Summer is here, and you're probably already packing your calendar with vacation escapes, backyard BBQs, and weekend road trips. Of course, the fan-favorite destination for this hot season is the beach, where the breeze is cool and the water is refreshing. But what if we told you that you didn't have to book an Airbnb or waterfront hotel in a beach town the next time you wanted to take a dip in one of nature's pools? Turns out, a beach house may be more in reach than you thought! Zillow recently pulled some data to identify the 20 most affordable seaside cities where you can make your vacation home dreams a reality.While we're not saying these options will get you a beach house on the cheap, the locations typically offer a range of properties with lower price tags that still give you access to the ocean, as well as all the charm that comes with a seaside locale (think Mom and Pop ice cream shops, quaint shopping, and more). Of the top 20, you'll find that Florida dominates the list, with a few other states sprinkled in. Keep reading to see which beach towns have the lowest typical home values, but still all of the sandy perks.For more real estate stories:1Atlantic City, NJFederico ScottoAtlantic City may be best known for its casinos, but the iconic boardwalk along the Atlantic Ocean is a close second. There's plenty to do in this shore town, from visiting the amusement park and eating fresh seafood to spreading out on the sand. Since you're so close to New York City, day trips from either location are extremely easy as well.Typical home value: $215,336Learn More2Daytona Beach, FLFlavio Vallenari//Getty ImagesAny NASCAR fan is familiar with Daytona Beach, but did you know that this Northeastern Florida city is also a festival hub? Every year, the city hosts over 60 different art, music, and other cultural festivals, giving residents and tourists alike opportunities to experience new things. Though you could easily spend every day on the beach, there are plenty of other museums, adventures, and opportunities to try out.Typical home value: $251,750Learn MoreAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below3Deerfield Beach, FLWiniker:Getty ImagesThe small city of Deerfield Beach is ideal if you want to experience South Florida's beaches without the crowds. Located between Boca Raton and Pompano Beach, the town is known for its fishing pier and abundance of outdoor water activities, like paddle-boarding, surfing, and water skiing. Typical home value: Learn More4Myrtle Beach, SCDale Fornoff:Getty ImagesMyrtle Beach is a seaside locale with 60 miles of sandy beach and 14 unique communities meshed together. It provides plenty of classic beach town activities, such as a fun boardwalk and theme park, and is generally a family-friendly location. There are plenty of things to do and places to explore, from the Waccamaw River to 90 different golf courses. Typical home value: $300,720Learn MoreAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below5Hallandale Beach, FLTHEPALMER:Getty ImagesSouth of Fort Lauderdale and north of Miami, Hallandale Beach is home to Gulfstream Park Racing and a handful of public beaches. It's a smaller community that offers a classic beach day if you want to escape the crowds. Typical home value: $301,130Learn More6Pinellas Park, FLMatthew Lindahl : 500px:Getty ImagesPart of the St. Petersburg metropolitan area, Pinellas Park has a population of about 53,000 and provides access to a string of beaches along the northwestern coast of Florida. Though small, there is an arts and culture scene in the town that highlights the community's creative DNA. Typical home value: $314,991Learn MoreAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below7West Haven, CTRedtea:Getty ImagesLocated on the Long Island Sound, West Haven is an affordable option not far from New York City. This town has the longest stretch of public beaches in the state, where you can swim, sunbathe, fish, and explore. Typical home value: $326,043Learn More8Galveston, TXWirestock//Getty ImagesWith over 30 miles of beaches, Galveston is the only Texas seaside city on this list. It's located on the balmy Gulf of Mexico, where there are plenty of museums and art galleries you can visit, along with beaches. The area also has a well-known restaurant scene.Typical home value: $333,127Learn MoreAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below9Palm Coast, FLMichael Warren:Getty ImagesParks, museums, beaches—oh, my! Palm Coast is on the Northeast side of Florida and offers plenty of fun. Relax or fish at one of the beaches, then head over to Washington Oaks Gardens State Park for some biking amid the lush gardens before ending your day at the Florida Agricultural Museum. Did we mention that there's also plenty of delicious seafood to be had?Typical home value: $351,404Learn More10Largo, FLalex grichenko:Getty ImagesSouth of Clearwater, Largo offers access to beaches and two larger metropolitan areas, perfect for the homeowner who wants to be near the action but not caught up in it. There are multiple parks to visit in the town, and art lovers will appreciate all the shows and performances. Typical home value: $353,576Learn MoreAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below11Pompano Beach, FLLagunaticPhoto:Getty ImagesPompano Beach is a hidden gem on the Gold Coast, neighboring Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale, and Hollywood. The city offers miles of beach with temperate waters from the Gulf Stream, as well as plenty of things to do, like snorkeling, shopping, festivals, and golfing. Typical home value: $356,795Learn More12Delray Beach, FLThomas Green:Getty ImagesFor a mix of water activities and a thriving art scene, consider Delray Beach. The arts district is part of what makes this South Florida city so special, and the municipal beach is just the cherry on top. It can definitely get busy on a nice day.Typical home value: $359,963Learn MoreAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below13Clearwater, FLJohn Murphy Photography:Getty ImagesIf Clearwater's three miles of white sand beaches aren't enough to entice you, maybe the plethora of activities and events will. Clearwater is part of the Tampa-St. Petersburg metropolitan area, and it has plenty to offer, from the nightly festival at Pier 60 to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. Typical home value: $362,300Learn More14Bradenton, FLDawn Damico:Getty ImagesExplore your love of the beach and historical sites in Bradenton along the Manatee River. For a small city, there's plenty to do, including the Bishop Museum of Science and Nature, the riverwalk, the Manatee Village Historical Park, and multiple beaches.Typical home value: $370,091Learn MoreAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below15St. Petersburg, FLJohn Coletti:Getty ImagesOne of the largest cities on this list in terms of population, St. Petersburg is known as the "Sunshine City" and is home to great shops, top-ranked beaches, and a thriving arts district. For those who want both beach and city life, this should be a top contender on your list. You can find multiple museums, like the Dali Museum and a living museum of botanicals and tropical plants at the Sunken Gardens.Typical home value: $372,035Learn More16Ormond Beach, FLArt Wager:Getty ImagesGet that small-town feel in Ormond Beach, which is at the northern end of the Daytona Beach area. It's a quieter refuge, though it's not lacking in culture. There are multiple state parks located in this town, along with museums and cultural centers that are good to visit when you're not taking a dip in the Atlantic. Typical home value: $379,800Learn MoreAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below17Oakland Park, FLShobeir Ansari:Getty ImagesOakland Park is just north of Fort Lauderdale and has excellent access to the metropolitan area's beaches. Think of this town of around 44,000 people as any other small American town, just with closer access to the Atlantic Ocean. Typical home value: $381,610Learn More18Riviera Beach, FLCrystal Bolin Photography:Getty ImagesRiviera Beach is just off the coast of Singer Island, and it's a wonderful location for those who love to bask in the sun and take in all types of water activities. There are multiple parks to explore and plenty of opportunities to see and learn about the marine life that lives in Florida.Typical home value: $397,829Learn MoreAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below19West Palm Beach, FLMasao Taira:Getty ImagesThis bustling city might not be the most affordable destination on this list, but it offers a lot for its elevated prices. From exciting nightlife and exceptional culinary options to an exciting art scene, West Palm Beach is a vibrant destination with plenty of beach access. Typical home value: $403,731Learn More20Navarre, FLArt Wager:Getty ImagesThis small city in Western Florida, on the Gulf Coast, just an hour and a half from Mobile, Alabama, boasts white sand beaches, clear blue water, and proximity to Santa Rosa Island. It's a tranquil destination with opportunities to learn about marine life at the multiple refuges and conservation centers.Typical home value: $415,063Learn More

