Healthy Habits - Psoriasis

 It is estimated that 8 million Americans live with psoriasis (PsO), a chronic immune-mediated disease resulting in overproduction of skin cells, which causes inflamed, scaly plaques that may be itchy or painful. The most common form of psoriasis is plaque psoriasis. Nearly one-quarter of all people with plaque PsO have cases that are considered moderate-to-severe.

 Living with plaque PsO can be a challenge and impact life beyond a person's physical health, including emotional health, relationships, and handling the stressors of life. Psoriasis on highly visible areas of the body or sensitive skin, such as the scalp, hands, feet, and genitals, can have an increased negative impact on quality of life. The average patient experience is to cycle through approximately three topicals or conventional agents for ~3 years, but many report cycling through three, four or even five.^[i] Recently, the International Psoriasis Council updated its guidelines to address just this, now suggesting that people living with psoriasis should consider systemic treatment after two rounds of topicals.

 The impact of PsO was something that Maddox experienced firsthand. Doctors diagnosed him with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis at age 12, right before his teenage years. Post puberty and into his college years, he often had scaly plaques covering his body, which impacted him emotionally. He often hid his condition with long sleeves and pants even in the summer heat. After years of trying to manage his symptoms cycling through various topical treatment options, never with much luck, his doctor enrolled him in the ICONIC-ADVANCE clinical trial for ICOTYDE™ (icotrokinra).

 For many with moderate-to-severe disease, targeted systemic treatments are key. The FDA recently approved ICOTYDE, a once-daily pill for the treatment of moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis in adults and pediatric patients 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 40 kg who are candidates for systemic therapy or phototherapy. It is a completely new option for first-line systemic treatment of plaque psoriasis.  

In this interview, Dr. Ted Lain (board-certified dermatologist and Executive Director of the Austin Institute for Clinical Research in Austin, Texas)discusses how psoriasis works, why many patients remain undertreated, and what makes this new treatment approach different. Joining him ise Maddox, who is living with psoriasis and can share firsthand how the disease affects daily life, both physically and emotionally, and discuss his experience with the latest treatment.

Interview courtesy: Johnson & Johnson

 

 

 

INDICATION

WHAT IS ICOTYDE™ (icotrokinra)?

ICOTYDE^TM 200 mg is a prescription medicine used to treat moderate to severe plaque psoriasis in adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds (40 kg), who may benefit from taking injections or medicines by mouth (systemic therapy) or treatment using ultraviolet or UV light (phototherapy).

 

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION

What is the most important information I should know about ICOTYDE?

ICOTYDE may cause serious side effects, including:

• Infections. Medicines that interact with the immune system, such as ICOTYDE, may lower your ability to fight infections and may increase your risk of infections. Your healthcare provider may check you for infections and tuberculosis (TB) before starting treatment and may treat you for TB before you begin treatment with ICOTYDE if you have a history of TB or have active TB. Your healthcare provider should watch you closely for signs and symptoms of TB during and after treatment with ICOTYDE.

Tell your healthcare provider right away if you have any infection or have symptoms of an infection, including:

fever, sweat, or chills cough shortness of breath blood in your mucus (phlegm) muscle aches

warm, red, or painful skin or sores on your body different from your psoriasis weight loss diarrhea or stomach pain burning when you urinate or urinating more often than normal

 

Before taking ICOTYDE, tell your healthcare provider about all of your medical conditions, including if you:

• have an infection that does not go away or that keeps coming back.
• have tuberculosis (TB) or have been in close contact with someone with TB.
• have recently received or are scheduled to receive an immunization (vaccine). Avoid receiving live vaccines during treatment with ICOTYDE.
• have kidney problems. 
• are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if ICOTYDE can harm your unborn baby.

Pregnancy Safety Study. There is a pregnancy safety study for women who take ICOTYDE during pregnancy. The purpose of this study is to collect information about the health of you and your baby. If you are pregnant or become pregnant during treatment with ICOTYDE, you can report your pregnancy by calling  1-800-525-7763 or visiting ICOTYDE.com.

