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• The Knicks won their first championship in 53 years on Saturday.
• The electric playoff run inspired the entire city — even non-sports fans like me.
• Here are some takeaways from a non-sports fan watching history unfold.

One of the things that makes sports so special is the room it has for people like me — outsiders who don’t follow every number and player but who love a close contest in the end. Especially one in her own hometown.

So here are some thoughts, not from a sports writer but from a not-sports writer, on the history that just happened.

• Human achievement is still far and away the greatest joy.
• Human achievement as a team is a special joy.
• Human achievement as an individual is a special joy.
• The ability to mess up and keep delivering at your best is hard — but essential.
• In the face of inevitably great competition, resilience and determination are essential.
• Dusting off life’s bum calls against you is essential.
• Youth is great, but so is experience.
• Hard work and preparation set you free.

• People want to unite in celebration.
• People want to embrace their commonalities.
• Social media can still be fun and amplify wonder.
• Partaking in something bigger helps make life worth living.

• Testosterone-maxxing is a hot trend in fitness and longevity, but too much can have side effects.
• New research suggests a majority of men are getting testosterone therapy without the right safeguards.
• A urologist explains who can benefit from testosterone and who should avoid it to prevent risks.

America is reaching peak testosterone.

In 2026, interest in the hormone is everywhere, from T-maxxing trends on social media to the US government’s MAHA campaign. Testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) use has quadrupled in the past three decades, up to as many as 11 million Americans.

For some of them, the treatment may be doing more harm than good, new research suggests.

A majority of men who are prescribed testosterone don’t meet the current guidelines for safe, effective treatment, according to a study from the University of Michigan.

That could worsen the risk of serious side effects, including infertility, heart attack, and stroke, and long-term dependence on TRT, which can dampen the body’s natural production of testosterone.

While testosterone is an essential hormone for health, finding the right balance is complex because there’s no one-size-fits-all treatment. A urologist explains what to know about the risks and benefits of testosterone, and how hormone trends are changing the landscape of men’s health.

Who can benefit from testosterone therapy?

Healthy testosterone levels are crucial for energy, sex drive, muscle, and metabolism.

T-maxxing influencers might promise that it can get you a six-pack and supercharge your focus and performance, but doctors say the benefits are much more modest — if you need a boost at all.

A blood test can check if you have low testosterone and could benefit from TRT. It’s typically taken first thing in the morning, and confirmed with a follow-up blood test on a different day.

Low testosterone is anything below 300 nanograms per deciliter for most healthy adult men.

You should also rule out conditions like sleep apnea, which are linked to low testosterone but can worsen with testosterone therapy.

Men who could benefit from testosterone might experience symptoms ranging from brain fog and low energy to reduced libido and erectile dysfunction. It can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months for TRT to make a difference, depending on the symptoms.

When T backfires

In the latest research, endocrinologists looked at data from 200 men who were prescribed testosterone at the university clinic.

They found that only 12% of the men met the criteria for treating low testosterone, confirmed by two blood tests.

That means the other 88% — 176 men — may have been inappropriately given TRT, including some who had sleep apnea or prostate cancer.

On average, the men studied were in their 50s, but some as young as 18 were also prescribed testosterone.

If they don’t need it, young men on testosterone could be putting their long-term health at risk, since taking TRT can make it harder for the body to produce its own supply of the hormone over time.

High testosterone levels can also increase the body’s volume of red blood cells, a risk factor for high blood pressure that, in extreme cases, may lead to a heart attack or stroke. It can also impair fertility by temporarily reducing sperm count.

And taking T can potentially exacerbate serious health conditions like prostate cancer, potentially fueling tumor growth, per the Mayo Clinic.

The findings are concerning, given how popular testosterone has become in the wellness industry and the potential for misuse without clear guidelines, said study authors Dr. Maria Papaleontiou and Dr. Sophia Sinha, both professors at the University of Michigan.

“Testosterone has been coined as the ‘fountain of youth’ to optimize performance through enhancing muscle and improving energy levels in social media,” they told Business Insider in a joint email interview. “Testosterone therapy can help some people who truly have low testosterone, but it is not risk-free.”

