States, barely qualifying the song as a one-hit wonder. However, like other novelty songs—including Aqua’s “Barbie Girl”—its cultural impact goes far beyond its performance on the chart

The song got another boost when it was included on the “Rugrats in Paris—The Movie” soundtrack, which was released two weeks after the song peaked on the Billboard Chart, ensuring children would continue “woofing” along with the song well into the next year. The song’s charm did wane in 2001, especially as sports fans began to find the song more annoying than energizing. But it still represents a unique time in music and a shift in stadium music in sports.

From Napster to TikTok

The late 1990s saw huge changes in technology that caused significant disruptions in the music industry. Throughout the 20th century, music technology continually advanced, making music more portable and providing more avenues to cater musical tastes to individual listeners.

The 1950s provided a foundation for modern popular music, as young listeners became the target of music producers and disc jockeys—especially as other forms of programming, like scripted programs and variety shows, transitioned from radio to television. Radio stations focused more on broadcasting music, especially as rock ’n’ roll exploded in popularity thanks to DJs like Alan Freed, who helped popularize the term in 1951. Rock ’n’ roll’s growth was supported by improvement in audio technology like the electric guitar, condenser microphones and enhanced amplifiers.

Radio put a greater focus on individual hit songs or singles, separating popular songs from a larger album. Album sales in all formats remained popular through the 1990s, but the greater focus on hits shifted the audience’s listening habits, especially as DJs curated shows of hit songs from a variety of artists. The introduction of the 7-inch 45 rpm record in 1949, which ran for between 5 to 6 minutes, also promoted single sales and became standard in jukeboxes.

The popularity of rock ’n’ roll among young listeners raised criticism from parents and politicians over concerns of sexualization and the influence of Black artists promoting integration. However, by the mid-1950s, teenagers found more freedom as the transistor radio came to market in 1954, allowing radios to travel outside of the home and car. FM radio, with its higher-quality sound, also slowly spread as the FCC implemented a rule in 1964 forcing FM stations in cities to create original programming rather than simply simulcast from AM; many FM stations chose music formats.

Music continued to become more portable and individualized as magnetic tape formats, including the 8-track and then the compact cassette, offered the option to listen to singles and albums on the move. They also allowed listeners to curate their own music. Through the 1970s, 8-tracks dominated the music market, peaking in 1978 as the preferred tape format for cars and homes. In 1979, Sony introduced the Walkman, which worked with compact cassettes that were not only more portable but also allowed listeners to fast forward and rewind to listen—and relisten—to their favorite songs anywhere.

Following decades of work by scientists to develop digital audio, the compact disc introduced the format to the public in 1982, allowing for greater portability, track selection and higher-quality sound. It later allowed users to upload or “rip” music to computers, helping to expand music sharing through peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. Although P2P promoted the sharing of all types of files, Napster’s launch in 1999 and LimeWire’s in 2000 popularized the practice of downloading compressed music files as MP3s.

In spite of lawsuits brought by artists like Metallica and Dr. Dre over copyright concerns and the music industry becoming anxious over how MP3s would impact sales and revenues, Apple introduced the iPod in October 2001. It was not the first portable digital music player, but it drastically improved data capacity, battery life, functionality, the file transfer process and portability.

In 1979, Sony introduced the Walkman, which worked with compact cassettes that were not only more portable but also allowed listeners to fast forward and rewind to listen—and relisten—to their favorite songs anywhere.

Users continued to download music through file-sharing sites even as Napster fought lawsuits before shutting down in July 2001. iTunes launched eight months before the iPod debuted, allowing for computer music management, including the ability to more easily rip CDs and build both mix CDs and playlists for the iPod when it launched. The iTunes store launched in 2003, allowing for seamless purchase of songs and albums, which could be transferred easily to the iPod. However, music sharing remained popular.

The digital era increased the focus on singles over albums, as consumers have increased options to curate their playlists by selecting individual songs rather than full albums through subscription-based streaming services like Spotify and YouTube Music. A few top artists like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé have strong fanbases that may buy full albums, but their albums sales still pale in comparison to artists of the 20th century.

One-hit wonders, novelty songs and ear worms

There is no official definition of a one-hit wonder, but in his book One-Hit Wonders, music journalist Wayne Jancik defined it as "an act that has won a position on Billboard's national, pop, Top 40 just once.” The Baha Men barely meet these requirements in the United States, and because of its rise as a stadium anthem and its gimmicky hook, some see “Who Let the Dogs Out” as a novelty song. A song is considered a novelty if there is some foundation of humor or unusual hook or sounds within the song.

Throughout modern music history, there have been countless songs that can be considered novelty—with artists like The Coasters (“Yakety Yak”) and “Weird Al” Yankovic enjoying successful careers from their novelty and parody songs. Cartoon bands like Alvin and the Chipmunks, created by Ross Bagdasarian (stage name David Seville) and The Archies (“Sugar, Sugar”) are considered novelty acts despite their music hitting No. 1 on the Billboard charts. Many kids’ (or children’s) songs are considered novelty songs when they chart, including “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” from the Disneyland miniseries in 1954 and, more recently, “Baby Shark.”

Like “Who Let the Dogs Out,” another novelty song, “Macarena,” was a minor hit for other artists before catching on when it was re-recorded and reintroduced to the U.S. market in the summer of 1995. Considering listeners rarely know the lyrics of these songs beyond the catchy hook, the much-repeated eponymous lyrics could also be considered an earworm.

An earworm is a memorable piece of music that occupies someone’s mind well after the song stops playing. Earworms are often associated with advertising jingles like McDonald's "I'm Lovin' It" or Oscar Mayer's "Oscar Mayer Weiner Song," but music listeners can also develop ear worms from catchy songs—especially if the hooks are replayed and the tune is associated with particular memories like sporting events. Another example of this is Steam’s “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye.”

Social media has placed an increased emphasis on hooks, creating ear worms that can promote a song to hit status or revitalize a song's popularity. A recent example of both of these phenomena is Doechii’s “Anxiety,” which she originally recorded in 2019. After the hook went viral on TikTok, she recorded the song again in 2025, leading to its becoming a top-ten single.

