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Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. Kelly McEvers: This episode is for the DIY nation. The people who see something they like and say, “I can make that.” People like Marcia and Dave Johnson. Their farm in Windsor, Illinois, is filled with DIY projects. The house… Marcia Johnson: The house is modeled after one in Williamsburg, Virginia. We found the house plan at the back of a magazine. Kelly: The gate… Marcia: The gate that you enter is a copy of King George VI’s gate in England. Kelly: The musical stones in the garden… Marcia: They are like an outdoor xylophone, but they’re made out of granite, and they actually can be played. You take a little marimba stick out there, and it makes a different sound depending on which one. Kelly: And this one feature that has actually become a tourist attraction. Marcia: When you come up the driveway, you don’t see it. And so then I bring people around this very large oak tree, and they see it for the first time, and they’re amazed because it’s much bigger than they expected, I think. Kelly: This big thing she’s talking about is a tower, almost like a fairy-tale tower, tall and spindly with a pointy roof. There’s this ramp thing that winds its way around the tower all the way up to the top. Marcia: And so the very first thing I do is have them sit on a little bench with the tower in the background under a sign that says Bienvenue, meaning “welcome.” Kelly: The sign is in French, not for the visitors, but for the goats. I’m Kelly McEvers and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. And today’s episode is brought to you in partnership with Enjoy Illinois. And today, Dave and Marcia Johnson are going to introduce us to their goat tower, the Tower of Baa-Goat, which is inhabited by a flock of goats who speak French—Swiss French to be exact. We’ll talk about 19th-century architectural follies and why goats like to climb and how sometimes household projects take on a life of their own. That’s after this. This is an edited transcript of the Atlas Obscura Podcast: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. Kelly: When Dave and Marcia Johnson were building their house, the one inspired by a building in Colonial Williamsburg, they happened to have some bricks left over. And for them, a pile of unused bricks is an opportunity, the start of a new potential project. One day, when Dave was reading a magazine… Marcia: Decanter magazine, which is a wine magazine out of the UK, did a feature article on Charles Back at the Fairview Winery in South Africa, and so that’s where my husband saw the picture of the goat tower. Kelly: This, of course, is Marcia Johnson. She’s a retired school teacher. Dave is a retired crop insurance salesman. The Fairview Winery goat tower in the magazine looked like a tower from a fairy tale. Or maybe if you live on a farm in central Illinois, a grain silo with a big ramp that spirals up around the outside of it. Charles Back had built this tower on his vineyard in South Africa because he also had a herd of goats for making cheese, and the tower was meant as a jungle gym for them. Marcia: These are Saanen goats that live in the tower, and Saanen goats originate from the Saanen region of Switzerland. I think that might be why they like to climb. They’re just automatic climbers. They see the tower, they go up it. Kelly: These Saanen goats from the Alps had been domesticated for milk production. Marcia: They’re actually called “Queen of the Milkers” because they give such prolific milk and such delicious milk. Kelly: The Fairview winery in South Africa was inspired by an even older goat tower from the 1800s at a winery in Portugal. That one was built as a kind of architectural folly. Or an interesting building with no real purpose other than just to be interesting. Or, as the family behind that vineyard put it, an artistic daydream with no functional explanation. In any case, Dave was smitten. Marcia: He was intrigued by it, and he, I think, he was just always thinking about different unique things that could be done. So, yeah, he was the idea guy, and then I’m the maintenance person. Kelly: I should point out that the Johnsons did not actually have any goats at this time—like at all. Still, Dave pushed ahead. This was back in the late ’90s. Marcia: And he saw the picture of the Fairview Winery, and he showed it to the bricklayer, and the bricklayer said, “Oh yeah, I could do that.” He was a master bricklayer who had come out of retirement just to do this, because I guess he was intrigued by it. In fact, he said to Dave, “You’re the craziest guy I’ve ever known.” So anyway, it was in the works before I knew anything about it. I was off, working. And they got this all planned out and got it started. The only thing I got to say was where to put it, which was outside my kitchen window. So I measured 50 feet outside my kitchen window, and that’s where they built the tower. Kelly: But unlike the design of their house, which had plans they got from a magazine, there were no plans for the goat tower. So Dave improvised. He and the bricklayer used the photograph from the magazine and worked backwards. They designed a tower that essentially had floors with little compartments on each floor that the goats could hang out