How Exercise Shapes You, Far Beyond The Gym
Physical activity boosts short-term brain function and heightens awareness. And even on days they don’t train — which rules out fatigue as a factor — those who habitually push their bodies tend to confront daily stressors with a stoic demeanor.
How A New Technology Is Changing The Lives Of People Who Cannot Speak
Millions are robbed of the power of speech by illness, injury or lifelong conditions. Can the creation of bespoke digital voices transform their ability to communicate? The digital voice is not a remnant of who they were, but a promise of who they will be.
The Diabetes Patients Who Hacked A Pancreas
While diabetics anxiously awaited the release of commercial systems, tech-savvy diabetics and their loved ones worked on do-it-yourself systems. How could a bunch of hackers, working in their free time, create something medical manufacturing companies had yet to put on the market?
Why Is There Still Poverty In America?
In America almost 40m people—one eighth of its population—live in poverty. Why does the richest big country in the world still have so many people living in profound need?
Ashes To Ashes, Dust To… Compost? An Ecofriendly Burial In Just 4 Weeks
Also known as “natural organic reduction,” composting burial is the brainchild of Katrina Spade, CEO of alternative burial company Recompose. The process involves decomposition of the corpse in soil—but not within a traditional cemetery.
What Would Happen To Your Body If You Only Ate Fruits And Vegetables
Fruits and veggies are good places to find fiber and carbohydrates, but you don’t want to count on them to provide enough of the fat and protein—macronutrients, two of the primary building blocks of your diet—that you need. Fat is necessary for healthy mental function and energy.
People Born Blind Are Mysteriously Protected From Schizophrenia
It was something Tom Pollak had heard whispers about—an odd factoid, referred to now and again, usually with bewilderment: No person who was born blind has ever been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Over the past 60-some years, scientists around the world have been writing about this mystery.
Ladies In Waiting
In the most memorable scene of the 2002 film Secretary, nothing happens. For over ten minutes, a period that represents entire days in the movie’s internal timeline, protagonist Lee remains faithfully immobile, wetting herself in the process. Waiting, which renders everything provisional, which suspends progress or conclusion of any kind, is worse than clarity.
What To Do When It All Goes Wrong
The standard coping strategies, like positive self-talk, reframing, etc., work really well when you are teetering on the edge between striving and giving in, but once you’ve taken the step over the cliff, a new strategy needs to be implemented. You don’t need to cope, you need to be snapped out of it.
How Not To Care When People Don’t Like You
When you’re not wasting energy molding your personality to someone else’s to be accepted, you’re more likely to find people who genuinely like you for you, and those relationships are far less exhausting to keep up. Still, it sucks to feel disliked. Here’s how to get through it without falling down a rabbit hole of sadness.
The Frontier Couple Who Chose Death Over Life Apart
Artist Eric Bealer was living the remote, rugged good life in coastal Alaska with his wife, Pam, an MS sufferer, when they made a dramatic decision: to exit this world together, leaving behind precise instructions for whoever entered their cabin first.
I Was a Proud Non-Breeder. Then I Changed My Mind.
When I hear younger women confidently describe how they’ll feel when they’re older, sometimes I feel a pinch of such condescension myself. Not because I think they’ll all necessarily want kids, or that they should have them, but because one tricky thing about your 20s is the need to make decisions for a future self whose desires are unknowable.
Overcoming Despair To Discover The Meaning Of Life
“Sick Souls, Healthy Minds” offers us a lifeline at this moment. As we tell each other what to watch, what to cook, what to read and what exercises to do, John Kaag invites us to ask, together with America’s greatest philosopher, William James, what makes life worth living.
The Diabolical Genius Of The Baby Advice Industry
Every baffled new parent goes searching for answers in baby manuals. But what they really offer is the reassuring fantasy that life’s most difficult questions have one right answer. While there might indeed be one right way to do things, you will never get to find out what it is.
There’s A Better Way To Get Smarter Than Brain-Training Games
Most of the rapid cognitive enhancers currently being peddled are not very effective. Brain-training games like Lumosity and Posit Science (Brain HQ) won’t boost your IQ, but a host of strategies can improve your cognitive abilities one piece at a time.
How Your Diet Affects Your Mental Health
Active people tend to overthink what food is doing for their body—Is keto good for endurance? What’s the perfect post-training macro spread? Butter or no butter in my coffee?—but underthink what it’s doing for their mind. Yet you’ve probably noticed that what you eat impacts what’s going on upstairs.
How Protein Conquered America
My bodega is only a little bigger than my studio apartment, and sells no fewer than 10 kinds of Muscle Milk. Once the niche elixir of powerlifting bros, gulping down a Muscle Milk or three is now part of a “healthy, active lifestyle” — whatever that means.
The Great Fitness Scam
A new report found that Americans spent $264.6 billion dollars on physical activity in 2018, far more than any other nation. And yet, according to the academic journal The Lancet, for all of this spending, we rank 143rd globally for actual participation in physical activity.. How do we break the cycle?
How ‘The Five Love Languages’ Can Improve Your Relationships
Love languages let you in on what makes your partner tick. The idea is: we all express and feel love differently, and understanding those differences can seriously help your relationship. In fact, it’s one of the simplest ways to improve it. This term was coined by longtime relationship counselor Gary Chapman.
To The Driver Who Hit Me And Ran
I was biking home when you barreled into me with your car and left me to die. And I would have died if Tim Gillach, a cyclist and insurance salesman from Colorado’s Front Range, hadn’t caught a fleeting glimpse of my face as he drove past.
How Ketamine Became The Drug Of Choice For Our Dissociated Moment
Technically speaking, ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic, meaning that it numbs your body and makes you feel apart from your environment — like you’re watching your own life happen instead of living it. But that doesn’t begin to capture the weirdness of what it feels like to get high on K.