Today’s newest AI models might be capable of helping would-be terrorists create bioweapons or engineer a pandemic, according to the chief scientist of the AI company Anthropic.Anthropic has long been warning about these risks—so much so that in 2023, the company pledged to not release certain models until it had developed safety measures capable of constraining them.Now this system, called the Responsible Scaling Policy (RSP), faces its first real test.On Thursday, Anthropic launched Claude Opus 4, a new model that, in internal testing, performed more effectively than prior models at advising novices on how to produce biological weapons, says Jared Kaplan, Anthropic’s chief scientist. “You could try to synthesize something like COVID or a more dangerous version of the flu—and basically, our modeling suggests that this might be possible,” Kaplan says.Accordingly, Claude Opus 4 is being released under stricter safety measures than any prior Anthropic model. Those measures—known internally as AI Safety Level 3 or “ASL-3”—are appropriate to constrain an AI system that could “substantially increase” the ability of individuals with a basic STEM background in obtaining, producing or deploying chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, according to the company. They include beefed-up cybersecurity measures, jailbreak preventions, and supplementary systems to detect and refuse specific types of harmful behavior.To be sure, Anthropic is not entirely certain that the new version of Claude poses severe bioweapon risks, Kaplan tells TIME. But Anthropic hasn’t ruled that possibility out either. “If we feel like it’s unclear, and we’re not sure if we can rule out the risk—the specific risk being uplifting a novice terrorist, someone like Timothy McVeigh, to be able to make a weapon much more destructive than would otherwise be possible—then we want to bias towards caution, and work under the ASL-3 standard,” Kaplan says. “We’re not claiming affirmatively we know for sure this model is risky … but we at least feel it’s close enough that we can’t rule it out.” If further testing shows the model does not require such strict safety standards, Anthropic could lower its protections to the more permissive ASL-2, under which previous versions of Claude were released, he says.Jared Kaplan, co-founder and chief science officer of Anthropic, on Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2023. Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesThis moment is a crucial test for Anthropic, a company that claims it can mitigate AI’s dangers while still competing in the market. Claude is a direct competitor to ChatGPT, and brings in over $2 billion in annualized revenue. Anthropic argues that its RSP thus creates an economic incentive for itself to build safety measures in time, lest it lose customers as a result of being prevented from releasing new models. “We really don’t want to impact customers,” Kaplan told TIME earlier in May while Anthropic was finalizing its safety measures. “We’re trying to be proactively prepared.”But Anthropic’s RSP—and similar commitments adopted by other AI companies—are all voluntary policies that could be changed or cast aside at will. The company itself, not regulators or lawmakers, is the judge of whether it is fully complying with the RSP. Breaking it carries no external penalty, besides possible reputational damage. Anthropic argues that the policy has created a “race to the top” between AI companies, causing them to compete to build the best safety systems. But as the multi-billion dollar race for AI supremacy heats up, critics worry the RSP and its ilk may be left by the wayside when they matter most. Still, in the absence of any frontier AI regulation from Congress, Anthropic’s RSP is one of the few existing constraints on the behavior of any AI company. And so far, Anthropic has kept to it. If Anthropic shows it can constrain itself without taking an economic hit, Kaplan says, it could have a positive effect on safety practices in the wider industry. Anthropic’s new safeguardsAnthropic’s ASL-3 safety measures employ what the company calls a “defense in depth” strategy—meaning there are several different overlapping safeguards that may be individually imperfect, but in unison combine to prevent most threats.One of those measures is called “constitutional classifiers:” additional AI systems that scan a user’s prompts and the model’s answers for dangerous material. Earlier versions of Claude already had similar systems under the lower ASL-2 level of security, but Anthropic says it has improved them so that they are able to detect people who might be trying to use Claude to, for example, build a bioweapon. These classifiers are specifically targeted to detect the long chains of specific questions that somebody building a bioweapon might try to ask. Anthropic has tried not to let these measures hinder Claude’s overall usefulness for legitimate users—since doing so would make the model less helpful compared to its rivals. “There are bioweapons that might be capable of causing fatalities, but that we don’t think would cause, say, a pandemic,” Kaplan says. “We’re not trying to block every single one of those misuses. We’re trying to really narrowly target the most pernicious.”Another element of the defense-in-depth strategy is the prevention of jailbreaks—or prompts that can cause a model to essentially forget its safety training and provide answers to queries that it might otherwise refuse. The company monitors usage of Claude, and “offboards” users who consistently try to jailbreak the model, Kaplan says. And it has launched a bounty program to reward users for flagging so-called “universal” jailbreaks, or prompts that can make a system drop all its safeguards at once. So far, the program has surfaced one universal jailbreak which Anthropic subsequently patched, a spokesperson says. The researcher who found it was awarded $25,000.Anthropic has also beefed up its cybersecurity, so that Claude’s underlying neural network is protected against theft attempts by non-state actors. The company still judges itself to be vulnerable to nation-state level attackers—but aims to have cyberdefenses sufficient for deterring them by the time it deems it needs to upgrade to ASL-4: the next safety level, expected to coincide with the arrival of models that can pose major national security risks, or which can autonomously carry out AI research without human input.Lastly the company has conducted what it calls “uplift” trials, designed to quantify how significantly an AI model without the above constraints can improve the abilities of a novice attempting to create a bioweapon, when compared to other tools like Google or less advanced models. In those trials, which were graded by biosecurity experts, Anthropic found Claude Opus 4 presented a “significantly greater” level of performance than both Google search and prior models, Kaplan says.Anthropic’s hope is that the several safety systems layered over the top of the model—which has already undergone separate training to be “helpful, honest and harmless”—will prevent almost all bad use cases. “I don’t want to claim that it’s perfect in any way. It would be a very simple story if you could say our systems could never be jailbroken,” Kaplan says. “But we have made it very, very difficult.”Still, by Kaplan’s own admission, only one bad actor would need to slip through to cause untold chaos. “Most other kinds of dangerous things a terrorist could do—maybe they could kill 10 people or 100 people,” he says. “We just saw COVID kill millions of people.”