in. But the actual measurements required a lot of guesswork, because, again, they were working off a photograph. Marcia: Well, they got the scale wrong. The diameter is about a foot bigger, and by the time they got to the four compartments that the Fairview winery has, it was out of proportion. It was too squat looking, so they had to do one more complete wrap, making it the world’s largest goat tower by mistake. Kelly: We’re talking now about a tower that’s 31 feet tall with a diameter of 7.5 feet. So this is like the height of a two- or three-story building. Marcia: And then they had to order another load of brick ’cause they ran out of brick, and the whole point was to use up the brick that was left over. So, they ordered another load of brick, and that was no small thing because those are handmade brick in North Carolina. So they got another shipment, finished the tower, they got the whole thing done in three months. Kelly: Now that Marcia and Dave had a goat tower. The next thing they needed was goats. They chose Saanen goats from Switzerland, naturally, just like the Fairview winery. And when the goats got there, they went straight for the tower. Marcia: They were in it just about instantly, and we had quite a few babies born on the place. We’ve had over 100 goats over the years, and one of the little boys, two days old, climbed all the way to the top of the tower, and then he got up there and he cried because it was easy to go up, but it’s hard to come down. So Dave went out and he went up the tower. It was funny because the mother was standing below the tower, kind of like, Well, what are you gonna do now that you’re up there? So Dave went and he carried him down, and then the next day the little guy did the same thing, went way up, and then cried because, again, he didn’t want to come down. So Dave went up and made him walk in front of him, and then he got it, and then he couldn’t keep the little guy down. So sometimes the goats will be up in their compartments, or sometimes they’ll just plunk themselves down on the stairs that go over the end of the spiral stairs that go around it. So yeah, they like to be out looking from above, I think. Kelly: Word got around about this goat tower on the Johnson’s farm. It started with some local newspaper articles, then it was picked up in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Their farm in central Illinois is about a two-hour drive from St. Louis. And from there, it just kept spreading. Marcia: We even ended up on the local phone book, which was ironic because it was a phone book for Findlay, and we’re actually in Windsor, but they put our goat tower on the Findlay phone book. So yeah, it got around and it’s been since the ’90s. Kelly: Soon, the goat tower became a full-on attraction. Marcia: It’s just a way or something that people can spend about 40 minutes out of their day to come and see something different, very un–central Illinois, as I would say. Kelly: And according to Dave and Marcia, the goats seem to enjoy the attention. Marcia: They love visitors. Sometimes it takes them a little bit to decide that they’re going to come out of the tower, but once they come down, then they love to be petted and made over, and yes, they’re, they’re friendly goats. They are friendly goats. Kelly: If you would like to visit the Tower of Baa-Goat, head over to their website, goattowerfarm.com, and drop Marcia a line to get a full tour. We will post a link in the episode description. Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. Our podcast is a co-production of Atlas Obscura and Sirius XM podcasts. This episode was produced by Amanda McGowan. The production team for this episode includes Dylan Thuras, Doug Baldinger, Kameel Stanley, Johanna Mayer, Manolo Morales, Jerome Campbell, Amanda McGowan, Alexa Lim, Casey Holford, and Luz Fleming. Our theme music is by Sam Tyndall.

SpaceX launched 24 more of its Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit on Sunday (June 28), continuing to expand its broadband internet relay network.A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the new batch (Group 17-40) launched from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Liftoff took place at 12:09 p.m. EDT (1609 GMT or 9:09 a.m. PDT local time).The Starlink satellites reached orbit about 9 minutes after leaving the ground and were on track to be deployed by the Falcon 9 upper stage about an hour later.The first stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is seen after landing on its four legs atop the autonomous droneship "Of Course I Still Love You" in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California on Sunday, June 28, 2026. (Image credit: SpaceX)Previous Booster B1088 missionsNROL-126 | Transporter-12 | SPHEREx | NROL-57 | 12 Starlink missionsThe rocket's first stage (Booster 1088) completed its 17th flight, touching down on the autonomous droneship "Of Course I Still Love You" positioned in the Pacific Ocean.The 24 satellites increased the total number of active relays in the Starlink network to more than 10,700, according to tracker Jonathan McDowell. The Starlink service provides access to the internet to people around the world, as well to in-flight wifi and cell-to-satellite service providers.Sunday's launch was SpaceX's 75th Falcon 9 mission in 2026.