• are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed. It is not known if ICOTYDE passes into your breast milk. Talk to your healthcare provider about the best way to feed your baby during treatment with ICOTYDE.

 

Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements.

 

What are the possible side effects of ICOTYDE?

 

ICOTYDE may cause serious side effects. See “What is the most important information I should know about ICOTYDE?”

 

The most common side effects of ICOTYDE include:

headache nausea cough

fungal infection tiredness

 

These are not all the possible side effects of ICOTYDE. Call your doctor for medical advice about side effects. You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit fda.gov/medwatch, or call 1-800-FDA-1088.

 

How should I take ICOTYDE?

• Take ICOTYDE exactly as your healthcare provider tells you to take it.
• Take ICOTYDE 1 time a day when you wake up on an empty stomach with water. Wait at least 30 minutes after taking ICOTYDE before eating food.
• If you have difficulty swallowing tablets, ICOTYDE can be dispersed in water. For more information, please read the  Medication Guide.
• If you miss a dose of ICOTYDE, take the dose as soon as you remember and go back to your regular schedule the next day.

Book Nook - Transported: The Everyday Magic of Musical Daydreams

Music is a huge element of my household. My family is constantly listening to music, we perform, we play together. It's inspiring, relaxing, energizing, and much more. So I was excited to have a chance to review the upcoming book Transported: The Everyday Magic of Musical Daydreams (Liveright; May 19, 2026 ). In the book, Princeton professor Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, PhD, explores how music uniquely activates memory, imagination, and emotion, often more powerfully than images, food, or even lived experience.

Drawing on research from her Music Cognition Lab at Princeton, Margulis shows that when we listen to music, our minds don’t just wander randomly. The sound itself actively shapes what we remember and imagine, triggering vivid, sensory-rich experiences and even shared patterns of thought across listeners.

The book is very academic, but also easy to understand. Dr. Margulis does an excellent job of distilling the research into plain language. The book explains why music can trigger memories, generate imagery, and shape our thoughts and emotions. It's an excellent book for anyone who loves music, but also for those who are just casual listeners curious how music shapes their minds.

You can learn more in this Q&A.

What surprised you most as you were researching and writing this book?

I still find it shocking that two separate people in two separate places can listen to an excerpt of music they’ve never heard before and lapse into the same daydream. This discovery was so counterintuitive that we needed to prove and reprove it to ourselves until every last doubt was removed. One of the plotlines in the book covers this journey—all the ways we tried to talk ourselves out of our own finding.

How does your work change the way we think about listening to music in everyday life?

My favorite course evaluation for the large lecture class I teach every spring reads “I’ll never listen to music the same way again.” My work gets underneath some of the most intuitive aspects of music listening, unsettles them, and shows how strange and revealing they actually are. Why can music make you feel like you’re reliving a memory in technicolor detail? Why do you listen again and again to the same song? Why do you automatically feel more connected to someone who loves the same band as you? Transported makes you curious about experiences that you might have taken for granted, seeing them for what they are: windows into your own mind.

What led you to write a book about musical daydreams in the first place?

During my time studying piano at the Peabody Conservatory, I got increasingly restless about the why underneath what I was doing. In an act of brazen rebellion, I defied my piano teacher’s instructions and took a bus to Johns Hopkins to enroll in a class called Minds, Brains, and Computers. Stepping outside the confines of conservatory helped me reconnect to the powerful listening experiences that had first fueled my interest in music, and learning about cognitive science gave me the tools to rigorously study them.  

Why do you think this everyday experience has been overlooked by science and culture?

We live in an era of acute anxiety about distraction, every spare moment occupied by a screen, every lapse in attention treated as a failure. Against that backdrop, the idea that a certain kind of mind-wandering is not only normal but genuinely valuable cuts against the grain. It’s easier to dismiss these experiences than to examine them.

