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I do not consider myself a very woo-woo person, someone who's in touch with their spirituality, or even someone particularly sentimental. The concept of meditating, like so many other things I regard "too mystical," has never appealed to me, but I'll tell you what does: Working out, being physically healthy, and staying on top of my goals. That's why Peloton's approach to meditation sessions appealed to me more than others have before.I'm always browsing the Peloton app for new workout options and recently stumbled across the guided meditation classes it offers alongside cycling, walking, yoga, strength training, and more. At first, I didn't see the appeal. I use the app and its classes to get sweaty, burn calories, and enhance my body's performance, after all. But as it turns out, these are really cool and can put you in a better mental space, which clears the way for you to do all that other stuff. Since discovering them, I've been streaming them quite a bit. Here's why you should, too.What are Peloton's meditation classes all about?Using Peloton's app—which is included on the touchscreens of its at-home workout equipment, can be downloaded to your phone, or even streamed on devices like a Roku—you can access a variety of class types. Tap Meditation from the home screen and you'll be shown hundreds of meditation options that range in length from five minutes to 30. As with any Peloton offering, they're led by a number of different instructors; if you take enough of them, you'll find a favorite or two, but what really stands out is that there are different categories available, such as:sleep mindfulness anxiety focus recoverygratitudehappinessrelaxingEach class is designed for a specific purpose, so you can choose if you want to "flow and let go," embrace a bright morning, or even take one designed for use on your evening commute. You can filter by class type, which lets you break down the classes by categories like "Daily Meditation," "Meditation Basics," "Emotions," "Theme," or "Walking Meditation." There are even some for pre- and post-natal meditation. You don't need any special equipment; the instructors usually lead off simply by suggesting how you should position your body. Meditations can be added to class Stacks, which are Peloton's version of playlists that cycles through pre-selected classes, allowing you to customize your entire workout before it begins. If you have your Apple Watch linked up to your Peloton account (and you should!) the app will track your heart rate and input the meditation into your Apple Health tracker, listing it as "Mind & Body" under your sessions. Why I like Peloton's meditationsAs I said, I'm not a very spiritual or soulful person, so I appreciate that the meditation classes I've taken through the app aren't overly mushy. Rather, they're pretty straightforward: The instructors speak clearly and plainly, don't rely too much on frivolous imagery, and instead, draw your attention to your breathing and body in a way that actually helps you feel more connected to both. For as much energy as I put into working out and strengthening my body, I do struggle with things like the "mind-muscle connection" or just identifying how different parts of my body are feeling, so these sessions, where I'm asked to focus intently on certain areas and connect to how I'm feeling in a given moment, are actually pretty beneficial to my quest to become stronger and healthier overall.I first tried the Peloton meditations a few weeks ago while waiting for the bus. I was having a very busy day and had had absolutely no time to work out, not even on my Peloton bike, which was adding to my stress while I waited for the bus to pull up and take me to more busy activities. I didn't want to lose my Peloton streak, so I opened the app to see if there was a quick walking workout I could get in, maybe by strolling to the next-farthest bus stop, and saw the meditations option. I picked a five-minute meditation and listened to it while I stood on the sidewalk—and it did chill me out, help me focus, and reinvigorate me a little, almost the same as a traditional workout would have, but without taking up as much time or making me a sweaty mess. I tried a few others over the next few days and found them really useful, especially during long hours in the car on my Memorial Day road trip or earlier this week and when my team was losing a baseball game and I was not enjoying the experience of watching. Obviously, these classes are a lot different from Peloton's usual offerings. I'm not sweating, straining myself, or enhancing my cardiovascular or respiratory function. Instead, I'm strengthening my mind, training myself to focus on my breathing and feelings. Those abilities translate really well to being able to continue my fitness journey as well as just handle whatever is going on in an average day. I think these are especially useful as a pick-me-up, a kickstart for the day, or a post-workout wind-down. I also appreciate how accessible the classes are. You can toggle on closed captions, for instance, and the audio and video components are high-quality, making the instructors easy to understand. The background music never muffles the instructors' voices, there is a diverse selection of instructors and class types, and there really does seem to be something for everyone, whether you want to walk and listen or only have five minutes to devote to grounding yourself.

