Things you can learn in newspaper stories about something else

From time to time, I like to take off on a routine inspired by the late, great Chicago Sun-Times columnist Sydney J. Harris, who often found the most intriguing facts in unexpected places and compiled them into columns under the theme “things I learned while looking up something else.” My approach is strictly limited to newspapers, but it can be just as surprising and rewarding.

For example, in Monday’s Health & Fitness section, you would get what you expect from stories about how exercise helps sustain cognitive functions for older adults, ways to reduce your cancer risk or things to know about helping a child with mental illness. But you might be surprised to learn under a story about the value of “interval walking” that the technique’s nickname of “Japanese walking” has almost nothing to do with culture or practices in Japan. The name is based on a study published 20 years ago in Japan about the practice, and the technique is no more popular in Asia than anywhere else.

That little nugget, though, cannot compare to the wealth of arcane science you could have picked up in a weather story last Friday about the week’s heat wave. I grew up with a 200-acre corn field across the street from my house and had never heard of the somewhat distasteful term “corn sweat.” In this weather story, I learned not only the meaning of the phrase and its impact on humidity but also that corn can release up to 4,000 gallons of water per acre into the atmosphere each day. And there’s a name for that, too. Evapotranspiration.

Just a little something to jot down in the vocabulary notebook, I guess.

Russell Lissau’s Sunday story about the level of campaign fundraising that’s building in the 2026 race for retiring Dick Durbin’s seat in the U.S. Senate was interesting for its implications about the role of money in modern elections, but it was also eyebrow-raising to find that candidate Raja Krishnamoorthi has already purchased two television ads, nearly eight months before the March primary.

And, in Jake Griffin’s data-filled story on electric vehicles that same day, I was intrigued to find the average price for a new car in the United States is $50,000, a figure that leads me to note, if nothing else, that I’m well behind the Joneses when it comes to buying a new vehicle.

There’s so much else throughout every day’s edition of the paper. For example:

• The University of Chicago has a website that backs up and hosts at-risk data sets. It’s called the Data Mirror.

• Using a fan when the room temperature is above 90 degrees Fahrenheit increases your body temperature.

• Mongolian barbecue is a style of cooking from Taiwan that takes its name from Kublai Khan’s attempts to conquer Japan in the 12th century.

• Nutrition experts say that, if you do it right, frozen pizza can be part of a healthy lunch or dinner.

Sometimes you can be surprised by a simple reminder from local history. A picture accompanying Chris Placek’s story today on the 1985 fire that destroyed Arlington Park features “premium parking” for a price of $1.50. Regular parking is advertised at $1.

And, sometimes, you get insights into what great coaching is all about, as in Monday’s story from The Athletic about the pressures from college football programs on 6-foot, 6-inch high school football star Mason West, who already is committed to hockey as a Blackhawks first-round draft pick.

“A lot of people think, as the football coach, I’m going to tell him to play football or don’t play hockey,” The Athletic quotes his coach Jason Potts. “But I love Mason. I love him as a person, and I want him to do whatever his heart is set out to do.”

That’s not exactly an arcane fact, but it is a telling insight about coach-athlete relationships that goes beyond the simple facts of an interesting story.

Every page of the paper is peppered with such facts and insights every day. They’re often so niftily woven into the content or a structure of a story or picture that you may not even notice that you learned something. But they’re there. Go ahead. Why not make a little check through today’s paper and see what you find?

• Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is managing editor for opinion at the Daily Herald. Follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jim.slusher1 and on X at @JimSlusher. His new book “To Nudge the World: Conversations, community and the role of the local newspaper” is available at eckhartzpress.com.