During several recent conversations, people have told me that they've stopped checking their phones in the morning. Not because nothing was happening, but because everything was. They described the feeling as standing under a waterfall of perpetual bad news.This experience is far from an isolated one. According to Reuters Institute's 2025 Digital News Report, 69% of Canadians at least occasionally avoid the news now.Globally, 40% report they at least sometimes or often do the same, the highest figure ever recorded. People shared consistent reasons for this: the news put them in a bad mood, they felt overwhelmed and powerless to act.As a researcher in developmental psychology, focusing on social development and psychological well-being, I argue that news fatigue is not laziness, weakness or a generational decline in civic interest. It's the predictable response of a human brain meeting an environment it was never designed to navigate.Wired for bad newsLong before smartphones or even the printing press, our cognitive architecture was shaped by a single problem: stay alive long enough to reproduce. Our ancestors whose attention drifted past the rustle in the grass left fewer descendants than those who froze, looked and listened.The brain that paid attention to threats was the brain that survived.This is the foundation of what psychologists call the negativity bias, one of the most replicated findings in cognitive science. Across decades of research, the human mind has been shown to weigh negative information more heavily than positive, attend to it faster and remember it longer.A predator nearby mattered more than a beautiful sunset. The cost of missing a real threat was death, while the cost of overreacting was a few minutes of wasted vigilance. The asymmetry made this bias adaptive.Here is the problem: the human brain has not changed since then. We are the same species as we were thousands of years ago. What's changed is the size of the world it's asked to scan for threats.News fatigue is not laziness, weakness or a generational decline in civic interest. It is the predictable response of a human brain meeting an environment it was never designed to navigate. (Image credit: pzAxe via Getty Images)Scanning the whole worldFor most of human history, the threats our nervous system processed were local. A neighbouring tribe. A drought. The illness of a child we personally knew. Information about distant places would barely arrive, and if it did, it was mainly irrelevant.In 2026, the same neurological system is being asked to absorb a war in one region, a financial shock in another, a climate disaster in a third and a violent crime in a fourth, all before lunchtime.A study published in the scientific journal Nature Human Behaviour examined more than 105,000 real news headlines viewed nearly six million times. Each additional negative word increased click-through rates, while positive words had the opposite effect.It's crucial to recognize the tactics meant to exploit our negative biases and create cognitive distance (Image credit: cbies/Shutterstock.com)Recent studies suggest people around the world demonstrate measurably stronger physiological responses to negative news than to positive news. The body is reacting before the mind has decided whether the threat is relevant.Some researchers have introduced a clinical framework for what happens in this instance called Problematic News Consumption (PNC) — a pattern of news engagement that results in preoccupation, dysregulation and disruption to daily functioning. In their 2022 study, the researchers found that 17% of American adults qualified as having severe levels of PNC. Among that group, 61% reported feeling unwell quite a bit or very much, compared with 6% of those who didn't.For minority populations, news fatigue may be even more consequential.Repeatedly witnessing harm directed at our own groups, even when we're not the immediate target, can have a significant psychological impact on people from the same group affiliation. For racialized communities, such as immigrants, the cognitive load could be even heavier, and the option to simply stop watching is much harder to exercise when the news is about their country of origin.Looking away is not the fixWhat's the solution to news fatigue? Well, it's not avoidance. A democracy depends on informed citizens.Many adults already cite the spread of misleading information as a major source of stress. Withdrawing from accurate, trustworthy information only deepens the problem. We're wired to pay more attention to bad news, and that kind of content will find its way to us one way or another.The fix is to manage the consumption and the sources.Several approaches can help manage news fatigue and protect mental health. Containing news consumption to defined windows of time reduces the sense of being overwhelmed. Choosing depth over volume also matters: one carefully reported long-form article will inform you better than bursts of random, unreliable and emotionally loaded posts on Instagram.There is also value in distinguishing between information and action — research on perceived control and stress consistently shows that the gap between awareness and agency is one of the strongest predictors of psychological distress. Identifying what you can actually do about what you read in the news, however small, regulates that response.Finally, be wary of "rage bait" — intentionally provocative messages or content designed to boost engagement on social media platforms by eliciting negative reactions. Recognizing that certain content creators want to provoke rather than reflect reality creates useful cognitive distance.The news will not become less "heavy." But our relationship with it can become more deliberate. Our brains were not built for this scale of input. They were, however, built to learn to adapt.This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