Major update coming soon for testosterone therapy guidelines

Doctors understand that this is not a black-and-white issue.

While testosterone treatment can have side effects, low testosterone is also a health concern, Dr. Justin Dubin, director of men’s sexual health at Baptist Health Medical Group, told Business Insider.

Dubin, who was not involved in the study, said prescribing TRT outside the guidelines may not always be harmful. Yes, TRT can be overprescribed to men who don’t need it, but it is also underprescribed to men who could benefit, Dubin said.

“Guidelines are guidelines, they’re not law,” Dubin said. “There are gray areas, and we need to give care in the gray. That’s where most doctors live and where most patients live.”

The benchmark for healthy testosterone is so nuanced, Dubin said, that the American Urological Association has gathered a panel to discuss a major update to its guidelines on treating testosterone deficiency in the coming year or two.

For now, Dubin said the growing popularity of testosterone is a good thing, as it’s prompting a more proactive approach to medical care for men, who are notorious for avoiding the doctor’s office until there’s an emergency. As long as guys are going about it the right way by speaking to their doctor instead of just buying stuff online, he’s all for it.

“I think that’s a wonderful thing because this is a gateway to men’s health. This is how we can access a lot of guys, get them in to learn about their blood pressure, whether they have diabetes, heart disease,” he said. “I’m actually excited and hopeful.”

• Weekly dinners with neighbors became a support system for both families.
• My children gained trusted adults outside of school and family.
• What started as convenience slowly turned into a real community.

When I first suggested a “kids’ dinner” with our upstairs neighbor, I was mainly thinking about getting a night off.

Feeding my three kids (ages 4, 6, and 10) can feel endless — just when I think I’ve found a meal that works, one of them suddenly refuses to eat pasta, or rice, or chicken. Getting even one night off every other week sounded like a dream.

Thankfully, our upstairs neighbors had two kids who got along with mine, and the parents were just as eager for a break.

The logistics are simple

Every Tuesday night, one family hosts a kids’ dinner. We switch off weeks, and the parents simply walk the kids to the other family’s apartment door. Parents are welcome to stay, but are encouraged to take an hour for themselves.

We also made a key rule: no cleaning before dinner. This arrangement is supposed to make our lives easy, not harder.

I became a go-to adult for someone else’s child

A couple of months into these dinners, my 6-year-old neighbor walked in, took my hand, her eyes welling with tears, and pulled me aside. We sat on the blue couch in my office — a room that’s otherwise off-limits — and she told me about a fight she’d had with her mom. It was a big deal to her. And the fact that she wanted to tell me about it felt big to me, too.

Since that night, we’ve had more of these heart-to-hearts, and I’ve been surprised by how much they mean to me.

I’ve become a go-to adult in her life — a role I didn’t expect to play for someone else’s child, especially since living in Germany means I’m an ocean away from my nieces and nephews. When she gets especially mad with her parents, she threatens to run away. To me. It’s the best-case scenario for her parents, who know she’d be two flights downstairs with a trusted adult.

And my neighbors fill this same role for my three children. On Tuesdays, after my kids drop off their backpacks in our apartment, they run upstairs, bursting to tell Laura what happened that day on the playground or try to stump Michael with a riddle they just learned.

Without grandparents or aunts and uncles around, weekly dinners have provided my children another set of adults — outside teachers — who know to ask about ballet practice, speech therapy, and report cards.

The kids built something of their own

Around the table, the kids have built something of their own. They plan what toys to bring for each other, negotiate over seating, and sometimes show up with handwritten notes.

They sit at the table by themselves, so their conversations aren’t dominated by adults. The talk is about Pokémon cards or about whose birthday party is coming up this weekend.

After dinner, while I clean the kitchen, the five of them have free rein to play. Sometimes I find my 4-year-old daughter and my 3-year-old neighbor huddled in her room, “reading” side by side or listening to “Frozen” on her Tonie box. Other times, my ten-year-old reads to the younger kids or makes up games that everyone can play.

What started as a break became something more

Cooking for five kids instead of three has turned out to be surprisingly fun. Having two extra mouths to feed doesn’t require much more food, and with a party-like atmosphere, I think about what could be fun (like I did in my pre-children dinner party days).