There’s also something to the classic observation that fish don’t know they’re in water. Musical daydreams are so woven into everyday experience that we rarely stop to question them. But once you start pointing them out and naming them, you begin to see just how strange and revealing they actually are and to wonder why science wasn’t studying them earlier.

What did you see missing in how we currently understand music and the mind?

When people imagine the cognitive science of music, they usually picture something reductive, like a formula mapping notes to predictable experiential outputs. But music is a stranger window into the mind than that. It bears the traces of every association we’ve accumulated moving through the world, which reveals something important: our minds aren’t individual autonomous processers, but entities fundamentally shaped by experience and community. There’s a suggestive parallel here with large language models, and machine learning is now helping map that associative structure at scales previously deemed impossible. The newest generation of research on music and the mind treats culture and mind not as separate objects of study, but as joint phenomena to be understood together.

If readers take away one new way of thinking about music, what do you hope it is?

Usually, when I tell people what I do, the first thing they say is “Oh, I don’t know anything about music.” No one who reads this book should come away thinking that again. The book details the sophisticated but implicit musical knowledge required to hear one snippet of a song and picture Seattle in the 1990s and hear another and feel silk slipping through your fingers. More than anything, this book will show readers how much they know about music that they didn’t know they knew.

Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, PhD, is a Professor of Music at Princeton University, where she directs the Music Cognition Lab. Initially trained as a pianist, she turned to cognitive science to explore why music has such a powerful ability to transport the mind, studying how listeners experience imagination, memory, and emotion through sound.

Her work bridges music, psychology, and neuroscience, using experiments and listening studies to track how the brain processes music and how it shapes attention, memory, and emotion. In these studies, participants listen to carefully designed pieces of music while Dr. Margulis measures how they respond, what they remember, how their attention shifts, what they imagine, and how they feel, allowing her to isolate specific elements of music and understand their effects on the mind.

Dr. Margulis is the author of award-winning academic books, including On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind, which received both the Wallace Berry Award and the ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and recognized by the National Academy of Sciences and has been featured in outlets ranging from NPR’s All Things Considered to the BBC.

She has appeared as an expert contributor on Netflix’s Explained, where she explains how music affects the brain and helps translate research on music cognition for a broad audience.  Elizabeth served as President of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition from 2017 to 2019, where she helped advance interdisciplinary research and guide the field’s direction. Transported is her first book for general audiences.

She holds a PhD and an MA from Columbia University and a BM from the Peabody Conservatory of Music.

Book Nook - Ethical Ed Tech: How Educators Can Lead on AI and Digital Safety in K-12

Educators and school leaders have incomplete information, minimal guidance, and intense pressure from vendors, parents, students, and policymakers as they make decisions around AI and digital safety for students. The stakes of these decisions extend far beyond learning outcomes and into the realms of student privacy, equity, wellbeing, and the fundamental purpose of education, according to Priten Kadakia Soundararajan-Shah, a Harvard Scholar in Education Management Policy and entrepreneur working at the intersection of technology and education.

I recently had a chance to see a copy of the upcoming book Ethical Ed Tech: How Educators Can Lead on AI and Digital Safety in K-12 (May 18).

The book is written just the way educators need - practical, with tangible tips and clearly understandable, even by those who have limited tech experience. AI is already widely used in education, and without guidance, students can often end up using AI in inappropriate ways, which can lead to misinformation, ethical dilemmas, and sometimes even safety issues.

The book looks at real-life scenarios instead of abstract ideas, and addresses not just AI, but also VR and biometrics. It incorporates a wide range of perspectives, including parents and students as well as school staff, and can be an excellent resource for any teacher, especially those looking to help guide their schools and shape technology policy.

Priten Kadakia Soundararajan-Shah is an educator, philosopher, and entrepreneur working at the intersection of technology and education.

He is the CEO of Pedagogy Ventures, where he integrates cutting-edge technology with proven teaching strategies to help educational organizations.

