10 of Our Best Weekend Reads

The American media and NFL star spent much of his youth in Mannheim, Germany, where he first played organized football.

After an incredibly successful NFL career, where he set the record for most sacks in a season, Michael Strahan went on to become one of the most recognizable faces in television as co-host of Good Morning America. But before Strahan rose to prominence, he spent his childhood in an unlikely place for a future NFL star: Mannheim, Germany.

Though he was born in Houston, Texas, Strahan, the youngest of six kids, was primarily raised in Germany, where his father was stationed as an Army major. Strahan was an avid football fan, but options to actually play American football were few and far between in Europe. Thanks to encouragement from his father, Strahan still managed to train hard and pursue his dreams of going pro. He went on to earn a scholarship to Texas Southern University, and was drafted by the New York Giants in the 1993 NFL draft.

From blood bots to headscarves with hidden meanings, here’s the best of OZY this week.

Greece and California burst into flames, and President Trump and Iran burst into flaming tweets. On the other hand, the U.S. and the EU step back from a trade war, and North Korea looks like it’s dismantling a missile site (maybe). Tie goes to the optimists. That being the case (sez us), kick back and enjoy a deep dive into the best of OZY this week.

The future of medicine? Miniature robots communicating with doctors from inside our bodies.

David Zarrouk carefully places the tiny robot into a cleaned-up pig intestine on his table, and flips on the switch. About the size of a thumb, the miniature robot comes to life and starts worming through the intestine, all the way through the other end. The researcher at Ben-Gurion University in Israel draws his inspiration from the 1960s movie Fantastic Voyage. There, a shrunken submarine swims through a scientist’s bloodstream to repair his brain. Zarrouk hopes to turn what he saw on the screen into reality. “You can call it a gut bot,” he says. He isn’t alone.

Since the turn of the century, scientists have eyed implantable medical devices or particles, sometimes as tiny as ingestible pills, as a long-awaited solution that could allow them to monitor body functions from the outside while avoiding painful, and at times costly, surgeries. But now, researchers are leapfrogging those implants, instead developing minuscule robots that are emerging as the next frontier in medical science.

From dogged tumors and new viruses to addictions and lifestyle diseases, the world is grappling with myriad health challenges, even though life expectancy has doubled over the past century. OZY brings to you Medical Breakthroughs, a series about transformative cures and approaches – and the people behind them – that could change how doctors treat us, find fixes to today’s diseases and make our longer lives truly better.