We rendered the new Hyundai IONIQ V in full N attire. Ioniq 6 N already offers a 641 hp template to borrow. A patented fake manual could add a real clutch pedal. When Hyundai pulled the wraps off its China-exclusive (for now) IONIQ V at Auto China 2026, the reaction was immediate, and most of it came down to the way it looks. Low-slung proportions and sharp angular surfacing that reads more Sant Agata than Seoul. Then you get to the spec sheet and find a single motor making 225 hp, which is a lot less drama than the bodywork suggests. var adpushup = window.adpushup = window.adpushup || {que:[]}; adpushup.que.push(function() { if (adpushup.config.platform !== "DESKTOP"){ adpushup.triggerAd("0f7e3106-c4d6-4db4-8135-c508879a76f8"); } else { adpushup.triggerAd("82503191-e1d1-435a-874f-9c78a2a54a2f"); } }); That gap between how it looks and how it moves invites one obvious thought: what would happen if Hyundai s N division got hold of it? Sure, there s no evidence to suggest such a model is being considered, yet the company has demonstrated with the Ioniq 5 and 6 N that it knows how to inject driver appeal into electric vehicles. Read: Hyundai s 2027 Elantra Is Bigger, Sharper, And Barely Recognizable Stretch the logic a little and the IONIQ V N starts to look like the spiritual successor to the Elantra N, only with the full weight of Hyundai s current EV tech behind it. var adpushup = window.adpushup = window.adpushup || {que:[]}; adpushup.que.push(function() { if (adpushup.config.platform === "DESKTOP"){ adpushup.triggerAd("ea4d4b5a-f8e5-4d5d-9d9a-53a3b956b6cd"); } else{ adpushup.triggerAd("44c0a4dc-e25b-4ba5-ac64-2c510461b92a"); } }); A Wicked Wedge Illustrations Josh Byrnes / Carscoops Our exclusive rendering imagines the IONIQ V in full N attire while preserving the dramatic, wedge-shaped aesthetic of the standard model. At the front, the aggressive fascia gains a deep splitter, larger cooling intakes and red accents seen on other N products. Also: BMW s i3 Sedan Divided The Internet, So We Drew The i4 Coupe Instead At 4.9 meters (193 inches), the Prius-on-steroids profile remains one of its defining features, with its heavily raked windscreen and fastback look. Larger wheels, performance brakes, subtle side skirts and lowered ride height help sharpen its stance. Out back, a more functional diffuser, discreet spoiler, and N-specific taillight elements help complete the transformation. var adpushup = window.adpushup = window.adpushup || {que:[]}; adpushup.que.push(function() { if (adpushup.config.platform !== "DESKTOP"){ adpushup.triggerAd("bb7964e9-07de-4b06-a83e-ead35079d53c"); } else { adpushup.triggerAd("9b1169d9-7a89-4971-a77f-1397f7588751"); } }); High Tech Cockpit The standard Ioniq V s interior. As with the exterior, the standard car s cabin would carry the concept s aesthetic into production largely intact. A 27-inch 4K panoramic display commands center stage, backed by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8295 processor, customizable performance graphics, track-focused telemetry, and an AI-powered voice assistant. Future Cars: Hyundai s Venue-Sized Bayon Could Get A 140-HP Hybrid America Won t Other goodies would include an advanced head-up display with a lap-timer, Level 2 semi-autonomous highway driving, heavily bolstered sports seats with illuminated N logos, a sports steering wheel with N mode presets, and acres of Alcantara trim. var adpushup = window.adpushup = window.adpushup || {que:[]}; adpushup.que.push(function() { if (adpushup.config.platform !== "DESKTOP"){ adpushup.triggerAd("b25ecba7-3bbb-4ea7-a3a8-dbea91695c07"); } else { adpushup.triggerAd("e46c436a-adeb-4b5e-a2c7-56bc36561c10"); } }); Performance to Stun Based on Hyundai s 800-volt E-GMP architecture, the IONIQ V N could utilize the same dual-motor, all-wheel-drive powertrain from the Ioniq 6 N, which in that application generates north of 601 hp (448 kW) or 641 hp in N Grin boost mode. Also a possibility is the use of Hyundai s recently patented electronic manual transmission. This setup expands on the automaker s e-Shift technology by employing a gated shifter with six speeds (plus reverse), a clutch pedal, and software-controlled gear simulation to recreate a manual driving experience. Underneath, the chassis would get stiffer springs with adaptive damping, larger anti-roll bars, sharper torque vectoring, and upgraded brakes to keep the powertrain honest. Amped Alternatives The regular 2027 Ioniq V is expected to go on sale in China later this year. If Hyundai ever greenlights an IONIQ V N, such a model would face off against Tesla s Model 3 Performance, Polestar 4 Performance Pack, MG IM5 Performance, BYD Seal Performance, Xpeng P7 Ultra, and BMW i3. The standard car is widely expected to go global eventually, albeit not in the US, where Chinese cars are effectively blocked. If it does, the smart money says it ll land with more performance than the Chinese-market version makes today. Would you rather this over the Ioniq 6? Let us know in the comments below. Illustrations Josh Byrnes / Carscoops