He also supports three nonprofits: PedagogyFutures, as Executive Director, which provides professional development resources to build a responsible, ethical, human-centered future for educational technology; Academy 4 Social Civics, as Chair, which is dedicated to civics education that prepares students to tackle future challenges; and ThinkerAnalytix, as CTO, which is working to scale critical thinking instruction at educational institutions around the world.

 

Soundararajan-Shah is the author of the AI & The Future of Education: Teaching in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (Wiley, 2023), which was translated into Arabic, Simplified Chinese, Turkish, and Vietnamese. He also teaches courses on the Ethics of Ed Tech, Family & Society, and Epistemic Justice at College Unbound, a bachelor’s degree-granting institution focused on adult learners.

 

He holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Harvard College and an M.Ed. in Education Policy and Management from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

 

Websites:

http://priten.org

http://pedagogyfutures.org

http://new.academy4sc.org

http://thinkeranalytix.org

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Book Nook - Lily Tripp: Diary of an Accidental Time Traveler

Lily Tripp: Diary of an Accidental Time Traveler (FSG BYR; on sale May 12, 2026) follows a modern-day girl who unexpectedly finds herself dropped into different moments in history—each one challenging what she thought she knew about the world.

What makes this stand out for parenting audiences is how seamlessly it blends adventure with perspective-building. As Lily navigates unfamiliar eras, kids are gently exposed to different ways of living, helping them develop empathy, resilience, and a broader understanding of life beyond their own experience. It’s a natural springboard for conversations about gratitude, adaptability, and how people across time face challenges.

At the same time, the book sparks curiosity about history without ever feeling like a lesson. Rather than traditional historical fiction, it delivers “history through story”—making it especially appealing for kids who don’t typically gravitate toward nonfiction. It’s the kind of book that can complement what they’re learning in school while still feeling like a page-turning escape.

In short: it’s a fun, fast-paced adventure that quietly builds empathy and perspective—and might just be perfect for kids who think they don’t like history.

Book Nook - Are You Speedy

 oung readers are invited to rev their engines and join a delightful parade of construction vehicles in a brand-new interactive board book that asks one simple question: Who is speedy? Are You Speedy (The Collective Book Studio/May 12, 2026), the latest book by Tim Button, is packed with charming illustrations, playful sound words, and sturdy board pages. The book is designed to captivate toddlers and preschoolers who love things that go.

From digging excavators and mixing cement trucks to towing vehicles hard at work, each character shows off its own unique motion through expressive artwork and lively, read-aloud-friendly text. Just when it seems that none of the vehicles are especially speedy, a race car zooms onto the scene—leading to a joyful, surprise ending. A novelty mirror on the final page reveals the speediest one of all: the reader!

 

Perfect for story time, lap reading, and repeated reads, the book combines vehicle-themed fun with an interactive twist that encourages children to participate directly in the story.

 

Are You Speedy joins the beloved and growing board book series by author Tim Button and illustrator Ana Larrañaga, following the popular titles Are You Wiggly?, Are You Giggly?, and Are You Snuggly? Together, the series celebrates movement, emotion, and imaginative play for the youngest readers. Ideal for ages 0–3, this joyful board book is sure to become a fast favorite for families, libraries, and gift-givers alike.

 

Tim Button began writing as a child when he and his grandmother exchanged letters written in rhyme. Today, he advises businesses on technology and continues to play with words and voices as a writer and voice-over artist. A lifelong sports enthusiast and youth coach, Tim lives in Moorestown, New Jersey, with his wife, three no longer-wiggly children, and two dogs.

 

Ana Martin Larrañaga was born in San Sebastian, Spain, and grew up in the countryside of Castilla, in a huge family, surrounded by cousins and animals. At school, she drew little stories on every possible piece of paper. In Salamanca, where she studied Fine Arts, teachers told her to draw very big things. When she finished her studies, she returned to her small drawings and became an award-winning illustrator. Ana lives in Germany with her husband, three sons, and one cat. She likes swimming in the sea in the summer and knitting in winter.

