The wackiest headlines from the week as they would appear in a Classifieds section.

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CREED COVER BAND: Not even a drunk uncle at karaoke could create magic quite like this mariachi band playing a beautiful rendition of “Higher” at a Rangers game.

CASTING BARF: Now that Amazon MGM Studios knows you freaks just want the same old stuff you grew up with, it’s making a Spaceballs sequel starring Josh Gad and produced by Mel Brooks.

Personal

STUDIO W/ NATURAL LIGHT: People who lived across the Arabian peninsula 3,500–10,000 years ago hid out in giant lava tubes to get a break from the elements on cross-desert journeys, new research found. Still a basement unit, though…

WORKING LATE? Have some of the Sabrina Carpenter x Van Leeuwen Espresso ice cream that’s arriving next week. It’s only a matter of time until Baja Blast is replaced by Mountain Dew It For Ya.

For sale

OLD FRUIT: At George Washington’s Mount Vernon, archaeologists dug up a bunch of jugs filled with surprisingly well-preserved 18th-century cherries and other berries. They’ll either display the aged fruit in a museum or make the worst pie you could ever imagine.

OLDEST WINE EVER: Even the people 2,000 years ago recognized wine o’clock. Some red (formerly white) wine discovered in an urn in Spain has been deemed the oldest wine to have ever been found in liquid form. It was described as “full-bodied” because it also contained the cremated bones of a Roman man. Finally—some authentic Josh.—MM

Photo of the week

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department

The Nevada desert is no longer just a place for disposing of people who get caught cheating at Las Vegas casinos—last weekend, it became the location of the latest mysterious monolith. The structures, whose purpose still remain a mystery, started showing up in 2020 first in the Utah desert, then in Romania, Central California, and the Isle of Wight. Bad news for anyone looking to make the trek to see the monolith in Nevada—Las Vegas police on Friday said they removed it.—DL

Dept. of Progress

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Here are some illuminating scientific discoveries from the week to help you live better and maybe even regain hope for humanity’s enduring impact on the natural world.

Conservationists got this wild cat off the “endangered” list. One of the rarest cats in the world, the Iberian Lynx, has been recategorized as “vulnerable”—a step back from “endangered”—after years of successful repopulation efforts that included boosting the availability of the cat’s main prey. Adult Iberian Lynx numbers surged from just 62 in 2001 to 648 in 2022, and the species’ total population (young kitties included) is estimated to be above 2,000 by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The short-tailed cat, which is only found in Spain and Portugal, has expanded its territory from 173 square miles in 2005 (a little more than half the size of NYC) to 1,282 square miles today.

Genome testing can spot rare disease risks at birth. Newborn babies typically get blood tested for dozens of diseases, but some parents living in North Carolina and New York have recently been able to get their bundles of joy screened for hundreds of potentially life-threatening medical conditions that regular tests can’t catch thanks to a growing field called genomic medicine. Early results from two ongoing studies are very promising, the Washington Post reported, but scaling the new type of testing could be tricky: A full genome read (which covers all of your DNA) costs around $1,000 per patient. Still, research into the cost-benefit of genome sequencing has found that it can ultimately save families money on hospital care.

Stuntpeople tend to keep head injuries to themselves. Professional stunt performers are likely to never report concussions or concussion-like symptoms, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Occupational Medicine and Toxicology. In a survey of 87 stuntpeople, 80% said they’d gotten at least one head injury on the job. Of them, 86% said they had concussion symptoms, and of them, 65% kept working anyway. Forty-four percent of the performers who didn’t follow conventional medical advice reported doing so out of shame or fear of losing work. One of the study’s coauthors said they hope that research like this pushes the film industry to follow the NFL’s lead in making dangerous jobs (somewhat) safer and destigmatizing injury reporting.—ML

Are soccer stars playing too much?

Anadolu/Getty Images

As soccer fans enjoy a feast of games between the Euros and Copa América, professional players are accusing FIFA of being like that friend who asks you to haul a couch up to their sixth-floor walk-up. The umbrella org for European player unions, Fifpro Europe, recently sued FIFA over its plan to expand the Club World Cup that will take place in the US next summer during the off-season for club teams.

The beefed-up tournament will include 32 teams (instead of seven originally) from all over the world. FIFA envisions it as a global club contest as opposed to a regional one like Europe’s Champions League, but Fifpro thinks that bringing the Real Madrids of the world to face off against each other will only make players more burnt-out.

• Fifpro Europe claims that the scheduling all but deprives already overworked players of the “right to a guaranteed annual break” and accuses FIFA of putting profits over players’ well-being.
• FIFA responded that it controls only a tiny fraction of global matches and that it needs the extra cash to promote soccer worldwide.

Let’s take a closer look at why European soccer legends are crying foul at the organization that’s trying to make the sport even more global than it already is.

Sleep, eat, play

With a greater number of games and tournaments than ever, today’s top players have a much more demanding schedule than soccer stars of the past.