Don’t call Kylie Kelce a WAG. The acronym for the “wives and girlfriends” of professional athletes rankles the podcaster, who first rose to fame as the wife of retired Philadelphia Eagles player Jason Kelce. As Kelce explains, the phrase suggests that “your spouse’s profession swallows you up as well.”But many in the media are heralding this moment as a “new era” for WAGs, and Kelce is just one of several famous women who are at the fore of this renaissance: Everyone from TikToker Alix Earle, who is dating Miami Dolphins player Braxton Berrios, to Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles — unquestionably the more famous athlete — who is married to the Chicago Bears’ Jonathan Owens. Then there’s Taylor Swift, one of the most successful musicians on the planet, who, thanks to her relationship with Kylie’s brother-in-law Travis Kelce, has become the ultimate symbol of the new WAG.Meanwhile, a host of lesser-known women are experiencing their first taste of fame through their relationships with tennis players, Formula 1 race-car drivers, and even pole-vaulters. A sizable number have leveraged their romantic lives to receive brand deals, podcasting opportunities, and magazine profiles.By and large, our understanding of WAGs is rapidly evolving to acknowledge their own social and economic power. They’ve transformed from tabloid punching bags to an appealing status symbol. Still, the continued use of the term does raise some complicated questions: Why are we so interested in defining these women, some of whom are independently successful, by their relationships to men? And what does it mean that they might be raking in more attention and financial opportunities than some female athletes? The rise of the new WAG The public’s fascination with WAGs isn’t new. The acronym originated across the pond in the early 2000s to describe the wives and girlfriends of English footballers. British tabloids and football fans alike lambasted women — celebrities in their own right — like former Girls Aloud member Cheryl Cole and former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham for their partying, extravagant spending, and flashy, maximalist looks. When the England national football team lost the 2006 FIFA World Cup, their partners were blamed in the press for the defeat. In the United States, being a WAG could be an equally dangerous public position. From Jessica Simpson to the Kardashians, they’ve been painted as distractions, attention-seekers, and bearers of bad luck. Over the past two decades, though, a WAG has become less of an involuntary title and more of an identity that some women are willing to cultivate, given that it can come with its own rewards.David and Victoria Beckham at the MOBO Awards on October 6, 1999. Dave Hogan/Getty ImagesThis modern version of WAG-dom can be credited to early 2010s reality shows like WAGS, Basketball Wives, and La La’s Full Court Life. These platforms allowed these women — some anonymous before they entered into relationships with athletes — to craft their own public narratives and become notable personalities on their own. For years now, Ayesha Curry, wife of Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry, has modeled what it means to be a “WAG influencer,” embracing her public relationship with her spouse while building a separate career as a successful cookbook author and host. Since then, WAG-influencers have become a welcome staple of certain sports cultures. Formula 1 has exploded in recent years, with a small part of that popularity owed to the sport’s stylish other halves. Since 2017, female viewership has grown from 8 percent to 40 percent. This has been largely credited to the popular Netflix series Formula 1: Drive to Survive, which put a spotlight on the personal lives of drivers and, naturally, their partners. Lily Herman, who writes the F1 newsletter Engine Failure, says that the current popularity of WAG-influencers in Formula 1 can be credited to the former partners of a few young popular drivers from 2019 to 2022, like Carlos Sainz’s girlfriend Isa Hernáez and Charles Leclerc’s girlfriend Charlotte Sine, who were both featured on Drive to Survive. In 2022, Sine was the first WAG in the sport to explicitly use her access to the F1 circuit as a part of an ad campaign for the skincare brand Sunday Riley.“They were around during an era where the sport saw a lot of growth in its younger fan base, especially among teen girls and younger women, and there was a new wave of interest in these young drivers’ personal lives,” says Herman. These women have inspired fan pages, Tumblr accounts, and subreddits dedicated to their relationships, fashion, and rumored drama. Lately, the organization has fully embraced WAGs as recognizable supporting characters in the F1 universe, featuring them on social media and including them on chyrons during racing broadcasts. Tennis has tried to replicate the WAG-to-influencer pipeline too, although the sport and its fans are still warming up to the presence of outside partners. Morgan Riddle, who’s dating highest-ranked American male player Taylor Fritz, has been making get-ready-with-me videos for tournaments and vlogging about her life on the tennis tour since 2022. Ayan Broomfield, a former college tennis player who’s dating Frances Tiafoe, and influencer Paige Lorenze, who’s dating Tommy Paul, have mimicked the same career path, broadcasting their lives as WAGs on social media. Herman says that WAGs play a role in “adding dimension” to their male partners, contributing to the marketability of both. “Fritz is pretty bland as a public figure without his girlfriend,” says Herman. “She’s done way more in her work as an influencer and content creator to make him seem multidimensional than he has through solo interviews and profiles.”It certainly benefits younger, newer WAGs who are already powerful women. Biles and Swift have joined their ranks and seem to take pride in the role. Beckham, now a successful fashion designer, has also played a role in igniting a nostalgia for WAGs, thanks to the popular 2023 Netflix docuseries Beckham. The business of being a WAG is still very traditional In our current political climate, the WAG boom raises interesting questions. Research shows that some Gen Z-ers are identifying as more conservative than their parents. “Trad wife” content abounds online. Where do WAGs fit in? WAG influencers share some obvious similarities to tradwife influencers, women who’ve created lucrative identities and even businesses by perpetuating conservative ideas of marriage and motherhood. In a Substack essay, sports writer Frankie De La Cretaz argues that WAGs are essentially the tradwives of men’s sports: “No matter how many businesses a WAG starts or how many charities she runs, she still embodies a heteronormative idea of family and a woman’s place in society.” It’s hard to get around the fact that most WAGs are initially famous for