 

The Collective Book Studio is a woman-owned, full-service publishing studio that works with authors, brands, and companies to create, develop, and publish high-quality books. With a focus on innovative content and striking design, The Collective Book Studio offers a unique approach to the publishing process, providing clients with expertise and collaborative support from concept to creation.

 

The Collective Book Studio, based in Oakland, CA, publishes high-quality lifestyle, gift, and children’s books. Their books are distributed by Simon & Schuster, a global leader in general interest publishing, dedicated to providing the best in fiction and nonfiction for readers of all ages. For more information, visit www.simonandschuster.com

Healthy Habits - Stress and Sleep Study

Did you know 1 in 3 Americans says stress, worries, or responsibilities frequently keep them from falling asleep? Add kids and a phone in the mix and… well, you already know.

Sudoku Bliss recently surveyed Americans in 40 of the country's biggest cities about how they're sleeping and what they do in bed before they drift off (if they ever really do). A few highlights:

• Across the country, 60%+ of adults are scrolling in bed before sleep — a tough habit to break in any household with kids watching

• 1 in 4 Americans frequently stay up later than they should to reclaim personal time after work or responsibilities. 

• In the worst-sleeping cities, 41–59% say they've tried multiple things to fix their sleep with no luck

• Women are more likely than men to say stress, worries, or responsibilities frequently keep them from falling asleep

• Women are more likely than men to frequently stay up later than they should to reclaim personal time after work or responsibilities

Mealtime Magic - Brown Butter Caramel Cookies

For Mother's Day, I have a chance to share with you a delicious recipe from cookbook Let's Bake! Over 100 Dessert Recipes for Gifting & Giving by the wonderful home baker Gail Sweeney.

It is a cozy, accessible baking book celebrating time together in the kitchen, ideal for Mother’s Day moments shared across generations.

Brown Butter Caramel Cookies

Ingredients

1 cup butter, browned
1 egg plus 1 yolk at room temperature
2-1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 cups dark brown sugar
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
3/4 cup salted caramel Chipits
Two 100-gram 70% chocolate bars such as Lindt, chopped
Sea salt for sprinkling on finished cookies

To make the cookies

Place the butter in a small saucepan and cook over medium heat, swirling the pan occasionally. The butter will froth up and you will see brown particles forming along the top of the butter. Stir the butter occasionally and when the butter turns into a dark amber color, remove from the heat. Set aside to cool in the fridge and continue with the rest of the recipe.

Chop the chocolate bars into small 1/4-inch size pieces. On a large piece of parchment paper, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Place the cooled brown butter into the bowl of the stand mixer. There will be browned bits at the bottom of the pan and add these as well as they will intensify the flavor.

Add the brown sugar to the butter and mix on medium high speed until light and creamy. Add the egg and yolk and continue beating until well incorporated. Tip in the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. On low speed, add in the caramel Chipits and chopped chocolate.

Scoop rounded balls of dough onto the prepared cookie sheets, 2 inches apart. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 360°F. Bake the cookies for approximately 15 minutes or until set and golden brown around the edges. Sprinkle the warm cookies with sea salt. Let cool on the trays.

Note: These cookies will keep in an airtight container for one week in the refrigerator or cupboard and can be frozen for up to 2 months.

About the Author

Gail Sweeney has been baking and tweaking her recipes for over 25 years, providing specialty markets, bistros and boutique stores with her renowned goods. Her love for baking stems from the happiness it brings to others. Also an aspiring food photographer, her recipes have been featured in local newspapers and television in Ontario, Canada.

Fun Freetime - Elmo's Got the Moves

Round Room Live is proud to announce Elmo’s Got the Moves, an all-new Sesame Street Live production that is traveling to cities across the U.S. and Canada. This joyful and engaging show invites children—and their families—to sing, dance, and move along with their favorite friends from Sesame Street in a heartwarming, interactive celebration unlike anything they’ve seen before.