“Who Let the Dogs Out” and “Macarena” unknowingly represent a shift in the music industry at the turn of the 20th century. These pre-social media viral songs, popularized by a novel hook and gaining popularity off-radio, can be considered ahead of their time—with the “Macarena” even fostering a viral dance. Although playing these songs may result in more eye-rolls than cheers, their path to success cannot be overlooked in this modern digital music era.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the ̽��Ƶ Department of Ethnic Studies.

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The Baha Men hit, released 25 years ago, occupies a distinctive spot in music and sports history, along with “Macarena” and other novelty earworms.

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What’s at risk with public media cuts?

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 14:23:00 +0000

What’s at risk with public media cuts? Rachel Sauer Tue, 07/08/2025 - 08:23

Jared Bahir Browsh

Through its more than 100-year history, U.S. public media has represented diverse audiences and broadcast in areas that commercial media hasn’t

On Nov. 7, 1967, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act into law, forming the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) that led to the creation of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in 1969 and National Public Radio (NPR) in 1970.

However, the history of U.S. public media goes back even further—more than a century—as producers and public media advocates have pushed to use the nation’s airwaves and, more recently, digital outlets to give the American public a broad range of news, cultural entertainment and educational media.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the ̽��Ƶ Department of Ethnic Studies.

Modern U.S. public media’s roots are in the campuses of colleges and universities. Many broadcast historians recognize KDKA in Pittsburgh, which launched on Nov. 2, 1920, as the first commercial radio station, but several experimental stations, some public, had launched in the preceding decade. Union College launched its experimental station in 1916, although it was shut down in 1917 because of the suspension of all civilian stations during World War I (civilian stations were allowed to broadcast again after the war ended). Unsurprisingly, many early radio stations launched on college campuses to both serve the community and train a generation of early broadcasters.

In 1925, at the Fourth National Radio Conference, the Association of College and University Broadcasting Stations (ACUBS) was formed across 25 universities to encourage cooperation and content sharing. This is the model that PBS and NPR adopted and represents one of the main misunderstandings about how public media functions in the United States: PBS and NPR are not a centralized cabal producing biased content for national distribution; rather, they are networks in which the majority of content is produced by local member stations and distributed by PBS and NPR.

The commercial National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and the antecedent to the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), the United Independent Broadcasters, were formed just before the Radio Act of 1927 was passed on Feb. 23 of that year. The Act was partly a response to the chaos caused by the lack of regulation, with stations launching on previously occupied frequencies. The Act aimed to better regulate and organize radio broadcasting under the Federal Radio Commission (FRC), and in response to the effort to base radio license distribution on the ability to serve “public interest, convenience, or necessity,” the Act ultimately prioritized commercial radio affiliates with more financial means in their license allocation, causing many smaller, non-commercial stations to either lose their licenses or lower the power of their frequencies.

In 1933, engineer Edwin Armstrong patented high-fidelity frequency modulation (FM) radio broadcasting, offering higher-quality audio broadcasting as compared to amplitude modulation (AM). Experimental FM stations launched in the late 1930s, and the FCC established commercial FM bands on Jan. 1, 1941.

The growth of FM radio, and later television, was delayed by World War II, and soon after the war ended in Europe in 1945, the FCC reassigned the FM band’s range to between 88–106 MHz—under the pressure from the Radio Corp. of America (RCA), which owned NBC at the time. This led to the end of a number of stations that operated outside of the frequencies and made nearly 400,000 receivers obsolete.

This was part of a larger legal battle between RCA and Edwin Armstrong, who owned the original FM patent. RCA claimed its FM system did not infringe on Armstrong’s patent, and the ensuing legal battle delaying the growth of FM radio. One positive outcome from the FCC’s decision is the dedication of the lowest 20 bands (88.1~91.9 MHz) to noncommercial educational stations, which is why many NPR stations broadcast from these frequencies.

The rise of television

After World War II, television expanded rapidly, but to avoid the same chaos that plagued radio before the creation of the FRC, the FCC froze license distribution in 1948, using the time to organize the broadcast television landscape. License distribution was restarted in July 1952, when the FCC's Sixth Report and Order ended the freeze; it also allocated stations for educational television.

"Soul!" debuted in 1968 as a variety show hosted by Ellis Haizlip (right, facing camera) that featured Black artists and figures considered controversial by the white establishment. (Photo: PBS)

In November 1952, the Ford Foundation’s Fund for Adult Education created the Educational Television and Radio Center, which six years later relocated to New York City and renamed as the National Educational Television and Radio Center (NETRC). The organization became National Educational Television (NET) in 1963 and produced its own programs, including “NET Journal” and “Public Broadcast Laboratory.” Both programs were accused of having a liberal bias and were ultimately not carried by a number of affiliates in conservative areas for covering issues like the Civil Rights Movement and poverty.

In 1966, the Carnegie Foundation began conducting a study on the future of educational television at the behest of President Johnson, prompted by concerns about NET’s role as both a television producer and network. The following year, Carnegie’s report recommended that educational television evolve into a more comprehensive “public television” model—inviting a larger variety of programming and transitioning from a centralized production model to one that is rooted in the distribution of programming from independent producers.

The Public Broadcasting Act formalized this plan, with nearly all the CPB’s budget coming from Congressional allocations. Only 5% of this allocation is used for administration costs; the rest is dedicated to content development, community services and other local station and system needs. The budget for CPB in fiscal year 2025 was $535 million, with 70% of that total allocated to grants for local television and radio.

The Act did not invent public media, but it helped organize it, ensuring stations have necessary funds to operate and improve the distribution of programs. During this transitional period between the establishment of the CPB and the launch of PBS in 1970, several programs debuted that would exemplify the eventual impact and reach of public television. “Washington Week” debuted on WETA in 1967, followed by “Black Journal” in 1968; the latter was one of the few public affairs programs focused on issues affecting African Americans. “Soul!” also debuted in 1968, a variety show that featured Black artists and figures considered controversial by the white establishment. This included Muhammad Ali during his exile from boxing after his draft refusal and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. It also featured popular musical acts like Stevie Wonder and Gladys Knight & the Pips.