their association with a male partner, although they may ultimately transcend that attachment (see Kylie Kelce’s complaint about being called a WAG and consider that her podcast, Not Gonna Lie, briefly dethroned The Joe Rogan Experience when it debuted in 2024).WAGs are gaining visibility while the most talented female athletes are still fighting for wage parity and struggling to land brand deals.But even attempts to define WAGs outside of their relationships come off a bit shallow. Stories about how these women are impacting sports largely focus on their brand deals and follower counts. When we celebrate the influence of WAGs, we’re mostly talking about their ability to turn other women into consumers and spectators, not athletes. Meanwhile, WAGs are gaining visibility while the most talented female athletes are still fighting for wage parity and struggling to land brand deals. Back in March, Australian tennis pro Daria Saville made a TikTok about the lack of sponsorships she and other female pros receive compared to tennis WAGs. “Female tennis players are not getting those brand deals,” she said. “It’s actually tennis WAGs that fit into the ‘aesthetic’ rather than, us, sweaty tennis players.” De la Cretaz tells Vox that the WAG boom echoes the mainstream platforming of tradwives. “It’s an extension of “girlboss” feminism, the idea that promoting women regardless of what that looks like is somehow good for women,” De la Cretaz says. “It’s also this idea that whatever you’re choosing is valid, even though those choices don’t exist in a vacuum.” The most visible WAGs are still predominantly in straight relationships, and a large part of being one still involves affirming a male athlete’s heterosexuality. As journalist Kira Cochrane wrote in a 2010 piece for the Guardian about football WAGs, “consciously or not, the women know their role is to boost their partner’s masculinity.” She added that their often highly feminized presentation “underlines [their] status as possessions, part of the package for footballers.” WAGs, with their new clout and influence, haven’t exactly gotten a total makeover. Rather, their hustle has grown more appealing. After all, they represent all the things women are encouraged to be in a time when mainstream culture is trending more conservative. They’re tradwives. They’re girlbosses. They’re stylish and beautiful. Most of all, they’re sitting on the sidelines. See More:

May 21, 20256 min readSleep Plays an Important Role in Sustainable Weight LossA sleep medicine specialist explains how restless nights lead to consuming more calories and how you can use sleep as a tool for weight lossBy Tammy Worth solidcolours/Getty ImagesThis Nature Outlook is editorially independent, produced with financial support from Avadel.A healthy diet and regular exercise have long been staples of weight management. But research shows that the role of sleep, which helps to regulate appetite hormones and calorie intake, is just as important. Esra Tasali, a sleep specialist at University of Chicago Medicine in Illinois and director of the UChicago Sleep Center, spoke to Nature about why getting sufficient sleep could be crucial to weight loss and maintenance.How did you end up studying sleep and weight loss?On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.My sleep journey started about 25 years ago. I had completed my pulmonary training and decided to specialize in sleep medicine. I also trained in endocrinology, so it was natural for me to study the relationship between sleep and metabolic diseases, including obesity and diabetes.Would you say that sleep is as important for the body as it is for the brain?Absolutely! Sleep is inextricably linked to our biology and important for every cell in the body. Work at the University of Chicago has challenged the brain-centred view of sleep. As far back as 1999, we published a paper that showed that healthy young men who did not have obesity or diabetes, when sleep-deprived in a laboratory setting, show signs of prediabetes. And now we have the research to show that sleep is essential to regulating metabolism, appetite and hormones.Why does not getting enough sleep make us more susceptible to weight gain?Lack of sleep increases our drive to eat. There are two main reasons that this could happen. The first is that when we are sleep-deprived, our brain’s reward centres are more active and drive us to seek rewards. These include food, particularly high-calorie, unhealthy food. Our ability to inhibit the impulse to eat is diminished.The second mechanism driving increased calorie intake is elevations in appetite hormones. The most well-known is ghrelin, the ‘hunger hormone’, which is mainly secreted by the stomach. If you don’t sleep enough, levels of that hormone will be higher, and you will feel hungrier and consume more calories. Over the long term, this leads to weight gain. In 2022, we showed, in a real-world setting while people continued their daily activities in their home environment, that if you extend sleep by an average of 1.2 hours per night and monitor the energy intake among adults who are overweight, they decreased their intake by an average of 270 calories per day.How many hours of sleep should people aim for if they are trying to lose weight?In our study, we aimed for 8.5 hours of time in bed. So, a target of at least 8 hours in bed — and no less than 7 hours of sleep — would be a good start for an adult. But any increase in sleep time seems to help. Interestingly, we found an association between an increase in sleep duration and a decrease in calorie intake. Even an extra 30 minutes of sleep reduced the number of calories consumed.Many people would like to get more sleep, but have difficulty doing so. What kind of sleep intervention did you use in the study?We personalized the sleep-hygiene instructions — that is, we tailored them to each person’s schedule and specific needs. One strategy that worked for almost all participants was to insist that they put their electronic devices away at a certain time so that they wouldn’t hear those beeps and dings that draw them into social media, texting or e-mail.Does weight loss help sleep apnoea, in which a person’s breathing during sleep is interrupted?Yes — for people with sleep apnoea, a 10% reduction in body mass index reduces the apnoea’s severity by about one-third. And if you lose weight and improve your sleep apnoea, that might reduce your risk of type 2 diabetes, or make it less severe if you already have it. The fragmented, low-quality sleep associated with sleep apnoea, however, can compound the risk of obesity. So there’s a kind of a bidirectional interaction between excess weight and sleep apnoea.So, it’s not just the duration of sleep, but also sleep quality that plays a part in metabolism and diabetes risk?Yes, slow-wave sleep, often called deep sleep, is a key marker of sleep quality. This stage of sleep helps with memory