We may earn a commission from links on this page.Even if you don't have a Peloton Bike or Bike+, the at-home fitness giant's app can help you get in an effective, safe cycling workout. The instructor-led classes that are available for Bike and Bike+ users on their devices' touchscreens are also available on the Peloton app, which works on iPhones, Androids, and streaming devices like Roku. Taking one of the company's famous spin classes is a little different without the accompanying proprietary equipment, but it's still a solid workout. Make sure you can see the classWhen you take a Peloton cycling class using the mobile or streaming app, you still see most of the same elements on-screen that you would if you were taking it on a Peloton Bike: recommended cadence and resistance, a leaderboard that you can hide, and, if you have a heart rate monitor connected, your heart rate. It doesn't exactly look the same as it does on a Peloton device—it's much plainer, as you can see in the screenshot above—but that doesn't really matter as long as you can see the cues for how fast you should be going and at what resistance your bike should be set. There's the first key: You need to be able to see the screen. Instructors do periodically call out recommended cadences and resistance settings, but you'll be better off if you can see the ones displayed on-screen. I tried out two different kinds of non-Peloton bikes with Peloton classes at the gym this week and found that a recumbent bike with a little ledge for the phone worked better for enabling me to see. Streaming the class on your TV is smart, if you can, but there are also all kinds of phone holders available on Amazon for under $20 that you can attach to your bike. Choose the best bike If you already have a spin bike at home, you'll have to deal with whatever it is you've got, but if you're looking for an at-home cycle or have a few options in the gym, here's what you should keep in mind if you want to take Peloton classes. First, I highly recommend a stationary bike that displays RPM (revolutions per minute). I first tried a Peloton mobile class on a spin bike in a commercial gym cycling studio, then went out on the gym floor to find a recumbent bike I could try for the experiment, too. I've taught spin for years in a variety of settings and not all the bikes I've taught on have featured a digital component that shares information on RPM or visually displays the resistance level. Over the years, these have become more common, but you may still find yourself in a place where the spin bikes you have access to don't show any information at all. It's not the end of the world; you just won't be able to track your cadence and match it up to what the instructor and screen are telling you it should be. While testing the mobile app classes, I used two pretty rudimentary bikes. They lacked many of the usual bells and whistles but featured basic displays that at least gave me a sense of my cadence. The simple display on a bike I tested. Credit: Lindsey Ellefson Don't bother trying to guess your RPM if you don't have access to a bike that shows it to you; I've been teaching for a long time and still couldn't accurately estimate my RPM if I tried. Spending too much time trying to guess your RPM will take your focus off your form, the music, and your workout. If you can't see yours displayed as you ride, just do your best to ride to the beat of the music. Watch the instructor closely and try to match their cadence. Most of the time—not all the time, but most of the time—riding on the beat will put you in the middle of the recommended cadence. I also recommend choosing a bike that displays the resistance level you're on. It's much easier to ride knowing your resistance level rather than simply guessing based on how the tension feels. The resistance isn't quite as important as you think, however. When I teach a class, I make sure participants know that if they're struggling to ride on, say, a resistance level of 14 out of 25, they can knock off a few resistance points, even if I'm telling the class to aim for 14. Do your best to hit the resistance levels your instructor is telling you to, but understand that—especially if you're new to spinning—what's easy or manageable for someone else might not yet be easy or manageable for you. Be prepared to do mathThis is the part that sucks the most about doing a Peloton class on a non-Peloton bike. The instructors will tell you the recommended resistance level on which you should be riding—but they're going to be giving you numbers between one and 100 because that's how a Peloton bike's resistance is set up. If you're riding a bike that doesn't display resistance levels, it's no big deal. If the instructor says your resistance should be around 50, you can feel out what a 50% effort is for you and be done with it. But if you're riding a bike that does display resistance levels, you could end up having to do a lot of math on the fly. The bikes I currently teach on most often show a resistance level between one and 25. That 25 is comparable in feeling and effort to Peloton's 100, while a 12 or so on that bike would be similar to a 50 on the Peloton. To follow a Peloton class on one of those bikes, I'd have to calculate to make sure my resistance was lining up with what the instructors suggest. But wait, it gets worse. While testing out the mobile app classes, I was at a new gym I've never been to, using