• Fifpro projected that top players could potentially play 11% more matches in the 2024–25 season compared to the 2021–22 season.
• In an extreme example, 20-year-old British star midfielder Jude Bellingham has spent nearly five times the minutes on-field that David Beckham did by the time he turned 21, according to Fifpro.

LinkedIn grindset types would be especially proud of the 10 soccer stars who spent over 6,000 minutes on the field last year and the dozens who played most of their matches without the recommended five-day rest in between.

Despite advances in sports science and medicine, such intense play can take a physical and mental toll. Injuries (of the non-theatrical type) in the Premier League were up 11% during the last season compared with the previous one, according to the Premier Injuries website, which keeps track. Fifpro says that 43% of players reported experiencing extreme or increased mental fatigue in the 2022–23 season.

Fans are noticing

While many spectators might not have much sympathy for multimillionaires’ workloads, the players’ tight schedules have also meant that top players have to triage events they participate in. Lionel Messi angered fans in Hong Kong when he sat out an Inter Miami match there earlier this year, and he recently announced that he would not be competing for Argentina in the Paris Olympics next month.

Sports healthcare experts expect that the intense amount of play will lead many of today’s stars to retire earlier than pros of previous generations.

Top players wanted

Fifpro’s lawsuit adds to the question marks around the broadened tournament as FIFA tries to get the ball rolling.

• It’s still unclear where the matches will air and who’s sponsoring them.
• Talks with Apple for a $1 billion media rights deal have stalled, Bloomberg reported last week. FIFA reportedly has a $4 billion revenue goal for the tournament, per the New York Times.

Though FIFA is hopeful that the inclusion of teams from places where soccer is becoming more popular, like Saudi Arabia, will add to the tourney’s global appeal and commercial potential, industry observers say top players are a must to draw ratings.

While we know for sure Cristiano Ronaldo’s team, Al-Nassr, didn’t qualify for the Club World Cup, other big-name clubs, like Chelsea and PSG, did. But teams’ decision on whether to field household names might hinge on how much cash they take home for games and successes, according to The Athletic reporter Adam Crafton. At the moment, it’s still unclear how much FIFA will be paying clubs for participating in the tournament, as well as for advancing to its final stages.

One solution: Premier League manager Vincent Kompany, who was a former soccer star himself, proposed a workaround to the burnout issue last fall. He recommended capping the number of appearances players can make during a season.—SK

Place to be: Track Town, USA

Michael Heiman/Getty Images

It’s a big world out there. In this section, we’ll teleport you to an interesting location—and hopefully give you travel ideas in the process.

The best American runners have descended upon the University of Oregon this weekend, where they will compete to represent Team USA at this summer’s Paris Olympics.

But why would Eugene, Oregon, a college town of less than 200,000 that sounds like it’s named after a really cool accountant, host the US Olympic Track and Field Trial that runs (get it?) through June 30? Isn’t an event as massive as this usually hosted by a much larger city?

Well, Eugene is Track Town, USA, a place where, as a reporter once put it, “babies are teethed on stopwatches.”

• Hayward Field opened in 1919 for track and field and football. The football team left in 1966, so the track and field team are the sole occupants.
• Eugene’s reputation as the track capital of the world was solidified when coach Bill Bowerman (played by Donald Sutherland in the movie Without Limits about running prodigy Steve Prefontaine) built the most dominant program of the 1960s.
• Bowerman was also an innovator—he co-founded Nike with former Oregon track athlete Phil Knight and helped popularize the concept of jogging.

Oregon has won 22 track and field championships, the fourth-most of all time behind USC (30), LSU (32), and Arkansas (39).

Other opportunities to scream “USA” at your television: Olympics swimming trials conclude today in Indianapolis. Gymnastics trials will take place June 27–30 in Minneapolis.—DL

Crowd work

Last week we asked: What’s an inexpensive travel item that has changed your life? Here are our favorite responses.

• “AirFly connects the inflight entertainment system to my wireless headphones. $35.”—Billy from Boston, MA
• “Rubber bands. They keep my pill box closed, keep my charging cords in order, work as a bookmark, and hold my hair back. What more could I ask.”—Mary from Fargo, ND
• “Electrolyte tablets. They are allowed through security and help me remain hydrated while flying, and they taste good so it reminds me to drink more.”—Merridy from Alaska
• “I bring a small roll of electrical tape and a few binder clips with me when I travel. The tape is good for covering up the bright little LEDs that are often in the sleeping area. Binder clips are great for hanging things up (perhaps to dry), closing snack bags, or closing curtains together if they’re still letting in too much light.”—Shawn from Madison, WI
• “Without a doubt, it’s…wet wipes!!!”—Pipe from Chattanooga, TN

This week’s question

How did you make your last new friend?

Matty’s answer to get the juices flowing: “Making friends as an adult takes radical vulnerability, so I’ve been replying with some version of ‘Hell yeah! This rocks!’ to a person’s Insta stories for about three months now. They just posted an essay on Substack, so I messaged them. We’re getting coffee next week!”

Share your response here.