But dinners are still relatively simple. Chicken nuggets and fries. A charcuterie board of sliced meats and cut-up veggies. Breakfast for dinner. If I’ve got a bit of extra time, we’ll make avocado sushi together.

When everyone is back in their own home, I get messages about how my children ate — whether my daughter, who tends to bulk up on preschool snacks and skip dinner almost entirely, touched anything, or whether my oldest son ate an entire pack of hot dogs on his own.

I was looking for a break from endless meal prep, but instead, my kids gained a second set of adults just two flights away.

One dinner at a time, it feels like we’re building a community.

• Mayor Zohran Mamdani released New York City-themed World Cup jerseys on Friday.
• The $50 jerseys were meant to be an affordable alternative to the pricey FIFA version.
• People are now reselling the jerseys online at far less affordable rates.

Missed your chance to snag one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s affordable World Cup jerseys? You might now have to pay resellers a very unaffordable price.

The New York City-themed jerseys popped up on sites like eBay and Facebook Marketplace hours after they went on sale, going for at least $400. Some sellers are asking as much as $999. That’s a considerable upcharge from the $50 that residents paid for the same jerseys on Friday.

Mamdani unveiled the apparel earlier this week. In an Instagram post, he said they were “made by New Yorkers, for New Yorkers.” Only 1,500 jerseys were available for purchase, making them a hot ticket item among his supporters and ardent soccer fans. People stood in line for hours outside the City of New York’s official store to get their hands on one.

By comparison, official FIFA jerseys are noticeably pricier. The most expensive team gear costs $375, while the cheapest alternative costs $70.

Mamdani’s administration has broadly pushed for affordability initiatives. In May, the mayor outlined a plan to expand affordable housing. A month earlier, he and New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed a new pied-à-terre tax targeting wealthy people who own a secondary property in the city but live elsewhere.

Mamdani has also sought to make events affordable for New Yorkers.

Last September, he launched a petition urging FIFA to ditch its dynamic pricing model and lower ticket prices for New Yorkers. He also criticized the decision to allow ticket reselling on FIFA’s official platform without a price cap.

Dynamic pricing — when businesses adjust ticket prices in real time based on factors such as demand and market conditions — has become a point of contention for ticket buyers expecting a fixed price. The resale market can also be volatile because vendors often upcharge tickets by hundreds of dollars.

Following negotiations with FIFA President Gianni Infantino, Mamdani secured 1,000 World Cup tickets for New Yorkers at $50 each in May.

“Last year we said we’d fight for cheaper tickets for New Yorkers, and today I’m proud to announce, just like Arsenal, we got it done,” Mamdani, a lifelong fan of the London soccer club, said in a video posted to X in May.

New York City and New Jersey are among the host cities for this year’s tournament. The first local match, held at MetLife Stadium, takes place on Saturday evening between Brazil and Morocco.

• Dario Amodei has warned that his latest AI model, Mythos, was so powerful it posed a serious threat.
• The Trump administration just ordered Anthropic to block foreign access to Mythos.
• Anthropic responded by shutting down the model altogether.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is famous for warning that his own products pose a threat.

In an essay published this month, Amodei cautioned that AI’s power “has become undeniable.” As an example, he pointed to Anthropic’s latest model, Mythos, which he said presents “very real risks” to cybersecurity, the financial sector, critical infrastructure, and national security.

He then called for a more robust government intervention to address the risks.

On Friday, his warnings appeared to backfire when the US government suddenly intervened.

Anthropic cut off access to its Mythos 5 and Fable 5 after it said the Trump administration ordered it to block foreign access to the models. The Pentagon’s chief information officer expressed support for the move in an X post, writing, “Some things are simply more important than revenue cycles, clickbait, and pre-IPO valuation.”

The surprise development sent the tech industry into a tizzy.

Gary Marcus, the AI researcher and notorious skeptic, called the Trump administration’s move “wildly overdramatic and also counterproductive.”

Yann LeCunn, who is considered one of the godfathers of AI, blamed Amodei: “Dario Amodei’s ridiculous fear mongering about Mythos/Fable (and AI in general) finally pays off,” he wrote on X. “One reaps what one sows.”

