Weekly Top Five Articles
Christian Smith leaving Notre Dame, Why We Like Sour Foods, and more...
Here’s what stood out this week. . .
(1) “Passage to a Better WorldThe Revolution to Come: A History of an Idea from Thucydides to Lenin,” by Richard Bourke, Literary Review (February 2026)
Bourke’s review examines two ambitious new histories of revolution and, in doing so, interrogates one of the most morally charged ideas in modern politics. Dan Edelstein’s The Revolution to Come and Donald Sassoon’s Revolutions both argue that “revolution” has not always meant what we think it means. Bourke shows that their shared insight is historical as much as philosophical: the word itself has undergone a transformation.
Edelstein traces the concept from ancient Greece to the twentieth century. In the classical world, revolution signified disorder and civic collapse. Thucydides described stasis as a world turned upside down. Polybius conceived constitutional change as cyclical, not progressive. Politics aimed at preventing upheaval, not welcoming it. According to Bourke’s account of Edelstein’s thesis, the decisive shift occurred in the eighteenth century, when Enlightenment ideas of progress reimagined revolution as the gateway to a perfected future. By 1789, revolution promised moral and political regeneration. The state became an instrument of historical acceleration, a logic later radicalized by Marx and Lenin.
Sassoon approaches the subject from the vantage point of a historian of socialism. Bourke presents him as a chastened partisan, attentive both to revolutionary optimism and to its grim disappointments. Revolutions, Sassoon argues, often unleash violence and unintended consequences, yet their long-term effects can be more complex than immediate failures suggest. England consolidated parliamentary government. China, though far from Maoist ideals, lifted millions from poverty. Russia industrialized at immense cost.
Bourke concludes that both authors converge on a sober judgment. The age of revolutions, understood as a project of total reconstruction, has likely ended. Capitalism remains dynamic and self-transforming. The modern question is no longer whether revolution will perfect the world, but whether durable reform can achieve progress without catastrophe.
(2) “Why I’m Done with Notre Dame,” by Christian Smith, First Things (February 13, 2026)"
Wow. This is really something. Smith’s farewell to the University of Notre Dame is not a retirement note. It is an indictment. After twenty years on the faculty, holding an endowed chair, bringing in millions in grants, mentoring prize-winning students, and championing the university’s Catholic mission, Smith walked away. Not because he had grown tired of scholarship. Not because he no longer loved teaching. He left, he writes, because Notre Dame no longer seemed serious about being what it claims to be.
At the heart of his critique is a simple claim. A Catholic university is Catholic not by atmosphere, liturgy, or branding, but by its intellectual life. Its scholars must engage the Catholic intellectual tradition in real conversation with their disciplines. That engagement, Smith argues, happens only in scattered pockets at Notre Dame. Institutionally, leadership lacks the clarity and courage to integrate mission into hiring, promotion, faculty formation, and departmental life. The result is what he calls a “tick-the-box” Catholicism, heavy on symbolism and light on substance.
Why the drift? Smith identifies three forces. First, fear of conflict. Notre Dame, long a lightning rod in American Catholic debates, avoids controversy rather than risk internal strife. Second, a craving for mainstream academic acceptance. The university wants full membership among elite research peers, many of whom regard institutional Catholicism as suspect. Third, an ambitious push to become a globally pre-eminent research university. Here Smith invokes the “Iron Triangle.” One cannot simultaneously maximize research productivity, undergraduate excellence, and deep mission integration without trade-offs. In practice, he argues, the Catholic mission has borne the cost.
His critique extends beyond mission to branding and bureaucratic sprawl. The bookstore morphs into a merchandising hub. Marketing eclipses substance. Administrative demands crowd out intellectual life. Graduate students are trained for efficiency, not formation. Goal displacement sets in.
Smith insists this is not about culture-war skirmishes. It is about institutional integrity. If Notre Dame cannot align its practices with its professed purposes, it risks becoming what he fears most: just another very good research university, adorned with crucifixes.
(3) Science of Tastes: What Really Drives Our Love for Sour Foods, Neuroscience News (February 13, 2026)
This is kind’a fun! If you have ever watched a child suck on a lemon with delight while another recoils in horror, you have witnessed something deeper than preference. According to a new Penn State study, you are witnessing biology, exposure, and perception colliding in the mouth.
The research, published in Food Quality and Preference, dismantles the simplistic idea that “sour” is a single taste. Sourness, it turns out, is not merely a signal on the tongue. It is a multisensory event. It puckers. It dries. It tightens the jaw and pulls at the cheeks. And not all acids are created equal.
Researchers compared five common organic acids used in food production: citric, malic, lactic, fumaric, and tartaric. Each was presented at identical concentrations to ordinary consumers. The results were striking. Citric acid, the backbone of citrus fruits, produced the most intense sourness and puckering. Lactic acid, common in fermented foods, was markedly milder. Equal chemical amounts did not translate into equal sensory experiences.
Even more interesting was how people sorted themselves. Participants clustered into three groups. Some sharply disliked increasing sourness. Others tolerated it. And about one in eight adults, the “sour seekers,” actually liked the sensation more as it intensified. These individuals did not simply prefer sour. They perceived it differently. They rated the puckering and drying as less overwhelming.
Here is where the study challenges cultural assumptions. Unlike preferences for spicy heat or bitter beer, which correlate with sensation-seeking and risk-taking personality traits, sour preference showed no personality link. Loving sour candy does not make you an adrenaline junkie. Instead, the strongest predictor was dietary exposure. Those who consumed more citrus and tart fruits were more likely to enjoy intense sourness.
The implications are practical and philosophical. Food formulation can be more precise. But more broadly, taste is not destiny or temperament. It is shaped, habituated, and trained. Even our most immediate sensory reactions are, in part, learned.
(4) Syncing Sleep and Snacks: Personalized Fasting Boosts Heart Health, Neuroscience News (February 13, 2026)
For years, the wellness conversation around fasting has focused on duration. Sixteen hours. Eighteen hours. The longer the better. But a new study from Northwestern suggests we have been asking the wrong question. It may not be how long you fast that matters most. It may be when you stop eating.
In research published in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, investigators tested a deceptively simple intervention. Middle-aged and older adults at elevated cardiometabolic risk were asked to extend their overnight fast by roughly three hours, ensuring that their final meal occurred at least three hours before bedtime. They dimmed lights during that pre-sleep window, reinforcing the body’s natural circadian transition. Importantly, they did not change what they ate or how much they ate.
The results were not dramatic in headline-grabbing fashion. They were something more compelling: physiological coherence. Participants experienced a healthier nighttime “dip” in blood pressure, about 3.5 percent, and a 5 percent reduction in heart rate during sleep. Heart rate variability improved. Nighttime cortisol decreased. During the day, glucose regulation sharpened. The pancreas responded more efficiently to sugar challenges. In short, the heart, metabolism, and sleep cycle began working in tighter coordination.
This is what the researchers call “sleep-anchored” fasting. Rather than imposing a rigid clock window, the intervention aligns eating patterns with the body’s internal rhythms. The implication is profound. Cardiometabolic health is not merely a matter of calories in and calories out. It is a matter of timing. Biology keeps time, and when we ignore that clock, we pay a price.
Perhaps most striking was adherence. Nearly 90 percent of participants sustained the protocol. Unlike severe calorie restriction, this adjustment asks for discipline but not deprivation. It treats sleep as a biological anchor rather than an afterthought.
In a culture obsessed with hacks and extremes, the lesson is almost unfashionable. The body is not a machine to be bullied into compliance. It is a system governed by rhythms. Align your eating with your sleep, and the heart quietly recalibrates itself.
(5) “New research links childhood inactivity to depression in a vicious cycle,” by Karina Petrova, PsyPost (February 13, 2026)
Keep your kids moving! For years, public health messaging has treated childhood inactivity as a physical problem. Too much sitting leads to obesity, cardiovascular risk, metabolic dysfunction. A new longitudinal study suggests something more intimate and more troubling. Sedentary behavior and depression in children may feed each other, forming a self-reinforcing loop that extends beyond the child and into the family itself.
Researchers in Poland followed more than 200 parent–child pairs over fourteen months, equipping both with accelerometers to measure actual movement rather than relying on self-reports. They assessed depressive symptoms at three intervals. What they found was not a simple cause-and-effect pattern, but reciprocity.
Children who spent more time sitting at the outset were more likely to report higher depressive symptoms eight months later. Just as striking, children who began the study with elevated depressive symptoms were more sedentary months later. Low mood leads to withdrawal. Withdrawal leads to stillness. Stillness may worsen mood. The cycle tightens.
The study controlled for moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, meaning this was not simply about failing to exercise. It was about sitting itself. The body at rest for too long may alter inflammatory pathways or neurobiological processes linked to mood regulation. Depression, in turn, saps motivation and energy, making movement feel costly.
The most sobering finding crossed generations. When children’s depressive symptoms predicted greater inactivity, that increased inactivity was later associated with rising depressive symptoms in parents. The emotional climate of the family shifted. A child’s withdrawal became a parental burden. The dyad, as psychologists call it, functioned as a shared system.
The effects were modest, and the sample largely middle class. The accelerometers could not distinguish between homework and scrolling. But the pattern is difficult to ignore.
The lesson is not merely that children should move more. It is that mental health and physical behavior cannot be separated. Interventions that treat one without the other will falter. In a culture where screens increasingly mediate childhood, the risk is not just physical softness. It is a quiet psychological entrenchment that spreads across the household.