consolidation, restoration at the cellular level and tissue repair, and the clearing out of metabolic waste products. It also has an important role in metabolism and hormonal release. For example, a major pulse of growth-hormone secretion occurs during slow-wave sleep.Our experimental work has shown that if you deprive healthy young adults of slow-wave sleep — to the levels seen in older adults, or in people with sleep apnoea — they show signs of prediabetes after just three days. This finding opened up an area of research that focused on the role of sleep quality in diabetes risk. And data emerging from large population studies suggest that adults who get sufficient slow-wave sleep have a lower future risk of developing diabetes. So finding ways to get enough slow-wave sleep seems to be important, particularly for younger people.Can wearable technology help people to get better sleep?Wearables have allowed people to become more aware of their sleep needs and patterns by helping them to monitor their sleep passively. But they don’t necessarily know what to do with this information they’re getting about their own sleep. What is missing are guided, personalized solutions to improve sleep for each individual. That is what we are working on in our new study. I think that, increasingly with wearables, people will start to see how their sleep is connected with other health parameters, such as heart rate, blood pressure and oxygen saturation. They might notice that improvement on those metrics correlate with better sleep, which can, in turn, lead to a change towards healthier sleep behaviours.How important do you think sleep is in the larger realm of weight-loss strategies?Getting enough sleep could really help to tackle the obesity epidemic. Its impact could be particularly great for younger people. We know that the obesity epidemic is even more pronounced than it used to be in children and young people. Teenagers are sleep-deprived for various reasons, including heavy use of electronics, social media, video gaming and, in some places, early school start times that work against teenagers’ natural circadian rhythms. To compensate for that sleep loss, they increase their food intake because they tend to be hungrier and reach for unhealthy foods, putting them on a high-risk trajectory for weight gain. So stopping that weight-gain spiral before it starts, at an early age, through healthier sleep habits, has enormous public-health implications for prevention or reversal of obesity.New weight-loss drugs, known as GLP-1 agonists, are effective against obesity. Is it still important to emphasize the importance of sleep in maintaining a healthy weight?Despite the increasing interest in the positive effects of GLP-1 agonists, there is still a lot of uncertainty about their long-term biological effects and how they will ultimately change people’s eating habits and lifestyle behaviours. They make you feel less hungry, but they also come with side effects and they’re quite expensive. Plus, when you stop these drugs, you rapidly regain weight. Sufficient sleep can also make you feel less hungry and help you to eat healthier foods; and the good news is that sleep is free, has no side effects, and has many other benefits to overall health and well-being.More than one-third of US adults are not getting enough sleep on a regular basis, which strongly increases their risk of chronic conditions, including obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Lack of sleep is estimated to cost the US economy close to half a trillion dollars per year. So I strongly believe that educating the public about the importance of adequate sleep in maintaining a healthy weight is crucial to preventing obesity and curbing the epidemic of chronic disease.This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

May 21, 202510 min readSleep Better with New Drugs, Select Cannabinoids and Wearable DevicesDrugs that target wakefulness, molecules in cannabis and wearable devices that modulate brain activity could help people with insomniaBy Rachel Nuwer carlofranco/Getty ImagesThis Nature Outlook is editorially independent, produced with financial support from Avadel.Miranda cannot remember a time in her life when she did not have insomnia. The 23 year old, who asked for her last name to be withheld, started struggling with sleep when she was a child. As she’s grown older, it’s only become worse. She takes “a myriad of medications” each night, she says, but usually still cannot fall asleep until the early hours of the morning. “I can’t get up and be functional until halfway through the day,” she says. She had to drop out of university because she couldn’t attend classes, and she can’t hold down a job. Her insomnia exacerbates other medical conditions as well, including migraines and the pain condition fibromyalgia. “It’s hugely debilitating,” she says. “It affects everything.”In the United States, about 12% of adults have been diagnosed with chronic insomnia — when a person struggles to sleep for more than three nights each week for at least three months, and experiences daytime distress as a result. Research suggests that the worldwide figure is 10–30%. It also often co-occurs with and creates a vicious cycle with other conditions, including chronic pain, depression and anxiety.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Fortunately for Miranda and millions of others with chronic insomnia, new treatments are arriving. The emergence of a class of pharmaceuticals that induces sleep through a different brain pathway from existing drugs is a welcome development, and molecules in cannabis and specialized medical devices to promote sleep are also showing potential as sleep aids. Soon, those struggling with sleep could have a range of new options available to help.Imperfect solutionsCognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is usually the recommended first treatment. This specialized talking therapy focuses on establishing healthy sleep behaviours and addressing thoughts that can interfere with sleep. But CBT-I is not covered by all health-care insurance plans in the United States. In the United Kingdom and parts of Europe, public health-care systems usually provide it, but waiting times can be long. This is because, around the world, there is a limited availability of therapists, says Andrew Krystal, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco. “We keep hiring new people, but almost immediately their schedules are completely filled and the wait list is a year.”CBT-I also doesn’t work for everyone. Miranda has tried it and has received conventional talking therapy for over a decade, with limited success. “It only helps so much,” she says.Pharmacological interventions are the next line of defence, Krystal says. Benzodiazepines and a class of medicines called Z-drugs, which include zolpidem (Ambien), are among the most prescribed insomnia medications. These