a bike brand I'm not familiar with. That bike's resistance, inexplicably, was represented on a scale of one to 35. That calculation was much more bothersome than the comparably simpler one required on a bike that uses a 25-point resistance scale. Some bikes represent tension on a scale of one to 50. Others go from one to 10. Before pressing play on a Peloton mobile class, crank the resistance on your bike all the way up just to see what number is displayed on the screen when it's at its max. Prepare to calculate accordingly from there. Why I like the option to take Peloton classes on any bikeThe math is annoying and it can be frustrating to take one of these classes if you have no way of measuring your cadence, but overall, I think the ability to take a Peloton class on any bike is great. The All Access Membership costs $44 and grants you access to all kinds of classes, from walking to stretching to meditation, which makes the app valuable even if you don't have one of Peloton's Bike, Bike+, Tread, or Row devices. The cycling classes, which are all the same as the ones available on the touchscreens of Peloton's devices, make it even more valuable. You're getting guidance and encouragement from a trained, reputable professional. The classes are rigorously reviewed and keep safety top of mind and the playlists are varied and exciting. Even just following them on your phone is better than trying to craft a workout on your own, especially if you're new to cycling. I also love that these broaden the population of people who can use Peloton classes. I tried a mobile Peloton class on a recumbent bike, for instance, and it worked great, which is fantastic news for people with joint problems, mobility issues, or a desire for a more low-impact workout. I recommend linking your Apple Watch or other heart rate monitor to your Peloton app if you're going to try to take the cycling classes on a non-Peloton bike. Sure, you can depend on the heart-rate monitors that might be in the handlebars of your gym's bikes, but overall, gym equipment is a lot worse at giving you accurate information about your workout than a wearable is. The Peloton Bike itself tracks your distance, cadence, and all kinds of metrics as you work out, but if you're taking a class through the app on a different brand of bike, you get absolutely no data unless you have a wearable.

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drop it like it's hot The key to a successful egg drop experiment? Drop it on its side Eggs are less likely to crack when dropped horizontally vs. vertically, contradicting conventional wisdom. Jennifer Ouellette – May 26, 2025 11:05 am | 7 A physics teacher drops a package designed to protect three eggs from a fall of ten meters Credit: Ben Wildeboer/CC BY-SA 3.0 A physics teacher drops a package designed to protect three eggs from a fall of ten meters Credit: Ben Wildeboer/CC BY-SA 3.0 Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Egg drop competitions are a staple of high school and college physics classes. The goal is for students to build a device using bubble wrap, straws, or various other materials designed to hold an egg and keep it intact after being dropped from a substantial height—say, ten meters (nearly 33 feet). There's even a "naked egg" version in which a raw egg is dropped into a container below.  The competition is intended to teach students about structural mechanics and impact physics, and it is not an easy feat; most of the dropped eggs break. MIT engineering professor Tal Cohen decided to investigate why the failure rate was so high and reported her team's findings in a paper published in the journal Communications Physics. "The universal convention is that the egg should be in a vertical orientation when it hits the ground," Cohen told Physics Magazine. But their results from controlled trials simulating the egg drop challenge in the lab calls this conventional wisdom into question. It is not an unreasonable assumption to make. Another popular physics party trick is to walk on several cartons of eggs without breaking them. Typically it only takes about five and a half pounds of force to crack a single eggshell, much less than the average adult human. As I wrote for Slate back in 2012, "The key is to align the eggs so that the narrow pole is pointing upward, and step in such a way to distribute your weight over the entire surface area, to avoid overloading any one eggshell." (Being barefoot also helps.) In fact, I noted at the time a surprisingly long history of scientific studies of eggshells and how cracks propagate, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, when they served as useful models for failure analysis when building airplanes. The toughness comes from the egg shell's structure; it is made up mostly of calcium carbonate (calcite) crystals, similar to tooth enamel or sea shells,  embedded within a protein matrix. The egg shell is strengthened further by a thin inner collagen layer. This tends to keep damage localized as cracks spread little by little rather than one clean break. Chef instructor demonstrates the one-handed technique for cracking an egg in 1954's Sabrina. Paramount Pictures Chef instructor demonstrates the one-handed technique for cracking an egg in 1954's Sabrina. Paramount Pictures Sabrina needs a new egg. Paramount Pictures Sabrina needs a new egg. Paramount Pictures Chef instructor demonstrates the one-handed