Tour stops will include Phoenix, Chicago, Louisville, Providence, Austin, and many more cities. For tickets and more information, visit SesameStreetLive.com. 

Elmo’s Got the Moves will have kids and parents alike out of their seats and dancing along with Elmo and his Sesame Street friends as they move and groove to fan-favorite songs, including “Sunny Days,” “Elmo’s Got the Moves,” and “Letter of the Day.” Families will discover fun and playful ways to move—from yoga and jumping rope to cartwheeling and silly dance moves— all in a welcoming environment that brings the magic of Sesame Street from the screen to the stage.  More than just a show, Elmo’s Got the Moves is a shared moment of laughter and learning - an experience you and your child will treasure long after the final song.

This brand-new live tour—launching alongside the second drop of new Sesame Street episodes on Netflix and PBS KIDS—offers families the ultimate way to experience Sesame Street. It brings the joy, music, and beloved characters audiences know and love off the screen and onto the stage for an unforgettable, interactive celebration. 

“We’re beyond excited to bring Elmo’s Got the Moves to audiences everywhere — a brand-new Sesame Street Live adventure bursting with music, dance, and pure joy,” said Stephen Shaw, Founder and Co-CEO of Round Room Live. “It’s the perfect mix of Round Room Live’s signature high-energy production and the heart and soul of Sesame Street — creating an unforgettable experience that families will be talking about long after the curtain comes down.”

“For over 55 years, Sesame Street has empowered children to grow smarter, stronger, and kinder—and now, we’re thrilled to bring that same magic to the stage with Round Room Live,” said Jennifer Ahearn, SVP Strategic Partnerships & Themed Entertainment. “This all-new live show promises unforgettable moments of laughter and learning as families join their favorite furry friends for a joyful experience they’ll cherish.”

Enhance your Elmo’s Got the Moves ticket with an exclusive Photo Experience, where your family will have the opportunity to make a lasting memory by taking a photo alongside some of your favorite Sesame Street friends. Please note: to attend, each guest must have both a Photo Experience ticket and an Elmo’s Got the Moves show ticket. Children must be accompanied by an adult.

Fans can visit SesameStreetLive.com now for tour dates and ticket information. Sesame Street Live social media for exclusive tour content.

FOLLOW SESAME STREET LIVE

Official Website: www.SesameStreetLive.com
Facebook: @SesameStreetLive

Instagram: @SesameStreetLive

TikTok: @SesameStreetLive

YouTube: @ SesameStreetLive

About Sesame Workshop:
Sesame Workshop is the global nonprofit behind Sesame Street and so much more. For over 50 years, we have worked at the intersection of education, media, and research, creating joyful experiences that enrich minds and expand hearts, all in service of empowering each generation to build a better world. Our beloved characters, iconic shows, outreach in communities, and more bring playful early learning to families in more than 190 countries and advance our mission to help children everywhere grow smarter, stronger, and kinder. Learn more at www.sesame.org and follow Sesame Workshop on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and X.  

About Round Room Live:

Round Room Live is a global leader in producing and promoting live family entertainment, and immersive exhibitions, transforming iconic intellectual properties into expansive, interactive experiences that engage audiences of all ages worldwide. With tours spanning Europe, Australia, Asia and the Americas and installations in major cities such as London, Los Angeles, and Toronto, Round Room Live delivers high-quality, large-scale productions and live experiences that captivate and inspire. Their dynamic portfolio of touring theatrical shows includes popular titles such as Blippi on Tour, Sesame Street Live!, CoComelon: Sing-A-Long LIVE, Peppa Pig Live, Shrek the Musical, and Nitro Circus.  Beyond these, Round Room Live’s Immersive and Entertainment Experiences division has produced, managed and/or toured celebrated exhibits such as Formula 1®: The Exhibition, The Rolling Stones, Tupac Shakur. Wake Me When I’m Free., Jurassic World: The Exhibition, and Mandela: The Official Exhibition.