We always hear one thing about stress: it’s bad. I haven’t checked recently but I think that’s in the Constitution. Fortunately, stress is not that simple. Researchers asked 30,000 adults how much stress they felt in the past year – and whether or not they thought stress was a negative. Eight…
What if you could be someone else? Not a totally different person. But what if you could be a better version of you? You 2.0. We’d all like to change something about ourselves. (The phrase “character defects” exists for a reason.) Being less stressed and more organized might be nice. But…
Head out to the Inyo National Forest in California and you’ll see plenty of bristlecone pine trees. There’s one in particular worth noting. It’s aptly named “Methuselah.” As of 2021, that tree is at least 4,853 years old. Methuselah was there when woolly mammoths were still wandering around. It calls the…
Whether it’s UFOs or Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, we’re hearing a lot about space travel these days. But they seem to gloss over one thing: a lot about spaceflight sucks. Send me an angry email if you like but it’s undeniable. Being isolated in an unimaginably cramped living space, weird…
In 2007 the World Health Organization declared shift work a probable carcinogen. Yeah, you read that right: working at the wrong time can kill you. And cancer isn't the only problem it causes. If horror movies don't give you nightmares, the list of health problems associated with shift work will. So what's the…
Daniel Lieberman decided to do an informal -- and very sneaky -- study. While at an academic conference, he counted how many people took the escalator vs the stairs. In ten minutes, 151 people walked past him and only 11 used the stairs. That's just 7 percent. Thing was, this was…
us far, 2020 seems to have been some sort of cosmic clerical error. All around the world people are falling ill, everyone's afraid, and the economy, well... Let's just say I've never heard the word "trillion" used so often and it certainly has not been in a good way. In the United States, some bad actors are exploiting peaceful protests of noble intent to loot and cause mayhem. Times are tough so, of course, people will become cruel and selfish...…
re than five hundred people had died in just five days. All in one small neighborhood. A disproportionate number of them children. It was 1854 and this was one of the worst cholera epidemics London had ever seen. The cause was a mystery and until it was found, children would keep dying. The bacterium Vibrio cholerae infects the small intestine and basically squeezes the water from your body until your organs fail. How does it get from one person's intestine to…
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