sedative hypnotics enhance the effects of the neurotransmitter GABA, thereby dampening brain activity. They also reduce anxiety. But they can create a hangover effect and increase the risk of falls in older people. These drugs also have the potential for misuse and can cause dependence. Some studies have even found an association between long-term use of Z-drugs and benzodiazepines and an increased risk of death.Miranda tried Ambien, but says that she quickly became chemically dependent. She eventually weaned herself off it and switched to benzodiazepines, but she began developing a tolerance to them, too — she once wound up in hospital with withdrawal symptoms after she tried to cut back on her dosage. “They’re horrible drugs to be on,” she says. But she cannot fall asleep without them. Each night, she now takes two benzodiazepines, as well as gabapentin, an anticonvulsant medication that is sometimes given off-label for insomnia.Physicians frequently provide other off-label prescriptions for insomnia, including trazodone, which is approved for depression. Over-the-counter products such as antihistamines are also used for sleeplessness. None are ideal, however, because they have not been evaluated as sleep aids, says Emmanuel Mignot, a sleep-medicine researcher at Stanford University in California.Miranda has experience with many of these products. When she first developed chronic insomnia as a child, her paediatrician recommended melatonin, which is available without a prescription in the United States. It helped her fall asleep, but it did not keep her asleep. During her teenage years, different neurologists prescribed off-label antidepressants and other mood medications, including trazodone and mirtazapine. But they came with what she calls “torturous” side effects: she felt constantly anxious and exhausted during the day, and her memory became “incredibly foggy”.Blocking wakefulnessMignot was studying narcolepsy, a chronic disorder that affects sleep–wake cycles and causes people to fall asleep suddenly, when he inadvertently helped to pave the way towards the latest means of treating insomnia. He discovered that dogs with narcolepsy have a genetic mutation that affects one of two receptors used by the neurotransmitter orexin, the primary role of which was initially thought to be the regulation of appetite. Mignot then found that people with narcolepsy lack orexin, confirming the chemical’s main job: promoting wakefulness. If drugs could be developed to prevent orexin from binding to its receptors, Mignot thought, then people with insomnia would become “narcoleptic for one night”.In 2007, researchers at the pharmaceutical firm Actelion (part of which is now Idorsia Pharmaceuticals in Switzerland) showed that blocking orexin’s two receptors induced sleep in rats, dogs and people. In 2014, the biopharmaceutical company Merck, received US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for the first dual orexin receptor antagonist (DORA) drug, suvorexant (Belsomra). In 2019, another DORA drug — lemborexant (Dayvigo) — was approved, followed, in 2022, by daridorexant (Quviviq).Compared with benzodiazepines and Z-drugs, which inhibit activity all over the brain, DORA drugs affect only the neurons activated by orexins (see ‘Blocking wakefulness’). “The beauty of it is it does nothing but block the stimulation of wakefulness,” says neurologist Joe Herring, who heads neuroscience clinical research at Merck in Rahway, New Jersey. “It’s a physiologically better way to promote sleep.”Alisdair Macdonald/NatureDaridorexant is the only DORA drug for which data are available about daytime functioning, says Antonio Olivieri, chief medical officer at Idorsia, which produces daridorexant. In clinical trials, Idorsia showed that, compared with those given a placebo, people who received daridorexant experienced significant improvements in daytime insomnia symptoms the following day. Data reported in the approvals database of the FDA also indicate that daridorexant has the lowest fatigue and drowsiness scores of the three DORA drugs, possibly because it leaves the body the quickest.So far, there have been no one-to-one comparisons of DORA drugs. “Ideally, you’d have direct evidence of how those drugs compare to each other,” says Daniel Buysse, a sleep scientist at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in Pennsylvania. “But we rarely have such evidence, so instead, we have to rely on statistical techniques that allow you to make indirect comparisons.” It’s also difficult to say definitively how DORA drugs compare with older treatments for insomnia, but Buysse says that drug registration trials suggest that DORA drugs have fewer adverse cognitive or hangover effects compared with benzodiazepines and Z-drugs, as well as less potential for dependence and misuse. The European Insomnia Guideline 2023 placed daridorexant as the next recommended insomnia treatment after CBT-I.The main drawback to DORA drugs, Buysse says, is not medical but financial: their high cost keeps them out of reach of many people who could benefit from them. “There are many patients I would like to prescribe these drugs for, but I know in order for them to get one of these medications we’ll have to go through trials of several other drugs before the request will be considered,” Buysse says. DORA drugs are also available only in a few countries, so far.Given her long history of insomnia, Miranda was given a prescription for suvorexant. Her psychiatrist recommended the drug to her about a year ago. “I was really sceptical that an anti-wakefulness drug would be any different to a pro-sleep drug,” she says. But she quickly felt the difference, and has now come to see the drug as “a saviour”. Without the drug, she says, “I’d probably be on a much higher benzodiazepine dose than I am.” She hopes her suvorexant dose can continue to increase, so that some of her other medications can be reduced.Expanding availabilityOther drugs that target the orexin system are in the clinical pipeline. Seltorexant, for example, is being developed by the US pharmaceutical firm Johnson & Johnson for people with both major depressive disorder and insomnia. Around 70% of people with depression have insomnia, so having a medication that treats both of those disorders “has the potential to fill an important gap”, says Krystal, who has consulted for Johnson & Johnson on the drug. In a phase III trial, participants who took the drug experienced meaningful improvement in both sleep and depressive symptoms, with an antidepressant effect that seemed to be independent of the participants getting better sleep. Seltorexant might have an antidepressant effect because it is designed to block only one of the two types of orexin receptor, Krystal adds, whereas other DORA drugs block both receptor types.Investigations of already-approved DORA drugs are also expanding into other populations. Merck has sponsored