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While school systems around the world debate whether children or teachers should use AI, Guadalajara’s award-winning Instituto México Inglés (IMI) has already embraced Artificial Intelligence in its educational programs. In fact, the school was one of the first in Mexico to take the plunge.

In 2015, IMI began replacing traditional textbooks, teachers and curricula with iPads, coaches and a monthly challenge that turns students into investigators and researchers.

“We call them coaches because we want them to act like sports coaches,” explains IMI Director Luis Medina. “Sports coaches don’t do the push-ups for you or play the game for you. They’re there to support you, but you’re the one playing the game.”

Every morning, the children at IMI check their daily instructions, and their coach tells them what they’ll be working on that day. Then, it’s all hands on deck.

Medina explains that AI has been integrated into the program thanks to Google, which recently launched a version of its Gemini program designed for students under the age of 13.

“Each student now has their own specialized virtual assistant,” he says. “If a student didn’t understand something their coach explained in math, they can go to their ‘Math Gem,’ and the Gem will explain everything. And of course, the student can converse with the AI as if it were a person. The Gem is instructed: ‘You are an expert in math for third-grade students. Your job is to help them.’”

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September 19, 1985. I was all alone, sleep-testing a house I hoped to buy.

7:19 a.m. Strange squeaking sounds awoke me. The noise was coming from the doors. Every door in the house was swinging back and forth, and apparently, all their hinges needed oiling.

I sat up and looked out the window. Trees were swaying to and fro …

What’s it like to explore caves in Mexico? Here’s a story from 2006 that gives you an authentic answer—without pulling any punches.

While most people love to spend Semana Santa at the beach, members of Zotz—then Guadalajara’s only club dedicated to cave exploration—packed up their ropes, cable ladders, and helmets and headed for the pine-covered hills of Dos Aguas in the neighboring state of Michoacán. Zotz means bat in Mayan, and indeed, one would have to be a bit batty to vacation in Dos Aguas, a place truly in the middle of nowhere. It lies about 100 kilometers southeast of Colima City and is reachable only via chokingly dusty dirt roads that zigzag up and down mountains around 2,500 meters high.

By the time the last VW Beetle in the world rolled off the assembly line in Puebla in 2003, the Vocho, as it is still fondly called, had become a beloved icon throughout Mexico. One of the events that elevated the curvy sedan into the public eye was the unforgettable day a little white Vocho—equipped with a 30-centimeter propeller—crossed Lake Chapala.

All five of Mexico’s ecosystems can be accessed in what I call the 500-kilometer-wide Magic Circle around Guadalajara.

Driving only a few hours, you can immerse yourself in cool, shady forests, desert scrubland, or flat, highland prairies, and if you go far enough west in the Magic Circle, you’ll come to Mexico’s tropical ecosystems.

Cancer is frightening enough when it strikes adults. To see it afflict children is truly heartbreaking.

But what happens when the children’s families have no insurance and no resources?

In 1995, Bertha Padilla de Pérez encountered this reality firsthand during a visit to Guadalajara’s Fray Antonio Alcalde Hospital. She had been invited by her cousin, pediatrician Horacio Padilla, who showed her the children in need.

“How can I help?” she asked him.