Amodei has long sought to position himself as the AI industry’s adult in the room. Once an integral researcher at OpenAI, he left the company to start Anthropic over concerns that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman prioritized releasing products over ensuring their safety.

He has since issued a stream of statements that the things he is building and releasing to the general public, alongside OpenAI, Google, Meta, Amazon, and others, could upend life as we know it — for good as well as bad.

Amodei once warned that AI would eliminate half of entry-level white-collar jobs and cause unemployment to soar to levels not seen since the COVID-19 pandemic, and before that, the Great Recession in 2008.

While Amodei has softened his tone on jobs in recent weeks as his company gears up to go public, he and his company have not held back on other safety concerns.

“The cyber risks that Mythos-class models present will not be the last that we must face,” he wrote in his June essay. “I believe that biological risks may soon follow, and that serious AI autonomy risks may not be far behind.”

He wrote that concerns by lawmakers were out of step with AI’s rapid progress.

Earlier this month, his company called for a temporary halt to the development of frontier AI models in a paper cautioning that the latest models are getting closer to improving themselves, which it said, “might increase the risks of humans losing control over AI systems.”

“We believe it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development to enable societal structures and alignment research to keep up with the advance of the technology,” Anthropic wrote.

That pause arrived on Friday, at least for Anthropic.

• My partner is 17 years older than me. I’ve been calculating how much time we have left together.
• Since my mom died at 69, I can’t stop worrying about what our future might look like.
• Despite my fears, we recently moved to Italy together.

On New Year’s Day, I sat crying alone on the sofa while my partner, Max, slept. I wished it were just the one too many glasses of cava I had the night before. But it was something worse: a sudden, panicky feeling that time had moved faster than I realized.

When we met in 2015, I was 29, and he was 46 — 17 years my senior. He looked so youthful that I assumed he was in his late 30s. If I’m honest, the age difference made me hesitate, but the connection between us was too strong to ignore. He made me feel seen and wanted in ways no one else had before, and after a few months of resisting, I gave in to my feelings.

After 11 years, I worry about things my friends don’t think about yet

In the early days, he used to say, “I wish I were 10 years younger so I could have ten more years with you.” It sounded so romantic to 29-year-old me, and 10 years seemed like an eternity. I wasn’t prepared for how quickly they would pass.

Over a decade later, Max still has the same energy and drive he had when I met him. Now 57, he’s not showing signs of slowing down anytime soon, despite a few health niggles. He regularly spins records as a DJ, indulging in his passion for music.

But while friends my age are raising children or focusing on their careers, I worry about things that feel like they belong to someone much older. Those thoughts have intensified since my mom died unexpectedly at 69.

Losing my mom made me start calculating our time together

I often find myself calculating how long we have left together, as he’s now just 12 years younger than my mother was when she died.

Will I still be with the same energetic man in another 10 years? Or will I spend my 50s or 60s as a caregiver? Would I even be able to handle that responsibility if it fell to me? I picture hospital visits, me pushing a wheelchair, and the man I’ve come to depend on becoming dependent on me.

Other times, I jump further ahead and picture what might come after. Will I end up alone at 50 or 60? Will I meet someone else, or build a new life on my own? I call these calculations “grief math.”

Awareness of time keeps me grounded in the present

When Max woke up, I didn’t say anything. How do you tell someone you’ve been contemplating their death? But when he asked what was wrong, I confessed. He wasn’t upset; instead, he told me I should always talk to him.

I still catch myself doing grief math from time to time. But when I do, something else happens: all the daily annoyances, like how he interrupts me when I’m talking, or lets the dishes pile up in the sink, just evaporate. I just want to hug him and hold onto the feeling forever. So I do.

We recently moved to his hometown in Italy to be near his aging parents, which felt like a deeper commitment to a future that scares me. But if my mother’s death taught me one thing, it’s that time is never guaranteed, and not always in the way grief maths assumes.

Max could live to 100. I could die first. We could have forty more years together. Obsessing over worst-case scenarios only guarantees I’ll have wasted the time we definitely have now.