Relationships & Society
Psychology says one cruel remark can drown out many kind ones: across love, money…
Give someone five compliments and one insult in the same afternoon, and the insult is what they carry home.
Curiosities
Nearly every plant on your plate is quietly chemically defended against being eaten…
The bitter compounds in kale, broccoli and green tea are plant defence weapons — and the reason vegetables extend human life. A look at hormesis, the gut bacteria that decide who benefits, and why the vegetables engineered to taste mild may deliver less of what makes them medicine.
Relationships & Society
Sara Blakely spent seven years selling fax machines door-to-door for an office-supply…
Sara Blakely built a billion-dollar company on $5,000 of her own money and never took a cent from outside investors.
Curiosities
Astronauts can return to Earth up to 5 cm taller — then gravity compresses their spines…
Astronauts return from long missions up to 5 centimetres taller as their spinal discs swell in the absence of gravity. Within 48 hours of landing, the spine begins compressing again — and the injury risk that follows can last for years.
Curiosities
Cuttlefish have W-shaped pupils and can see polarised light, yet tests find them…
Cuttlefish have monochromatic vision but produce some of the most accurate colour camouflage in nature. New computer-vision studies of their chromatophores are finally showing how.
Curiosities
After nearly a year on the International Space Station, Scott Kelly found the hard part…
After 340 days on the ISS, astronaut Scott Kelly returned to Earth to find his own home felt staged, his skin broke out from soft furniture, and the smell of rain on his patio hit him like a physical event — a reentry the launch had never prepared him for.
Relationships & Society
The ‘spotlight effect’ was measured at Cornell in 2000, where students wearing an…
In 1996, Cornell psychologist Thomas Gilovich sent students into a room wearing a Barry Manilow T-shirt and measured a gap that would reshape how psychologists think about self-consciousness: wearers guessed 46 per cent of observers noticed the shirt. The real number was 23 per cent.
Business
Singapore became independent in 1965 with few natural resources and heavy dependence on…
Singapore had local freshwater reservoirs in 1965, but depended heavily on imported water. Its later prosperity grew through trade, investment, infrastructure and education.
Relationships & Society
Adults who prefer physical books aren’t necessarily romanticizing the past—they’re…
A physical book makes a narrow promise.
Relationships & Society
Why some people keep a paper calendar beside their phone
There is a particular kind of desk that looks as if it belongs to two eras at once.
Relationships & Society
A TED talk watched tens of millions of times promised that standing like a superhero for…
Stand like a superhero for two minutes before a job interview, and your body chemistry shifts to make you braver.
Relationships & Society
Eight reasons some people still prefer writing on paper
There is an oddly revealing moment in modern life: someone needs to remember something, reaches past the phone already in their hand, and looks for a pen.