"The Macron vote will ensure that Madame Le Pen does not win," Hollande added. With just nine days to go before election day, opinion polls show Macron is ahead of his far-right rival – though by a much smaller margin than the 24-point gap in 2017. The latest survey by pollsters Ipsos-Sopra Steria had Macron at 55 percent, 10 points ahead of Le Pen. Other pollsters point to a slightly narrower gap.

In fact, Americans question whether dialogue with other Americans, a necessity for the cultivation of social capital, is even worth their time. In 2020, Bahman Fozouni, a professor emeritus in the Political Science Department at California State University, Sacramento, asked, “Should we find ourselves in the company of the Trumpies, does it make sense to engage them in a political conversation?” A year earlier, filmmaker Michael Moore argued that liberals have “all tried at Thanksgiving dinner to convince the conservative brother-in-law of the wrongness of his ways, but he’s three years deep into pro-Trump. He’s lost."

Meanwhile, “green” lines of entire industries have popped up everywhere to try to meet consumer demand, with one of the clearest examples of this being the beauty industry. Proclaiming to be “all natural” and “non-toxic” or free of “harsh chemicals” is a pervasive type of branding for beauty products, from moisturizers to sunscreens. But because there is no standard definition for “clean” or even for what constitutes a “harsh chemical,” these sustainability claims can vary wildly.

What we have now in the U.S. and most parts of the world is a lot of interest and ideas on how to address our carbon footprint to reduce global warming. While we cannot dictate to the rest of the world what we think needs to be done, we can certainly lead by example if we want to take those necessary steps. It seems to me that if we look where we should be in the future, we need to start coming together now and discuss the best ways to move forward. These are difficult issues potentially impacting all of our lives.

At the end of World War II, Russia wanted assurances that NATO would not shift eastward, threatening Russian territory. After the fall of the Soviet Union, however, Ukraine and other Eastern European nations became independent, removing the buffer zones between Russia and NATO. Romania, Bulgaria, Poland and the Baltics have all become NATO members, and Russia sees this as a security concern.

I mention all this because it smacks of how on a recent Friday night my wife and I ate at a seafood restaurant, and when it came time to pay our bill, the server, throwing us both for a loop, asked if we wanted separate checks. It was as if we weren’t really together -- just as Putin seemed to be disconnected from the individual on the other side of the conference room. My wife and I both smiled sheepishly at the server’s question, but then my wife blurted out, laughing, “Excuse me?”

In a speech on Feb. 21, 2022, Putin recognized the occupied territories in Ukraine of Donetsk and Luhansk and moved Russian forces into them. In his view, Ukraine’s independence is an anomaly – it’s a state that should not exist. Putin sees his military moves as a way of correcting this divergence. Largely absent from his discussion was his earlier emphatic grievance that an eventual spread of NATO to Ukraine threatens Russia’s security.

Once these areas were established, Buettner and his team studied and identified the lifestyle characteristics that might explain the longevity of those living in each location, including their diets, levels of physical activity, social networks, views on life’s purpose and more. His findings are fascinating, but to make things even better, they are simple and often fun to achieve, particularly with the help of his most recent book, Blue Zones Challenge.