technique for cracking an egg in 1954's Sabrina. Paramount Pictures Sabrina needs a new egg. Paramount Pictures Cohen et al. give a shoutout in their introduction to Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, specifically the longstanding quarrel between the people of Lilliput and Blefuscu on the best orientation for cracking an egg. Of course, there is the classic chef's one-handed egg-cracking technique—immortalized in the 1954 romantic comedy, Sabrina—which involves holding the egg between the fingers and thumb and rapping the edge sharply against the rim of the bowl to achieve a clean break. Alas, this usually ends in a crushed eggy mess when attempted by amateurs. (Practicing with a golf ball can improve one's skill.) MIT scientists have previously studied precisely how much force to apply to the center of an egg. Specifically, the scientists devised a mathematical formula linking the ovoid geometry of the eggshell and its rigidity—a property that, along with strength (a related but distinct concept), accounts for how much force a given object can withstand before breaking. It's the narrow tip that is the most crack-resistant part of the egg, since the shell becomes more rigid the more the egg curves. That's why pressing down on both the bottom and top of an egg with your fingers won't work. But turn the egg horizontally and press right at the center, and the shell cracks easily. Stiffness vs. toughness So what's going on with these latest MIT findings? To find out, Cohen et al. bought 180 chicken eggs—Costco's Kirkland Signature brand— and conducted their own egg drop experiments in the lab. They dropped 60 eggs each from three different heights (8, 9, and 10 millimeters) onto a hard surface in three different orientations: horizontal, vertical on the sharp end, and vertical on the blunt end. They also subjected an additional 60 eggs to compression tests to determine the force required to break the eggs in both the vertical and horizontal orientations. Experimental snapshots for vertical (top) and horizontal (bottom) egg drops. Credit: A. Sutanto et al., 2025 The results: over half of the eggs broke when dropped vertically from an 8-millimeter (31-inch) height, regardless of which end of the egg was pointing downwards. Yet less than ten percent of the horiztonally-dropped eggs broke. The eggs broke when the force exceeded 45 Newtons, an impressive per-egg load bearing capacity that is independent of its orientation. There was a key difference, however, between how vertically and horizontally  squeezed eggs deformed in the compression experiments—namely, the former deformed less than the latter. The shell's greater rigidity along its long axis was an advantage because the heavy load was distributed over the surface. (It's why the one-handed egg-cracking technique targets the center of a horizontally held egg.) But the authors found that this advantage when under static compression proved to be a disadvantage when dropping eggs from a height, with the horizontal position emerging as the optimal orientation.  It comes down to the difference between stiffness—how much force is needed to deform the egg—and toughness, i.e., how much energy the egg can absorb before it cracks. Cohen et al.'s experiments showed that eggs are tougher when loaded horizontally along their equator, and stiffer when compressed vertically, suggesting that "an egg dropped on its equator can likely sustain greater drop heights without cracking," they wrote. "Even if eggs could sustain a higher force when loaded in the vertical direction, it does not necessarily imply that they are less likely to break when dropped in that orientation. In contrast to static loading, to remain intact following a dynamic impact, a body must be able to absorb all of its kinetic energy by transferring it into reversible deformation." "Eggs need to be tough, not stiff, in order to survive a fall," Cohen et al. concluded, pointing to our intuitive understanding that we should bend our knees rather than lock them into a straightened position when landing after a jump, for example. "Our results and analysis serve as a cautionary tale about how language can affect our understanding of a system, and improper framing of a problem can lead to misunderstanding and miseducation." DOI: Communications Physics, 2025. 10.1038/s42005-025-02087-0  (About DOIs). Jennifer Ouellette Senior Writer Jennifer Ouellette Senior Writer Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban. 7 Comments

I never considered myself a walking girl. I never engaged in the "hot girl walk" trends on social media or went on "mental health walks" during the pandemic lockdown. In fact, I long thought walking—the milestone most of us reach as babies, the activity the majority of us do each day to accomplish all the other basic tasks of living—had a little too much PR hype, especially after learning that the much-ballyhooed "10,000 steps" we're supposed to take every day relied on an arbitrary, made-up figure for marketing pedometers. If I am going to do cardio, I reasoned, I'm going to do cardio: cycling, running, swimming, or playing sports with my friends. If I'm not sweating, what's the use? After trying out Peloton's guided walks, available in the at-home fitness giant's incredibly versatile app, I have learned the use. I am now, finally, a walking girl. Is walking good cardio?The reductive view I formerly held of cardio—that I have