Mandy Oaklander | August 21, 2026

Bottoms down. People are drinking less alcohol than ever before, according to a new Gallup poll that my colleague Dominique Mosbergen wrote about for TIME. It’s a continuation of a downward trend in drinking across all age groups.

Why are Americans shying away from alcohol? Multiple factors are at play, but a big one appears to be health, as scientists continue to turn up evidence that no amount of drinking is safe.

TODAY’S TOPICS

Dream experiments get weird
COVID’s summer encore
Got a question for us?
When robots draw blood

QUICK CHAT

Can we shape dreams?

When it comes to influencing what you dream about, Karen Konkoly, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., believes in the power of weirdness. For my recent feature on the new science of dreaming, I visited Konkoly and participated in her current experiment. We also chatted about one of her earlier studies. —Veronique Greenwood, Staff Writer

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Will Matsuda for TIME

When I spoke to other researchers about your work, they told me to ask about nose harmonicas.

Yes! We were thinking of tasks people could do just before sleep that would be interesting and memorable—and could potentially change the way they breathed during dreams. If their breathing changed, we would have a way to tell, in real time, that they were dreaming about the task.

We decided participants would learn a harmonica duet with an experimenter using only nasal inhalations. I got very good at it. We told participants they were being graded and evaluated, and they progressed through three different songs to keep the task challenging and engaging.

The other task was a bubble-blowing competition against a different experimenter using only nasal exhalations. There was an archery target, and participants had to guide a bubble toward it with at least three distinct sniffs. Each round lasted 45 seconds, and we kept track of their scores on a leaderboard. We also tried to wear weird clothes so people would be more likely to dream about us, because unusual experiences are more likely to be incorporated into dreams.

This sounds really complicated!

Yeah, everyone kept saying, “Karen, I think you should use computer tasks to make it more regulated.” And I was like, “I don’t want it to be regulated. I want it to be weird.” I wanted it to be a real-world experience, because people dream about experimenters and the settings where they fall asleep.

So what did you find?

We found that people dreamed a lot about both tasks. When we played musical cues linked to each task while participants slept, those cues also made them more likely to dream about the corresponding task.

Could you tell from their breathing—in real time—what they were dreaming about?

Honestly, no—we didn’t see clear differences, and it was hard to figure out how to measure subtler variations in breathing.

But the sniffing work is continuing. I still think that if we can find a way to make it work, it could be really interesting.

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TODAY I LEARNED

We’re in the middle of COVID’s summer surge

COVID’s now-familiar summer surge is upon us. “We are seeing an increase in COVID across the country right now, and that’s something people should be aware of,” says Marlene Wolfe, assistant professor at Emory University and co-principal investigator at WastewaterSCAN, which tests wastewater samples from across the U.S. for more than a dozen pathogens.

SARS-CoV-2 levels in wastewater are 120% higher so far in August than they were in July, Wolfe says, reflecting the virus’s typical gradual climb over the summer. Concentrations are currently similar to those recorded last summer, though it’s unclear whether they will continue to rise.

Summer travel and hot weather—which sends more people indoors—can increase close contact and make it easier for viruses to spread. Protection from fall vaccinations may also wane by summer, leaving people more vulnerable to infection.

Wastewater surveillance gives local health departments another way to track COVID and other infectious diseases. It is “one piece of the ecosystem of data on infectious-disease outbreaks that helps us respond appropriately,” Wolfe says. —Alice Park, Senior Correspondent

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PLEASE ADVISE

Ask the health team

Have a burning health or wellness question? Wondering how to handle a tricky social situation? Please write to healthmatters@time.com, and we’ll weigh in weekly in the newsletter.

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WHAT WE’RE READING

Would you let a robot draw your blood? Ella Jeffries at Becker’s Hospital Review reports on the first FDA-authorized standalone machine that can find a vein, insert the needle, and collect samples without hands-on help.
The new U.S. dietary guidelines, released in January, were drawn up by a “secret panel” that was “rife with conflicts of interest,” the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine alleges in a new lawsuit against HHS and the USDA, Rachael Robertson writes for MedPage Today.
The FDA is conducting onsite inspections at iceberg-lettuce growers in Mexico as it investigates a Cyclospora outbreak that has sickened 10,930 people. The recalled lettuce is no longer on the market, the agency says.