investigator-led studies of suvorexant in people with insomnia as well as depression or substance-use disorders, and Idorsia is sponsoring studies of daridorexant’s safety and efficacy in sub-groups of people who have insomnia and other conditions.In 2020, suvorexant became the first medication to be approved for treating sleep disorders in people with Alzheimer’s disease. Insomnia is often a precursor to and co-morbid with Alzheimer’s, and the disease seems to manifest differently in people with the condition. In one study comparing older people with insomnia with those with both insomnia and Alzheimer’s, people with both conditions had a number of extra changes to their sleep patterns, including less time spent in deep sleep — sometimes called slow-wave sleep because that describes the pattern of the brain’s electrical activity during these intervals. Sleep problems in people with Alzheimer’s also seem to have a causal role in increasing levels of toxic substances in the brains of those individuals. Preliminary data suggest that suvorexant could also help to reduce toxic brain proteins. The results of a follow-up study testing that finding are expected in 2026.In the weedsSleeplessness is already among the most common conditions for the medicinal use of the drug cannabis. Miranda, for example, supplements her nightly pharmaceutical regimen with a cannabis tincture that contains a few of the plant’s 100-plus cannabinoids (she lives in a state where cannabis use is legal). “It’s definitely a key player in my sleep-medication arsenal,” she says.Yet, scientifically, little is known about which cannabinoids — if any — promote sleep, and what a safe and effective dose is. “Tens of millions of people around the world are probably using cannabinoids for insomnia, but we have very little good-quality evidence to support that,” says Iain McGregor, director of the Lambert Initiative for Cannabinoid Therapeutics at the University of Sydney in Australia.McGregor is investigating cannabinol (CBN), a molecule that develops in cannabis as the psychoactive component tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) oxidizes. His group reported that CBN increased sleep in rats to a similar degree as zolpidem, but without the drug’s known negative side effect of suppressing rapid-eye-movement sleep. Unpublished data of a single-night trial with 20 people with insomnia disorder show that people fell asleep 7 minutes faster after taking 300 milligrams of CBN compared with those taking a placebo; participants also reported subjective improvements in sleep and mood. Although 7 minutes “doesn’t sound like a lot”, it is on a par with what benzodiazepines and Z-drugs typically accomplish, says Camilla Hoyos, a sleep researcher at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, who led the work. McGregor, Hoyos and their colleagues are aiming to follow up the work with a large, community-based trial in which people with insomnia take either CBN or a placebo for six weeks at home.As for cannabidiol (CBD) and THC — the most well-known cannabinoids — the prospects for efficacy against insomnia are doubtful, at least for the doses used in trials so far. Several small studies have failed to find a sleep benefit from taking CBD. In one experiment, researchers observed that participants in a study who received 10 milligrams of THC and 200 milligrams of CBD actually slept for 25 minutes less compared with when they received a placebo. Several other company-sponsored trials of low-dose CBD for insomnia were not published, McGregor adds, because they found no significant improvement. “It’s been one failure after the next,” he says.Insomnia’s new frontiersThe search for more effective insomnia treatments continues in other realms, as well. Some research groups are experimenting with different receptors that they hope could lead to new classes of drugs. Gabriella Gobbi, a clinical psychiatrist and research neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, for example, has homed in on one of the brain’s two melatonin receptors, MT2. “We want to find an alternative mechanism without any addiction liability and with fewer side effects, especially for use in children and elderly people,” she says. A molecule that the team developed that binds to MT2 increased the time that rats spent in deep sleep by 30%. Gobbi aims to launch clinical trials in the next two to three years.A few companies and health systems, including the US Department of Veterans Affairs and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, have also created or are developing digital platforms for delivering CBT-I. These apps take users through regimens that are tailored to their symptoms. SleepioRx, for example, is a 90-day digital programme that has been evaluated in more than two dozen clinical trials and has showed efficacy as high as 76%. This includes helping people to fall asleep faster, sleep better throughout the night and feel better the next day. In August 2024, the programme, developed by Big Health in San Francisco, California, received FDA clearance. A 2024 meta-analysis of 15 studies that compare in-person and electronically delivered CBT-I concluded that the two approaches were equally effective.Uptake among physicians has been slow so far, Krystal says. But once practitioners catch on, he adds, “I can imagine a world where you have digital care as your first stop, and if that’s not successful, you see a therapist.”Some studies suggest that insomnia can stem from a high level of underlying brain activity during sleep. This raises the question of whether reducing this activity could treat insomnia, says Ruth Benca, a psychiatrist at Wake Forest School of Medicine in North Carolina. Companies and academic research groups are beginning to test this proposition with wearable devices that use auditory tones or mild electrical stimulation to increase slow-wave activity in the brain. Some devices are already on the market, and evidence suggests that they can increase the duration of deep sleep. Last June, for example, researchers at Elemind Technologies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, confirmed that auditory stimuli delivered in sync with specific brain-wave rhythms generated in a headband allowed people who usually struggle for more than 30 minutes to fall asleep to shave an average of 10.5 minutes off that time.In the coming years, according to Benca, researchers hope to learn enough about insomnia’s causes and treatments to be able to recommend personalized therapies based on an individual’s specific demographics, genetics and co-morbidities. These are the frontiers people are working at, she says.Even after a lifetime of struggling to find safe and effective help, Miranda says that she still holds out hope that better treatments for insomnia are on the horizon. “I can’t be on these medications forever,” she says. “They’re going to take years off my life.”