to be sweaty and tired for it to matter—is and was always false, which I knew, intellectually. As Lifehacker senior health editor Beth Skwarecki has explained before, walking is cardio—and it's actually a pretty good form of it, too. How fast you walk can even be used to measure your health and capacity. Different intensities of cardio do different things for your body, but at its most basic level, walking still burns calories. It's also a great, easy way to work a little extra movement into your life, especially if you're a fitness beginner or have an injury. The catalyst for me checking out Peloton's walking offerings was actually my mom being "prescribed" walking as a treatment for an issue she's been having with her back. The issue prevented her from walking long periods of time or walking fast, so after addressing it medically with doctors and physical therapists, her at-home assignment was to walk longer and longer durations on a walking pad in the living room.As an able-bodied person living in a walkable city (by which I mean a city where I am basically forced to hit my arbitrary 10,000 steps per day whether I want to or not), I have definitely taken the ability to walk for granted. I decided to check out Peloton's walking workouts to see if they'd be useful for my mom—but they ended up being useful for me. What are Peloton's walking workouts all about?To find walking workouts on the Peloton app, select Walking from the top of your home screen or type "walking" into the search bar. Peloton's walking workouts are designed for use on their Tread treadmills (or any treadmill, really)—but I've found that I enjoy them just as much if I go outside, although I obviously can't control the incline if I do that. The guided walks available in the app are like any class Peloton offers: They come in a variety of lengths and formats, are led by a certified instructor who encourages you and reminds you of safety cues, and feature playlists of music that keep the energy going. I start off nearly every weekday morning by walking to Dunkin' Donuts and then to the post office to drop off whatever I've sold on resale apps, so I queue up a Peloton walk for my journey. While I don't necessarily need to have an instructor in my ears reminding me to, well, walk, it encourages me to keep my pace up; I just ignore whatever they're saying about messing with incline and resistance buttons, as I'm not on a treadmill. This morning, I walked along with a five-minute warmup walk routine from instructor Logan Aldridge, who shared encouraging reminders that walking, even if it feels easy, is "massively worth it" for a person's health. He also gave speed cues using practical, real-world examples instead of just relying on cues built around treadmill functions. At one point, he described the pace goal as "not Manhattan walking, not New York City walking," which was funny because I was, in fact, Manhattan-walking my way to a Dunkin', so I slowed down a bit. You can enable location sharing for more accurate measurements and, of course, I have my Apple Watch paired with my Peloton app to give me better data on my heart rate, output, and speed, too. I forgot to enable my location tracking at the beginning of the walk (I don't have it set to automatically track that, though you can), so at the end, it prompted me to enter in my distance walked for better measurements. I glanced at my watch, which told me how far I'd walked, entered in that number, and was taken to a screen where I could review my output. You can absolutely do this on a treadmill, too, and the workouts are more or less designed for you to. There are live classes available, which enter the on-demand archive when they're finished, and you can choose from cool-down walks, power walks, hikes, walks set to certain kinds of playlists (like '90s music or EDM), or even "walk & talk" walks that have two instructors if you like that chatty, podcast kind of feel. Some classes feature walking and running and their titles tell you that upfront. As you're scrolling the options, you'll mostly see title cards with instructors on Treads in the Peloton studio, but you'll also see a few where the instructors are outside. These guided walks are designed more for outdoor walks and the instructors will call out the half-way point so you always know when to turn around and head home (or back to the office or whatever). The workouts come in all kinds of lengths, from five minutes up to 75, with the longer ones often incorporating both walking and running. Why I like Peloton's walking workoutsThese workouts are an easy way to slot some extra intentional movement into my day. I'm already walking around a lot, but I'm not always doing it with purpose. Having an instructor reminding me to connect with my steps and a playlist designed to keep me on a certain pace turns a standard coffee run into a mindful exercise. Walking is also low-impact and accessible, so even on a day you're tired or even if other forms of cardio are beyond your reach, this opens up a whole world of fitness opportunities. Perhaps most importantly, this is the most accessible kind of workout on the app because you really don't need anything special. You don't need a floor mat, yoga blocks, or weights, let alone a fancy treadmill. As long as you have some good shoes, you can walk around all you want while still getting the company's signature encouragement and guidance from trained pros.