A year before the official launch of PBS, the show that became most synonymous with the network debuted through NET: “Sesame Street.” After three years of research and development, Joan Ganz Cooney spearheaded the creation of the show following discussions with the Carnegie Foundation during its research into educational television.

“Sesame Street” was aimed at lower-income preschool children but ultimately became an influential program for generations of young children, mixing entertainment and education to keep them engaged. The structure also invited older children and parents to co-watch by adding cultural references and more sophisticated humor, as research showed that co-watching led to higher retention of the lessons presented through the presence of the older co-watcher. Cooney became executive director of Children's Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop) and also helped create “The Electric Company” for elementary school students, featuring Morgan Freeman and Rita Moreno.

Diverse representation

When the children’s show “Arthur” featured a same-sex wedding in 2019, some public television stations refused to air the episode. (Photo: WGBH/PBS Kids)

“Sesame Street” and “Soul!” also represented the diversity featured on PBS as other broadcasters continued to maintain a television environment that often ignored people of color, those with different abilities, women and, later, those who belonged to the LGBTQ+ community. The mix of informational and cultural content from otherwise-marginalized groups was especially important in a pre-cable television environment dominated by NBC, ABC and CBS. This diversity is still controversial; for example, when the children’s show “Arthur” featured a same-sex wedding in 2019, some stations refused to air the episode.

PBS also imported shows from around the world, a strategy originally utilized by NET to offer a greater variety of programming to member stations while exposing the audience to global television. “Masterpiece Theater,” which debuted in 1971, broadcasts performances, films and series mostly from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). In 1974, Dallas PBS station KERA began airing episodes of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” leading many other stations to pick up the irreverent and influential British sketch comedy show. More recently, “Downton Abbey” aired in the United States as a part of Masterpiece, continuing PBS’s commitment to groundbreaking television programming.

NPR launched in April 1971 with coverage of Senate hearings on the Vietnam War. Covering Congressional hearings and debates became a hallmark of NPR, including when it became the first radio network to broadcast from the Senate floor in 1978. Unlike PBS, NPR does have a centralized news division and launched its first national program, “All Things Considered,” in May 1971; “Morning Edition” debuted in 1979. Both rank among the most popular news radio programs. NPR also distributed popular programs produced by member stations like “Car Talk,” which debuted in 1977.

Public media also has been at the forefront of programming that is now commonplace in the United States. PBS aired several European Soccer shows in the 1970s and 1980s, and documentaries, which have seen a dramatic increase in popularity in recent years, have been a staple of PBS programming since NET was launched.

Local community and nonprofit stations joined as members, incorporating local news and programming with the national content distributed by NPR. In 1980, NPR was the first to launch a national satellite system to distribute content. In an agreement with CPB, NPR began broadcasting non-NPR programming in 1983, addressing a budget deficit resulting from rapid expansion and funding cuts. CPB agreed to lend NPR money if it would transition its satellite service into a collaborative effort, the Public Radio Satellite System, giving access to other public radio distributors. This also shifted the distribution structure for NPR, with money from CPB going to local radio stations that pay subscriber fees to NPR to air its programming.

"It is important to note that only 15% of PBS's funding and 1% of NPR's funding comes directly from the federal government, with NPR stations receiving on average about 10% of the operational budget from the CPB," says ̽��Ƶ scholar Jared Bahir Browsh. (Photo: Ted Eytan/Wikimedia Commons)

The 1983 crisis also led to a national fundraising campaign, “Drive to Survive,” to help ease the financial crisis that almost caused NPR’s demise. Pledge drives are typically run by the local affiliates, but on occasion NPR has run national drives to address funding cuts and other crises. PBS also has mounted coordinated national pledge drives; the first, “Festival 75,” was a reaction to federal funding cuts.

Benefits outweigh the costs

As the current administration’s calls to cut public media funding get louder, it is important to note that only 15% of PBS’s funding and 1% of NPR’s funding comes directly from the federal government, with NPR stations receiving on average about 10% of the operational budget from the CPB. Many PBS and NPR shows are partially funded by grants from the CPB and support from organizations like the Ford Foundation, so cuts may not end national PBS or NPR, but are more likely to lead to some programs and stations ceasing operations, since it is the individual stations that more heavily rely on grants from CPB.

Affiliates in major cities are better positioned to absorb the cuts due to a larger donor base and existing in states that provide more funding—though these stations, too, will still have to make up the loss of federal revenue, most likely through cuts to personnel and ancillary content like educational programs. The most significant cost would be to stations in rural areas and in states that provide little to no funding to public media. These stations provide important information in locations that are otherwise deserts for local news and culture.

Even in our expansive digital media landscape, with so many options available through streaming, PBS and NPR have been at the forefront of leveraging the digital environment to make content available to the public, particularly educational and informational content. NPR was one of the first large organizations to embrace podcasting, and PBS continues to develop and distribute content through its Digital Studios and LearningMedia for both educators and the general public. Also, as the radio and audio industry further consolidates under the domination of corporations like iHeartRadio and Audacy, many public radio stations have taken on the role of providing listeners with diverse and independent music.

The defunding of CPB would lead to a dramatic shift in the media landscape of the United States. PBS and NPR would survive, but their ability to provide diverse content and serve American media consumers would be severely curtailed. The return on the federal investment in the CPB proves it is not a burden but a boon.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the ̽��Ƶ Department of Ethnic Studies.

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Through its more than 100-year history, U.S. public media has represented diverse audiences and broadcast in areas that commercial media hasn’t.

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Top image: Sesame Workshop

Couples reimagining Jewish wedding ceremony

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 17:40:41 +0000

Couples reimagining Jewish wedding ceremony Rachel Sauer Wed, 07/02/2025 - 11:40

Samira Mehta

From the marriage contract to breaking the glass under the chuppah, many Jewish couples adapt their weddings to celebrate gender equality

Traditional Jewish weddings share one key aspect with traditional Christian weddings. Historically, the ceremony was essentially a transfer of property: A woman went from being the responsibility of her father to being the responsibility of her husband.

That may not be the first thing Americans associate with weddings today, but it lives on in rituals and vows. Think, in a traditional Christian wedding, of a bride promising “to obey” her husband, or being “given away” by her father after he walks her down the aisle.