A few summers ago, when the culture was moving through micro trends as fast as they could be Instagrammed, Cottage Core was born. The trend, which came out of a Covid-influenced romanticism for living close to nature (but not ruffing it, à la gorpcore, fashion’s cousin trend), inspired an infusion of chintz and whicker-filled interiors, and, of course, lush English-style gardens.Flash forward to 2025. All those cottage gardens planted in early 2020—rustic, sophisticated, chic—are at their peak. And there really is something to an outdoor space that merges with the indoors, is there not? On a warm summer evening, when the bougainvillea is in bloom, and the grass is a bit damp, what could be more appealing than a home built to nestle into a fantastical garden.Here, we’ve collected some of our favorite cottage gardens. They range from fairy house gardens to campground landscape, historical (Anne Hathaway’s famed cottage that has inspired Shakespeare devotees the world over) to contemporary compound gardens in the woods.While we may have a specific notion of a cottage garden, but they are—and should be—as unique as the people who tend them. One lesson for planting your own? A small space is an asset rather than a limitation.Below, you’ll find 15 of our favorite cottage gardens from Marin County California to Stratford-Upon-Avon, England.William Jess LairdThis Amagansett cottage was literally designed for “summertime snoozes.” It’s also a good reminder that a delicate slate garden pathway can take you far. Designer Melissa Lee noted how “unexpected” the whole place felt, surrounded by the many mansions of the Hamptons. As she rightfully notes, the charm is in the surprise. A suggestion of mystery always adds to a cottage! Think The Secret Garden or the unexpectedly expansive Weasley Family home.Noe DewittVines climb up this 1920s English Art and Crafts style cottage in the Hamptons. The elegant and eclectic cottage was re-designed by Nick Olsen to emphasize outdoor living with comfy couches, a tiled patio and a pool.William James LairdThis pink cottage kitchen looks out over a garden in Litchfield County, Connecticut. Designer Clive Lonstein’s work is vibrant and unexpected, particularly for a modest Connecticut cottage built in the late 1800s. In a way though, the bright colors all throughout the house are a reflection of the original design for the house. The architect, Ehrick Rossiter was known for his own whimsy, and even included a turret in this design. This cottage is a great reminder to leave the door open all summer long.Stephen Kent JohnsonThis former fishing shack in Provincetown proves that a sprawling garden can fit into a small space. From Windex yellow fox gloves to arching lavender, this is a bucolic slice of heaven. A classic shingled home, complete with flower boxes and a white picket fence, it has a deeply cottage-core sequence backstory. It was used as an artist studio for William Maynard until his death in 2016, and when it was sold, prospective buyers were asked to write why they wanted to live there.Rachael SmithWe love an indoor / outdoor cottage garden. Ideally, you have a branch that grows through a window, like this one in Suzie de Rohan Willner’s English Country Garden. It is a charming marriage of dynamics: English and French, contemporary and historical, and, of course just as eclectic as a cottage should be. Willner notes, “The whole house is a collection of things from each period of my and my husband’s lives. I love to pick up bibs and bobs and it all comes together very happily.”Chronicle / Alamy Stock PhotoKate Middleton’s Adelaide Cottage conjures images of an Arthurian fantasy. The Wales family made this their Windsor home since 2023. Built in 1831 for Queen Adelaide (the German-born wife of William IV, who was the Uncle of Queen Victoria). It went through a transformative renovation in 2015 which left the historical decorations in tact. Fun fact: the Wales family pay market rent for their use of the home.Photo 12//Getty ImagesThe poet, actor, and playwright Anne Hathaway’s famed cottage and accompanying garden must have inspired her husband’s plays (that would be Shakespeare). This might be what comes to mind when you think of a cottage garden. Now open to the public daily, it was originally built more than 500 years ago, and is the site of Hathaway’s own birth in 1556.CostcoThis Costco (yes, Costco!) shed turned cottage is an ideal backdrop for your cottage garden fantasy. If you’re feeling very DIY this year, start here. Priced at $6,499, it measures 12’ x 24’ feet, a perfect amount of space for your own summer hide away or gardening shed.Richard PowersThis glass house is a reminder that a cottage garden doesn’t have to follow a prescribed style. The Amagansett cottage, originally built in 1960, is a marvel of mid-century design, an aesthetic reflected in the mod-furniture choices. Again, we love a stylistic mix in an updated cottage. Japanese Maple Trees complete the woodsy vibe.© David Hockney, Photo By Jonathan WilkinsonDavid Hockney illustrated his own cottage garden during the Pandemic. His drawing is illustrative of the benefits of an English garden: a bit wild, extremely lush, and more green than anything else. If we could, we’d jump right into this scene like Mary Poppins on a rainy day.John M. Hall for ELLE DecorHere’s a rule of thumb: trust Ina Garten. This cottage-like structure, on the grounds of the East Hampton home Garten shares with her husband Jeffrey, is perennially perfect. Note, too, the green and purple color scheme here. This is perhaps the dream cottage garden and something of a childhood playhouse. It has just enough space for a cozy chat and is a reminder that you can build your own little cottage on a very small plot of land.Photo 12//Getty ImagesMarie Antoinette’s Hamlet on the grounds of Versailles still sets the standard for the cottage garden with a thatched roof, hedges, and roses straight out of a fairy tale. During the former French Queen’s reign, her hamlet was used as a faux farm house, where she and her young daughter, Princess Marie Thérèse, would dress as idealized versions of French peasant farmers and milk cows. The interior, though, of this modest cottage, is appropriately grand with silk furnishings and canopy beds.Douglas FriedmanA garden that proves succulents and cottages are a match made in heaven. This one, in Marin County, California, adds a bit of desert flair. On the other side of this cottage is a water way and a perfect little dock for launching paddle boards. We love how the greens liven up this side of the house and create a completely different, almost modern desert-like, aesthetic. As with any great cottage garden, there is a distinctly transportive factor.Michael CliffordA light wood sauna and cold plunge on the grounds of Jenni Kayne’s Hudson Valley farmhouse are hidden behind shrubbery for a sense of privacy against a wide open landscape. We love the idea of adding a spa-like ambiance to a cottage garden as well as finding inventive ways to use the space. This is exactly where we want to be in the summer!Getty ImagesThis is sort of cheating, but Bunny Williams is a necessary inclusion! Williams’s Oak Spring Garden in Upperville, Virginia continues to inspire garden and cottage enthusiasts the world over. Rather than one cottage, the grounds of Williams’s large estate feature a guest cottage and a basket house, both of which are charming in the extreme.Dorothy ScarboroughDorothy Scarborough (she/her) is the assistant to the Editor in Chief of Town & Country and Elle Decor.