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Women have been an important part of the armed services since the beginning, with icons like Harriet Tubman participating in the Civil War. While being female in a traditionally male-dominated space hasn't always been easy, these women have still served their countries.In 2023, the US Department of Defense reported that the percentage of women serving in active and reserve capacities was growing. In 2022, 17.5% of active-duty roles and 21.6% of the National Guard and reserves were women, up slightly from the year before, it reported, citing the 2022 Demographics Profile of the Military Community.On Memorial Day this year, here are 12 famous women who have served in the military around the world, including Bea Arthur, Queen Elizabeth, and more. Harriet Tubman was a military leader and Union spy during the Civil War. Harriet Tubman. MPI/Getty Images Most know Harriet Tubman for her groundbreaking work with the Underground Railroad and, later, as an abolitionist, but as National Geographic reported, Tubman was also an integral part of the Civil War.In 1863, Tubman and Colonel James Montgomery led a group of soldiers in freeing slaves from plantations in South Carolina, making Tubman the first woman in US history to lead a military expedition, according to National Geographic.Her work continued as a spy and recruiter for the Union Army. This operation was so covert that only President Lincoln knew about it.Tubman received compensation for her military contributions decades later, in 1899. Thomas B. Allen, the author of "Harriet Tubman, Secret Agent," called Tubman "one of the great heroines of the Civil War." Queen Elizabeth was a military truck driver during World War II. Queen Elizabeth outside a first aid truck during World War II. Keystone/Getty Images Queen Elizabeth was only 18 years old when she begged her father, King George VI, to take part in helping out during World War II. She joined the Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service in England that same year and was known as "Second Subaltern Elizabeth Windsor," according to the National Archives.While serving, the young queen drove military trucks and trained as a mechanic, making her, to this day, the only female member of the Royal Family to enter the armed forces.  NASA's Eileen Collins was one of the first female pilots in the Air Force and in space. Eileen Collins. NASA Eileen Collins broke several barriers during her career: Not only was she NASA's first female shuttle commander, but at 23, she became the Air Force's first female flight instructor, according to the agency.She joined the Air Force in 1978, becoming one of the first four women to go through pilot training at Vance Air Force Base in Enid, Oklahoma. She wrote in Time, "The Air Force was testing whether women could succeed as military pilots. We obviously were living in a fishbowl — everyone knew who we were, our personal business, our test scores and our flight performance. My philosophy was to be the best pilot I could be."Her military training directly led her to test-pilot school, where she "knew" she would go on to be the first female space shuttle pilot — and succeeded in doing so.   "Golden Girl" Bea Arthur was one of the first members of the Marine Corps Women's Reserve. Bea Arthur. Lennox McLendon/AP Photo Before she was Dorothy Zbornak on "The Golden Girls," Emmy Award-winning actor Bea Arthur was a Marine.As reported by The Daily Beast, Arthur enlisted in the Women's Reserve when she was 21 years old. She first served as a typist and truck driver. She worked her way up to staff sergeant and was honorably discharged in 1945. Official documents show that Arthur's supervisors thought she was "argumentative," which is not a far cry from the feisty persona she became known for on both "The Golden Girls" and "Maude." "Stranger Things" actor Jennifer Marshall served in the US Navy for five years. Jennifer Marshall as Susan Hargrove on "Stranger Things." Netflix Before Jennifer Marshall scored the role of Susan Hargrove on Netflix's hit show "Stranger Things," she served in the United States Navy from ages 17 to 22. According to Marshall's website, during her service, she was a forklift operator, aircraft handler, and logistics specialist. She also worked for the USS Theodore Roosevelt's Sexual Assault Victim Intervention (SAVI) program. Marshall was awarded many honors and medals for her time in the Navy. Now, in addition to acting, she works with Pin-Ups For Vets, a nonprofit organization that aids hospitalized veterans and deployed troops. Food Network star Sunny Anderson was in the Air Force. Sunny Anderson. Jim