Samira Mehta is director of the ̽��Ƶ Program in Jewish Studies and an associate professor of women and gender studies.

Feminism has changed some aspects of the Christian wedding. More egalitarian or feminist couples, for example, might have the bride be “given away” by both her parents, or have both the bride and groom escorted in by parents. Others skip the “giving” altogether. Queer couples, too, have reimagined the wedding ceremony.

During research for my book “Beyond Chrismukkah,” about Christian-Jewish interfaith families, many interviewees wound up talking about their weddings and the rituals that they selected or innovated for the day to reflect their cultural background. Some of them had also designed their ceremonies to reflect feminism and marriage equality—something that the interfaith weddings had in common with many weddings where both members of the couple were Jewish.

These values have transformed many Jewish couples’ weddings, just as they have transformed the Christian wedding. Some Jewish couples make many changes, while some make none. And like every faith, Judaism has lots of internal diversity—not all traditional Jewish weddings look the same.

Contracts and covenants

Perhaps one of the most important places where feminism and marriage equality have reshaped traditions is in the “ketubah,” or Jewish marriage contract.

A traditional ketubah is a simple legal document in Hebrew or Aramaic, a related ancient language. Two witnesses sign the agreement, which states that the groom has acquired the bride. However, the ketubah is also sometimes framed as a tool to protect women. The document stipulates the husband’s responsibility to provide for his wife and confirms what he should pay her in case of divorce. Traditional ketubot—the plural of ketubah—did not discuss love, God or intentions for the marriage.

Contemporary ketubot in more liberal branches of Judaism, whether between opposite- or same-sex couples, are usually much more egalitarian documents that reflect the home and the marriage that the couple want to create. Sometimes the couple adapt the Aramaic text; others keep the Aramaic and pair it with a text in the language they speak every day, describing their intentions for their marriage.

Rather than being simple, printed documents, contemporary ketubot are often beautiful pieces of art, made to hang in a place of prominence in the newlyweds’ home. Sometimes the art makes references to traditional Jewish symbols, such as a pomegranate for fertility and love. Other times, the artist works with the couple to personalize their decorations with images and symbols that are meaningful to them.

Contemporary couples will often also use their ketubah to address an inherent tension in Jewish marriage. Jewish law gives men much more freedom to divorce than it gives women. Because women cannot generally initiate divorce, they can end up as “agunot,” which literally means “chained”: women whose husbands have refused to grant them a religious divorce. Even if the couple have been divorced in secular court, an “agunah” cannot, according to Jewish law, remarry in a religious ceremony.

Contemporary ketubot will sometimes make a note that, while the couple hope to remain married until death, if the marriage deteriorates, the husband agrees to grant a divorce if certain conditions are met. This prevents women from being held hostage in unhappy marriages.

Key changes in Jewish weddings represent how the wedding ceremony itself has become more egalitarian in response to both feminism and marriage equality, notes ̽��Ƶ scholar Samira Mehta.

Other couples eschew the ketubah altogether in favor of a new type of document called a “brit ahuvim,” or covenant of lovers. These documents are egalitarian agreements between couples. The brit ahuvim was developed by Rachel Adler, a feminist rabbi with a deep knowledge of Jewish law, and is grounded in ancient Jewish laws for business partnerships between equals. That said, many Jews, including some feminists, do not see the brit ahuvim as equal in status to a ketubah.

Building together

Beyond the ketubah, there are any number of other changes that couples make to symbolize their hopes for an egalitarian marriage.

Jewish ceremonies often take place under a canopy called the chuppah, which symbolizes the home that the couple create together. In a traditional Jewish wedding, the bride circles the groom three or seven times before entering the chuppah. This represents both her protection of their home and that the groom is now her priority.

Many couples today omit this custom, because they feel it makes the bride subservient to the groom. Others keep the circling but reinterpret it: In circling the groom, the bride actively creates their home, an act of empowerment. Other egalitarian couples, regardless of their genders, share the act of circling: Each spouse circles three times, and then the pair circle once together.

In traditional Jewish weddings, like in traditional Christian weddings, the groom gives his bride a ring to symbolize his commitment to her—and perhaps to mark her as a married woman. Many contemporary Jewish couples exchange two rings: both partners offering a gift to mark their marriage and presenting a symbol of their union to the world. While some see this shift as an adaptation to American culture, realistically, the dual-ring ceremony is a relatively new development in both American Christian and American Jewish marriage ceremonies.

Finally, Jewish weddings traditionally end when the groom stomps on and breaks a glass, and the entire crowd yells “Mazel tov” to congratulate them. People debate the symbolism of the broken glass. Some say that it reminds us that life contains both joy and sorrow, or that it is a reminder of a foundational crisis in Jewish history: the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E. Others say that it is a reminder that life is fragile, or that marriage, unlike the glass, is an unbreakable covenant.

Regardless of what it means, some contemporary couples both step on glasses, or have one partner place their foot on top of the other’s so that the newlyweds can break the glass together. The couple symbolize their commitment to equality – and both get to do a fun wedding custom.

There are many other innovations in contemporary Jewish weddings that have much less to do with feminism and egalitarianism, such as personalized wedding canopies or wedding programs. But these key changes represent how the wedding ceremony itself has become more egalitarian in response to both feminism and marriage equality.

Samira Mehta is director of the Program in Jewish Studies and an associate professor of women and gender studies at the University of Colorado Boulder.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

From the marriage contract to breaking the glass under the chuppah, many Jewish couples adapt their weddings to celebrate gender equality.

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Harnessing the abundant resource of sunlight

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 17:55:24 +0000

Harnessing the abundant resource of sunlight Rachel Sauer Tue, 06/24/2025 - 11:55

Arindam Sau , Amreen Bains and Anna Wolff

Light-powered reactions could make the chemical manufacturing industry more energy-efficient

Manufactured chemicals and materials are necessary for practically every aspect of daily life, from life-saving pharmaceuticals to plastics, fuels and fertilizers. Yet manufacturing these important chemicals comes at a steep energy cost.

Many of these industrial chemicals are derived primarily from fossil fuel-based materials. These compounds are typically very stable, making it difficult to transform them into useful products without applying harsh and energy-demanding reaction conditions.

Arindam Sau, a Ph.D. candidate in the ̽��Ƶ Department of Chemistry, along with Colorado State University research colleagues Amreen Bains and Anna Wolff, have been working on a system that uses light to power reactions commonly used in the chemical manufacturing industry.

As a result, transforming these stubborn materials contributes significantly to the world’s overall energy use. In 2022, the industrial sector consumed 37% of the world’s total energy, with the chemical industry responsible for approximately 12% of that demand.

Conventional chemical manufacturing processes use heat to generate the energy needed for reactions that take place at high temperatures and pressures. An approach that uses light instead of heat could lower energy demands and allow reactions to be run under gentler conditions — like at room temperature instead of extreme heat.

Sunlight represents one of the most abundant yet underutilized energy sources on Earth. In nature, this energy is captured through photosynthesis, where plants convert light into chemical energy. Inspired by this process, our team of chemists at the Center for Sustainable Photoredox Catalysis, a research center funded by the National Science Foundation, has been working on a system that uses light to power reactions commonly used in the chemical manufacturing industry. We published our results in the journal Science in June 2025.

We hope that this method could provide a more economical route for creating industrial chemicals out of fossil fuels. At the same time, since it doesn’t rely on super-high temperatures or pressures, the process is safer, with fewer chances for accidents.

How does our system work?

The photoredox catalyst system that our team has developed is powered by simple LEDs, and it operates efficiently at room temperature.

At the core of our system is an organic photoredox catalyst: a specialized molecule that we know accelerates chemical reactions when exposed to light, without being consumed in the process.

Much like how plants rely on pigments to harvest sunlight for photosynthesis, our photoredox catalyst absorbs multiple particles of light, called photons, in a sequence.

These photons provide bursts of energy, which the catalyst stores and then uses to kick-start reactions. This “multi-photon” harvesting builds up enough energy to force very stubborn molecules into undergoing reactions that would otherwise need highly reactive metals. Once the reaction is complete, the photocatalyst resets itself, ready to harvest more light and keep the process going without creating extra waste.

Designing molecules that can absorb multiple photons and react with stubborn molecules is tough. One big challenge is that after a molecule absorbs a photon, it only has a tiny window of time before that energy fades away or gets lost. Plus, making sure the molecule uses that energy the right way is not easy. The good news is we’ve found that our catalyst can do this efficiently at room temperature.

Enabling greener chemical manufacturing

CSU chemistry researcher Amreen Bains performs a light-driven photoredox catalyzed reaction. (Photo: John Cline/Colorado State University Photography)

Our work points toward a future where chemicals are made using light instead of heat. For example, our catalyst can turn benzene — a simple component of crude oil — into a form called cyclohexadienes. This is a key step in making the building blocks for nylon. Improving this part of the process could reduce the carbon footprint of nylon production.

Imagine manufacturers using LED reactors or even sunlight to power the production of essential chemicals. LEDs still use electricity, but they need far less energy compared with the traditional heating methods used in chemical manufacturing. As we scale things up, we’re also figuring out ways to harness sunlight directly, making the entire process even more sustainable and energy-efficient.

Right now, we’re using our photoredox catalysts successfully in small lab experiments — producing just milligrams at a time. But to move into commercial manufacturing, we’ll need to show that these catalysts can also work efficiently at a much larger scale, making kilograms or even tons of product. Testing them in these bigger reactions will ensure that they’re reliable and cost-effective enough for real-world chemical manufacturing.

Similarly, scaling up this process would require large-scale reactors that use light efficiently. Building those will first require designing new types of reactors that let light reach deeper inside. They’ll need to be more transparent or built differently so the light can easily get to all parts of the reaction.

Our team plans to keep developing new light-driven techniques inspired by nature’s efficiency. Sunlight is a plentiful resource, and by finding better ways to tap into it, we hope to make it easier and cleaner to produce the chemicals and materials that modern life depends on.

Arindam Sau is a Ph.D. candidate in the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Chemistry; Amreen Bains is a postdoctoral scholar in chemistry at Colorado State University; Anna Wolff is a PhD student in chemistry at Colorado State University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Light-powered reactions could make the chemical manufacturing industry more energy-efficient.

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Soccer joins the club

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 20:31:24 +0000

Soccer joins the club Rachel Sauer Mon, 06/23/2025 - 14:31

Jared Bahir Browsh

The FIFA Club World Cup, being held through July at venues across the United States, highlights international collaboration and concerns that soccer schedules are too packed

On June 14, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) Club World Cup kicked off with Inter Miami CF taking on Al Ahly in Miami, Florida. Although the Club World Cup was established in 2000, interruptions and changes in format led FIFA to completely reimagine the tournament as a format that mimics FIFA’s premier tournament, the World Cup.

The Club World Cup serves as an appetizer for next year’s World Cup, being held in North America, which pits national soccer federations in the largest single sport event in the world.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the ̽��Ƶ Department of Ethnic Studies.

There have been a number of club tournaments run by FIFA and continental and inter-continental confederations, several of which were established in the 1960s, including the FIFA Intercontinental Cup and the Champions Cup overseen by the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF). Unlike the World Cup or other tournaments between international federations, these tournaments offer professional clubs from leagues around the world the opportunity to compete against each other.

In 1958, Brazilian Sport Confederation head João Havelange, who later went on to be the longest-tenured president of FIFA (1974-1998), suggested organizing a regular intercontinental cup between top European and South American clubs. There had been a few other attempts to establish international club cups, one of the earliest being Copa Aldao, a tournament between Argentine and Uruguayan clubs that started in 1913.

Copa Aldao was abolished in 1955 after competing national team and club schedules made it difficult to schedule the tournament, an issue that continues to affect national, continental and international club and federation tournaments today. These conflicts have included efforts by the South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL) to establish a continental club tournament, which resulted in the South American Championship of Champions in 1948 and Copa de Campeones de América, now known as CONMEBOL Copa Libertadores, in 1960.

Five years earlier, in 1955, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) began the European Champion Clubs' Cup (now the Champions League) a year after UEFA was established. The Tournoi de Paris, first hosted by the club Racing Paris in 1957, featured clubs from UEFA and CONMEBOL in a friendly tournament and prompted the creation of the FIFA Intercontinental Cup in 1960 between the champions of CONMEBOL Libertadores and the UEFA Champions League.

These tournaments were part of a larger effort to organize and expand international soccer in the 1950s and 1960s. Before this effort, the only international soccer confederation in existence was CONMEBOL, organized in 1913, with the North American Football Confederation (NAFC) and Confederación Centroamericana y del Caribe de Fútbol (CCCF) in Central America coming only after the first World Cup, in 1930.

Growing confederation

FIFA spent most of the first half of the 20th century trying to organize international soccer. The nations of the British associations boycotted World Cup play as FIFA included the Central Powers as they reorganized in 1919 after World War I. The British associations rejoined the next decade, but left again in 1928 over disputes related to payments to players and the maintenance of traditional ideas of amateurism. The 1942 and 1946 editions of the World Cup were cancelled due to World War II, but as the premier international soccer tournament grew, so did the need to further organize international soccer. They came to an agreement in 1950, helping the World Cup to grow and emerge from the shadow of the Olympic soccer tournament.

Through the 1950s and 1960s, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), Confederation of African Football (CAF), CONCACAF (a merging of NAFC and CCCF) and Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) joined UEFA and CONMEBOL to establish the current continental confederations. CAF, AFC and CONCACAF all founded their own Champions Leagues in the 1950s and 1960s, which were contested between top professional clubs in each confederation.

Urawa Red Diamonds fans cheer during a June 17, 2025, group stage match at the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup against Club Atletico River Plate at Lumen Field in Seattle, Washington. (Photo: SounderBruce/Wikimedia Commons)

Half of the teams in the Club World Cup qualified automatically through the confederation’s club Champions Leagues or the Copa Libertadores. In the case of Inter Miami, which is the host, the team qualified by winning the Supporters’ Shield, or the MLS regular-season championship, in 2024. This decision was controversial given that the L.A. Galaxy won the MLS Cup in 2024; FIFA President Gianni Infantino admitted that Miami’s soccer culture and the presence of Lionel Messi partially motivated Inter Miami’s inclusion.

The other half of the qualifying teams were selected based on their rankings in their respective confederations. LAFC won a play-in game against Club América after Club León was disqualified due to shared ownership with fellow Liga MX team Pachuca. Out of the 32 teams in the Club World Cup, 20 are from either UEFA or CONMEBOL, with Europeans teams guaranteed 14 spots in the tournament.

Infantino knew that for this tournament to be successful and grow in popularity, he needed to financially incentivize the top teams in the top confederations to play in the Club World Cup. There is a staggered prize money framework for qualification, with top European teams such as Manchester City earning more than $38 million USD for making the tournament based on sporting and commercial criteria, whereas qualifying OFC teams were awarded $3.58 million.

Busy schedules

The confederations oversee both intra-nation club tournaments and contests between national teams within the confederation. However, despite general oversight by FIFA, there are still conflicting schedules and growing complaints about the increasing number of soccer competitions and the struggle to balance club schedules with national team obligations.

The FIFA Club World Cup exemplifies one of the issues with the ever-expanding soccer schedule: direct conflict between club and inter-nation tournaments. The United States is hosting the FIFA Club World Cup and the CONCACAF Gold Cup at the same time. Most of the matches for the Club World Cup will be held east of the Mississippi, and the Gold Cup matches are being played in the Midwest and West Coast, with no shared venues and the Los Angeles area the only location to host matches for both events.

Several teams had to choose between the two competitions, and with the U.S. Men’s National Team automatically qualified for the 2026 World Cup as one of the hosts, and the larger payout of the FIFA Club World Cup, players like Timothy Weah, Weston McKinnie and Giovanni Reyna have decided to compete on behalf of their professional clubs rather than their national team.

The Club World Cup also comes on the heels of the UEFA Nations League Finals June 8. Players like Nuno Mendes, who helped lead Portugal to the Nations League championship, will have to quickly pivot to play with Paris Saint-Germain a week later for the Club World Cup. The international club soccer schedule runs from late summer through early spring, meaning players like Mendes are forced to play multiple tournaments during what is supposed to be their offseason.

Egyptian soccer star Taher Mohamed plays for Al Ahly SC in the 2021 FIFA Club World Cup. (Photo: Fars Media Corporation/Wikimedia Commons)

A number of players have expressed concern over being overworked, with some even calling for a strike for FIFA and for club leagues to reduce the schedule; some players are being pushed to participate in more than a match a week on average.

Several players and managers have said they see the Club World Cup as a money grab by FIFA, expanding the competition schedule to encroach upon the club offseason. The MLS plays a spring-to-fall schedule, so the North American league will be forced to suspend play during the Club World Cup. But the three MLS teams—the Seattle Sounders FC, Inter Miami and LAFC—do see it as a way to compete with top professional clubs and may adjust their schedules before the next Club World Cup to fall in line with the rest of the world.

FIFA scandals

FIFA has long faced a number of scandals and bribery charges, including with partner International Sport and Leisure, which handled marketing and media rights for the soccer organization but folded in 2001 with debts of more than $200 million. This led to the cancellation of the Club World Cup that year. The organization was subsequently investigated by authorities in Switzerland and charged with fraud. Later, as a part of the 2015 FIFA corruption scandal investigation, several sports marketing executives and officials with continental football bodies were found to have bribed FIFA officials including Havelange.

The 2015 scandal was also centered on bribery and collusion related to sports marketing and media rights; the FBI and IRS uncovered impropriety among executives of CONMEBOL and CONCACAF, several marketing firms and even Nike, which was found to have spent $40 million on bribes to become the exclusive apparel company for the Brazil national team. In spite of CONCACAF’s involvement, and a year delay in the bid process due to the scandal, the combined North America bid still won the 2026 World Cup.

Although no impropriety has been alleged around the 2025 Club World Cup, FIFA is still accused of participating in a money grab, with greed overshadowing team concerns and player health. The pace of top-level soccer also has increased over the last quarter century, with more running and pressing being partially blamed for more injuries along with the ever-growing schedule. Sponsors also have been hesitant to become involved over questions related to viewership, attendance and return on investment for the revamped tournament.

