After many futile hours of shoveling dirt under the scorching Australian sun, Sean Doody began to think that he had made an embarrassing mistake and was—quite literally—digging himself into a hole.  Doody is a herpetologist from the University of South Florida who has spent years studying Australia’s yellow-spotted goanna—a predatory monitor lizard with long claws, a whiplike tail, and a sinuous, muscular body that can reach five feet in length.

For two generations, economists and other custodians of financial propriety have chastised Americans for not saving enough. Getting the public to pay attention took a pandemic. Facing a real possibility that COVID-19 and the resulting economic havoc might leave them unable to pay their mortgages and feed their families, moderate- and middle-income Americans began saving as much as they could—and are now socking away now perhaps too much to support a healthy expansion for the U.S.

Pleasure, in the novels of Jackie Collins, tends to be abundant but hard-earned—imagine Pandora, having opened the box containing every sin plaguing humanity, retiring to a beach house in Malibu with two Weimaraners and a finely muscled masseur. The titles of her later books nod to desire and its cost: Lethal Seduction, Deadly Embrace, Dangerous Kiss. And in life, the British-born author emanated a similar combination of tough glamour.

Summer is hot. This is among the most basic weather concepts that we learn as children and accept without question. Heat and even heat waves have always been a reliable hallmark of the season between the June solstice and the September equinox. And yet recent weather has far outstripped that norm. For most of last week, the daily high temperature in Phoenix reached or exceeded 115 degrees, breaking records even in that desert city.