Spellman/Getty Images Anderson, who hosts "The Kitchen," "Cooking for Real," and "Home Made in America," grew up around the military because of her parents. As an adult, she enlisted in the US Air Force as a radio broadcaster and journalist, working in Seoul, South Korea, and in San Antonio. "I knew that there were radio stations, television stations, newspapers, and magazines, for the military, by the military, and I wanted to be a part of that," Anderson told ABC News in 2013.She also wanted to train in something that would be useful when she left the military."My transition from the Air Force started before I even got in the Air Force," she said. Radio talk show host Robin Quivers was a captain in the Air Force. Robin Quivers. Walter McBride/WireImage via Getty Images Robin Quivers has co-hosted "The Howard Stern Show" for over 30 years, but before that, she served as a captain in the US Air Force.Quivers got her degree in nursing from the University of Maryland and put it to use by joining the military as a second lieutenant after college. She quickly climbed the ranks, and when she was discharged in 1978, her official title was captain, according to Biography.com.She served as a reserve in the Air Force until 1990, per military records, after which she fully pivoted to her career in radio. But Howard Stern hired her for his show in 1981, which means that Quivers — though she was "inactive" — was still technically serving while she was on the air. Actor Zulay Henao served in the US Army for three years. Zulay Henao. JB Lacroix/ Getty Images Colombian-American actor Zulay Henao has appeared on the show "Army Wives," but few know that she herself served in the US Army before becoming an actor.Henao enlisted after completing high school and, after three years of serving, went on to enroll at the New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts.She previously spoke to the paparazzi about her time in the military, saying: "I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing, and I wouldn't have the perspective I have of the world, if it weren't for the Army." Olympic medalist Shauna Rohbock was in the National Guard. Shauna Rohbock. Harry How/Getty Images Shauna Rohbock is an Olympic bobsledder and won the silver medal at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy. But before that, according to Team USA, Rohbock joined the Utah Army National Guard and was part of the National Guard Outstanding Athlete Program. Olympian Amber English competed while still in the military. She won gold in women's skeet shooting at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Amber English at the 2020 Olympics. Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images At her first Olympics, First Lt. Amber English took gold with an Olympic record score of 56, NBC reported. Technically not yet a veteran, she's a logistics officer and member of the Army Marksmanship Unit, according to Military.com.After English's win, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin congratulated her on Twitter, now known as X."Your country is extremely proud of you today, and I'm so glad you're representing us," he wrote.She joins an illustrious list of medal winners, both male and female, with military backgrounds. "Wonder Woman" Gal Gadot served in the Israel Defense Forces for two years. Gal Gadot. Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images After Gal Gadot was crowned Miss Israel in 2004 and before she became Wonder Woman in 2017, she served her mandatory two years in the IDF. During her assignment, she worked as a "physical fitness specialist," teaching gymnastics and calisthenics to the soldiers, PopSugar reported.Pro-Palestine groups have criticized her service, as well as her support of the Israeli military and cause in social media posts."I think much of it comes from ignorance and people not understanding what most people do in the army in Israel or what I did in the army during my service in the military," she told The Jakarta Post in May 2021. She added, "Being an Israeli and going to the army is an integral thing. It's something you have to do. It's mandatory." Ruth Westheimer, better known as the sex therapist Dr. Ruth, trained as a sniper in the IDF. Dr. Ruth. Donna Svennevik/Walt Disney Television/Getty Images Dr. Ruth was a Holocaust survivor, and after World War II ended, she moved as a teenager to what would become Israel. During her time there, she trained as a sniper due to her small size.She told The New Yorker in 2013, "I have no idea what the experience would be if I had to show it. But I was a very good sniper."Melina Glusac contributed to an earlier version of this story.