To combat concerns and attract top clubs and players, FIFA has offered a $1 billion prize pool, with top-qualifying teams like Manchester City able to earn up to $125 million if they win the tournament. The amount a team like Real Madrid could earn would be on par with the prize money for making the UEFA Champions League quarterfinals, but some of that money is offset by costs including early signings or transfers to boost talent before the tournament.

Each win and draw from the group stage through the final will earn teams money, but there are also questions of where that money will go. Many players in the MLS clubs are currently petitioning the league, which owns all the clubs, for a prize-money share. The Club World Cup is not specifically mentioned in the collective bargaining agreement with the MLS Players Association, and caps on tournament compensation shares could lead to a disproportionate windfall for the league—with players getting what they see as a share below international standards if any of the league’s teams make a run. Seattle Sounders players wore T-shirts with the message “Club World Cup Ca$h Grab” before their June 1 match, and several players have posted criticisms campaigning with the #FairShareNow hashtag.

Another shadow over the Club World Cup is international and domestic tensions related to the Trump administration. Travel bans have created concern among players, while social media posts by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which were later deleted, hinted at the agency showing up at the first match in Miami and possibly using the soccer tournament to target undocumented immigrants. Some have blamed potential ICE presence at games for lower than expected attendance at early matches.

These concerns will fade if the tournament ends up being a success, and some of that will depend on the competition itself, which organizers hope will increase fan interest. Ultimately, seeing this many top clubs will be a fan draw, but the question is whether casual fans will be interested in the tournament in the same way as next year’s World Cup—ideally snowballing toward the 2029 edition and forcing sponsors, and possibly players, to warm up to yet another major tournament in an already crowded soccer schedule.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the ̽��Ƶ Department of Ethnic Studies.

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The FIFA Club World Cup, being held through July at venues across the United States, highlights international collaboration and concerns that soccer schedules are too packed.

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Top image: English soccer club Chelsea celebrate after winning the 2021 FIFA Club World Cup. (Photo: Fars Media Corporation/Wikimedia Commons)

Pitching perfection

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 20:58:56 +0000

Pitching perfection Rachel Sauer Mon, 06/09/2025 - 14:58

Jared Bahir Browsh

145 years after Lee Richmond threw the first perfect game in Major League Baseball, pitchers still pursue one of baseball’s ultimate achievements

Perfect (adj.): flawless, being entirely without fault or defect

The word “perfect” is not typically associated with team sports. In bowling, you can have a perfect game of all strikes, or in gymnastics we have seen perfect scores by legendary gymnasts including Nadia Comăneci and Mary Lou Retton. However, there are so many variables in team sports it is hard to define “perfection.”

One exception is baseball, in which a pitcher can step on the mound and if, after none of 27 batters reach base by a hit, walk or error, he is considered perfect.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the ̽��Ƶ Department of Ethnic Studies.

The National League is in the midst of its 150th season, and in those years there have been 24 recognized perfect games, the first thrown 145 years ago by Worcester pitcher Lee Richmond on June 12, 1880. The feat was repeated by John Montgomery Ward of the Providence Grays five days later, which remains the shortest time between perfect games in Major League history. It would be 24 years before a third perfect game occurred in 1904, a year after the World Series was first played between the National League and American League, which had been formed in 1901.

When Richmond and Ward threw their perfect games, baseball looked much different. Pitchers were required to throw underhand 45 feet from the plate and batters could request the height of the pitch, with umpires determining whether the pitch was “unfair” and batters getting up to seven balls before walking, reduced from nine before 1880.

In 1893, pitching moved toward its modern form as the pitchers were required to throw from a slab 60 feet, 6 inches away from home plate, the current distance between pitchers and home plate. Still, it would take another 11 years for the next perfect game to be thrown, as young pitchers had to be trained on the standardized distance and throwing motion.

As the calendar turned to the 20th century, the American League was established as a “major league” in 1901 before Major League Baseball was created through the National Agreement in 1903. In the season following the first World Series in 1903, a pitcher for the defending champion Boston Americans (who changed their name to the Red Sox in 1908) threw the first perfect game in the World Series era against the Philadelphia Athletics. The pitcher, Cy Young, is considered the father of modern pitching, and in 1956 Major League Baseball began awarding the top pitcher in baseball the Cy Young Award before expanding it to the best pitcher in each league in 1967.

Before World War II, there were only three perfect games thrown, and none in the regular season, including Charlie Robertson’s 1922 perfect game for the Chicago White Sox. More than 40 years later, Jim Bunning pitched a perfect game in 1964 for the Philadelphia Phillies. In between, Yankee Don Larsen threw the only perfect game in World Series history in 1956 against the Brooklyn Dodgers, beating a team that included the first Cy Young award winner, Don Newcombe.

Two more perfect games capped off the 1960s: Sandy Koufax for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1965 and Catfish Hunter for the Oakland Athletics in 1968. Hunter’s perfect game occurred in the midst of what became known as the year of the pitcher, one of the most dominant years of pitching in baseball history, when pitchers dominated with a league ERA of 2.98 (4.07 in 2024) and an average of 6.8 total runs scored per game (8.8 in 2024).

As a result of this domination, MLB lowered the pitching mound and tightened the strike zone to make it more difficult on pitchers. A higher mound allows more force as pitchers step down into the pitch, while a tighter strike zone makes it easier for hitters to take balls, induce walks and wait for better pitches. Much like the rule changes in the late 19th century, the leaders of professional baseball were concerned about the lack of hits contributing to reduced interest from fans. Sports are entertainment businesses that often adjust rules to encourage more offense and create more engaging experiences.

Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw (here pitching a July 2015 game against the New York Yankees) saw his 2014 perfect-game bid halted by an error. (Photo: Arturo Pardavila/Wikimedia Commons)

MLB wasn’t the only league to make changes to encourage more scoring: The NBA introduced the 24-second clock in 1954 after several seasons of boring, low-offense—and thus low-scoring—games, including a 19-18 game between the Fort Wayne Pistons and Minneapolis Lakers in 1950. College football legalized the forward pass in 1905 to encourage a faster pace of play and reduce head-on collisions, and the NHL reduced allowable goalie pad size in 2018 to encourage more goal scoring, the same year the NBA shifted rules again to limit the amount of contact defensive players can make and quicken the pace of play.

Rule changes = fewer perfect games

The lowered mound in 1969 is just one example of these rule changes that increase offense and make it harder for pitchers to achieve a perfect game. Similarly, in 1920, MLB made it illegal for pitchers to scuff the ball or use foreign substances that could affect how it moves in the air; the ball was also switched out at the first sign of wear, which allowed batters to see the ball more easily and made it more difficult for pitchers to manipulate its movement. These changes contributed to only one perfect game between 1920 and the 1956 World Series.

After the mound was lowered, there would not be another perfect game until 1981, meaning there were no perfect games in the 1970s. But in this time another rule was introduced that created another obstacle to a perfect game: the designated hitter in the American League in 1973. Historically, pitchers have been below-average hitters and often considered an easy out, so eliminating their presence in the lineup allowed for another skilled hitter to challenge perfection. The National League adopted the designated hitter in 2022.

Along with rule changes, strategy has also shifted significantly on the mound and in the batter’s box. Pitchers are pitching harder and throwing more breaking balls, which wear on the arm and lead to fewer complete games. In 1921 there were 1,827 complete games out of 3,553 total, meaning pitchers completed more than half the games they started. In 1968, out of 3,250 started games, 897 were completed (27.6%), while in 2024, of the 4,828 games started, only 28 were completed by the same pitcher (.58%). The desire to protect topline pitchers, and the increased reliance on talented relievers, has led to shorter outings for starters.

The changes in throwing style have led to a rise in strikeouts, which is a shift from the past when pitchers aimed more for contact and shorter at-bats. In 1988, there were about 5.6 strikeouts per nine innings pitched; in 2024 that number jumped to 8.6 strikeouts per nine innings pitched. This has also led to longer at-bats, raising pitch counts; in 1988, there were 136.2 total pitches per game and 3.59 per at-bat. In 2024, there were 146 pitches per game, or 3.88 pitches per at-bat.

In 1991, MLB formalized the definition of a perfect game to include only those games in which the pitcher throws at least nine innings without a batter reaching base, completes the game and wins the game. After that ruling, several games, including Harvey Haddix’s performance in 1959 when he pitched 12 perfect innings before losing in the 13th, was removed as a perfect game from the record books.

Walk, strikeout or home run

Batters have also contributed to this rise as they take more pitches and embrace the “three true outcomes”: walk, strikeout or home run. For a long time, walks were undervalued until analytics proliferated the game, popularizing a player evaluation strategy utilized by teams like the Oakland A’s and described in Michael Lewis’s 2003 book, Moneyball. The book follows the 2002 A’s as they won 103 games with a $44 million payroll—matching the win total of the Yankees, who had a payroll of more than $125 million. With more batters willing to take pitches—and walks—pitchers are forced to throw more.

Since 2012, the only perfect game was thrown by Domingo Germán (here pitching a 2019 game against the Baltimore Orioles) in 2023. (Photo: Keith Allison/Wikimedia Commons)

Also encouraging this protection of pitchers is the expansion of the playoffs and MLB introducing the five-game league championship series in 1969. This happened after each league added two teams, expanding professional baseball from 20 to 24 teams and with each league split into two divisions. Previously, the team with the best record in each league won the pennant and met in the World Series.

Baseball expanded its playoffs to four teams in each league in 1995, five teams in each league in 2012 and six teams in each league in 2022. This placed less emphasis on the regular season, and managers became more protective of pitchers to ensure their availability for the playoffs, leading to shorter outings. In fact, the only two times pitchers have been pulled from a perfect game have been in the last decade: in 2016 because of a blister and in 2022 when L.A. Dodger Clayton Kershaw was removed after seven innings. Dave Roberts, the manager of the current defending champion Dodgers, was the manager for both of those games.

Although the ebbs and flows of perfect games may be attributable to changes in rules, strategy and season format, there are a number of other variables beyond any pitcher’s control. Weather conditions can dramatically alter the path to perfection. The ball travels farther during warmer months, leading to more home runs. Only five of the 24 total perfect games occurred in July or August. Lower humidity and altitude also affect the ball, as it travels farther when the air density is lower, which is why the Colorado Rockies began to place balls in a humidor to combat the high rates of home runs being hit at Coors field. Rain or wetter conditions can make it harder for a pitcher to grip the ball, and in the summer, sweat can have the same effect.

With all of these factors, there is also a significant amount of luck in achieving a perfect game. There have been 326 no-hit games pitched in Major League history, with Nolan Ryan throwing seven of those, but with no perfect games in his career. Unlike a perfect game in bowling, perfection in baseball relies on other humans, including the pitcher’s defense. Nine perfect games have been made imperfect by errors—notably, a perfect-game attempt by Jonathan Sanchez in 2009 and, most recently, Clayton Kershaw’s bid in 2014. Human error is not reserved to fielders, as umpire Jim Joyce erroneously called the 27th batter safe, ending Armando Gallaraga’s perfect game attempt on June 2, 2010. Gallaraga completed his one-hitter, or “28-out perfect game” on the following at-bat.

This luck is also exemplified when we see a run of perfect games. Sanchez and Gallaraga’s flirtation with perfection occurred between 2009-2012, when there were six perfect games, with three occurring in 2012 alone (Sanchez’s and Gallaraga’s bids occurred fewer than two weeks after another perfect game). The first perfect game of 2012 was thrown by Phillip Humber, who started 51 total games in his career and finished 2012 with an ERA of 6.44, showing how just one good day can lead to baseball immortality.

Since 2012, the only perfect game was thrown by Domingo Germán in 2023. Germán has started seven games since his own perfect day with the Yankees.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the ̽��Ƶ Department of Ethnic Studies.

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145 years after Lee Richmond threw the first perfect game in Major League Baseball, pitchers still pursue one of baseball’s ultimate achievements.

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Top image: Cy Young pitching (Photo: Library of Congress)

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