Phoning it in

Oh how useful these things used to be. Whether you were at the mall and wanted to send your crush some love or you needed to ring your friend and tell them to get moving, the payphone was your pal. Plus, if you were lucky, you might find some free change 🤣

It’s no secret that today’s youth are reluctant to take calls, let alone use a public payphone. They call it “telephobia”, and at Nottingham College in the UK, they’re teaching a class to help young people overcome the fear.

Colour me your caller, baby ;)

(Love nostalgia? Play today’s trivia below for a chance to win a $25 Amazon eGift Card!)

Plenty of people get anxious about flying, particularly when aviation disasters are fresh in the mind. But there’s a difference between getting anxious before taking off and suffering from aerophobia, a medical condition that causes physical and mental symptoms in response to flying.

“There are physical symptoms of that fear—fast heartbeat, sweating, trembling, dizziness, nausea, shortness of breath, chest pain or vomiting,” said Dr. Gail Saltz, clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.

“[There are also] emotional symptoms, so they feel panicky and worried. There might be behavioral symptoms that make someone cancel a flight at the last minute because of their panic or decide to take a train for an obscene number of hours to avoid flying. They might choose to not go on vacations or business trips and repeatedly seek reassurance about travel safety from other people.”

According to Saltz, like most phobias, the best way to overcome aerophobia is to be exposed to flying. Guided exposure with a qualified therapist in particular is the best method, rather than simply taking the risk without someone to help nurse what triggers the symptoms.

Flight anxiety and aerophobia are understandable phenomena, although flying remains the statistically safest form of travelling.

Heart failure is almost always fatal but for those that survive the prognosis is often bleak, unless there’s a heart available for emergency transplant.

A study published recently in Nature documents an ongoing effort to partly fix a permanently damaged heart muscle by grafting stem-cell-grown heart muscle tissue onto the damaged heart.

The researchers who authored the paper and continue to facilitate clinical trials to test the efficacy of the treatment insist this shouldn’t be misconstrued as an alternative to a heart pump transplant or transplanting the entire organ.

“We think that we can potentially replace or at least delay the necessity for a pump implantation or even a heart transplantation,” study co-author Wolfram-Hubertus Zimmerman said last week.

“It is clear that heart transplantation is an excellent therapeutic option. The point is that we are implanting very few hearts presently, and this number will not increase, at least not dramatically,” he said. “And 99% of the patients with advanced heart failure will never receive a heart.”

Most heart failure patients need a transplant to survive and the stem cell experiment could be a way to buy the patient time until a more permanent solution presents itself.

“Lüften” is the German practice of opening windows periodically throughout the day to exchange and refresh indoor air. It’s become so entrenched that German apartments build it into lease agreements so that entire buildings can maintain a clean and fresh air supply.

There are two types, including stoßlüften and querlüften. The former (shock ventilation) requires windows in a single room to be opened for one “intensive” air exchange. The latter (cross-ventilation) requires all the windows in a building to be periodically opened several times a day to constantly exchange used air for fresh air.

The health benefits—both mental and physical—have been documented by German authorities after years of mandated lüften in some places. The practice reduces the proclivity for mould and bacteria to develop because it lowers stuffy and humid air quality.

Mentally, everyone has at one point said something like, “I need to get some air.” Lüften makes the air come to you!

Willie Nelson will turn 92 years old on April 29. Two weeks later, showing no signs of slowing down, he’ll embark on the 2025 Outlaw Tour.

The last living Highway Man, Willie has been releasing and playing music live for nearly 70 years. It’s a historic and one-of-a-kind run for the king of outlaw country, and the lineup for his 2025 tour just got a little spicier with the additions of Bob Dylan and Wilco.

The full lineup so far includes: Bob Dylan, Billy Strings, Trampled by Turtles, Wilco, Sheryl Crow, Lucinda Williams, Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats, Turnpike Troubadours, the Avett Brothers, the Red Clay Strays, Lake Street Dive, Waxahatchee, Charles Wesley Godwin, Bruce Hornsby and the Noisemakers, the Mavericks, Sierra Hull, Willow Avalon, Waylon Payne, Madeline Edwards, Lily Meola, Myron Elkins, Tami Neilson.

The 34-date tour will kick off on May 13 in Phoenix, and make its way through dozens of American amphitheatres, concluding on Sept. 19 in East Troy, Wisc.

"What an amazing lineup to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Outlaw Music Festival Tour," Nelson said in a press release. "I can't wait to join friends and family in bringing this celebration to the fans we love."

Once it hit the mainstream, there was no escaping the pop cultural force of disco—burn, baby, burn!

Did you like to get down and boogie back in the day? Either way, you’ll have a blast with today’s disco trivia. And if that’s not groovy enough for you, dig this: you’ll earn a shot at a $25 Amazon eGift Card if you complete the game ;)

Winner will be notified tomorrow afternoon—keep your eyes on your inbox!*

Have a great day ahead Staker!

Today’s issue written by Michael Cowan, Joey Cowan, and Maureen Norman.


*SEE FULL STAKE TRIVIA CONTEST RULES HERE.