Even at first glance, there’s something off about the body on the street. The white sheet it’s under is a little too clean, and the officers’ movements are totally devoid of purpose. “We need to clear the street,” one of them says with a firm hand gesture, though her lips don’t move. It’s AI, alright. But here’s the kicker: my prompt didn’t include any dialogue.Veo 3, Google’s new AI video generation model, added that line all on its own. Over the past 24 hours I’ve created a dozen clips depicting news reports, disasters, and goofy cartoon cats with convincing audio — some of which the model invented all on its own. It’s more than a little creepy and way more sophisticated than I had imagined. And while I don’t think it’s going to propel us to a misinformation doomsday just yet, Veo 3 strikes me as an absolute AI slop machine.AI generated video: Made with Veo 3Google introduced Veo 3 at I/O this week, highlighting its most important new capability: generating sound to go with your AI video. “We’re entering a new era of creation,” Google’s VP of Gemini, Josh Woodward, explained in the keynote, calling it “incredibly realistic.” I wasn’t completely sold, but then, a few days later, I had Veo 3 generate a video of a news anchor announcing a fire at the Space Needle. All it took was a basic text prompt, a few minutes, and an expensive subscription to Google’s AI Ultra plan. And you know what? Woodward wasn’t exaggerating. It’s realistic as hell.I tried the news anchor prompt after seeing what Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, was able to produce. One of her clips features a news anchor announcing the death of US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. He is not dead, but the clip is incredibly convincing. A post including a string of videos with AI-generated characters protesting the prompts used to create them has 50,000 upvotes on Reddit. The scenes include disasters, a woman in a hospital bed using a breathing tube, and a character being threatened at gunpoint — all with spoken dialogue and realistic background sounds. Real lighthearted stuff!Maybe I’m being naive, but after playing around with Veo 3 I’m not quite as concerned as I was at first. For starters, the obvious guardrails are in place. You can’t prompt it to create a video of Biden tripping and falling. You can’t have a news anchor announce the assassination of the president, or even generate a video of a T-shirt-and-chain-wearing tech company CEO laughing while dollar bills rain down around him. That’s a start.That said, you can generate some troubling shit. Without any clever workarounds I prompted Veo 3 to create a video of the Space Needle on fire. Starting with my own photo of Mount Rainier, I generated a video of it erupting with smoke and lava. Coupled with a clip of a news anchor announcing said disaster, I can see how you could seed some mischief real easily with this tool.AI generated video: Made with Veo 3Here’s the better news: it doesn’t seem like a ready-made deepfake machine. I gave it a couple of photos of myself and asked it to generate a video with specific dialogue and it wouldn’t comply. I also asked it to bring a pair of giant boots in a photo to life and have them walk out of the scene; it managed one boot stomping across the sidewalk with some comical crunching noises in the background.AI generated video: Made with Veo 3I had an easier time generating videos when my prompts were less specific, which is how I confirmed something my colleague Andrew Marino pointed out: Veo 3 is excellent at creating the kind of lowest-common-denominator YouTube content aimed at kids.If you’ve never been subjected to the endless pit of garbage on YouTube Kids, let me enlighten you. Imagine watching the worst 3D rendering of a monster truck driving down a ramp, landing in a vat of colored paint. Next to it, another monster truck drives down another ramp into another vat of paint — this time, a different color. Now watch that again. And again. And again. There are hours of this stuff on YouTube designed to mesmerize toddlers. These videos are usually harmless, just empty calories designed to rack up views that make Cocomelon look like Citizen Kane. In about 10 minutes with Veo 3, I threw together a clip following the same basic formula — complete with jaunty background music. But the clip that’s even more troubling to me is the two cartoon cats on a pier.AI generated video: Made with Veo 3I thought it would be funny to have the cats complain to each other that the fish aren’t biting. In just a couple of minutes, I had a clip complete with two cats and some AI-generated dialogue that I never wrote. If it’s this easy to make a 10-second clip, stretching it out to a seven-minute YouTube video would be trivial. In its current form, clips revert to Veo 2 when you try to extend them into longer scenes, which removes the audio. But the way that Google has been pushing these tools forward relentlessly, I can’t imagine it’ll be long before you can edit a full feature-length video with Veo 3.Honestly, I wonder if this sort of use for AI-generated video is a feature and not a bug. Google showed us some fancy AI-generated video from real filmmakers, including Eliza McNitt, who is working with Darren Aronofsky on a new film with some AI-generated elements. And sure, AI video could be an interesting tool in the right hands. But I think what we’re most likely to see is a proliferation of the kind of bland imagery that AI is so good at generating — this time, in stereo.See More: