Six Scientific Secrets To A Long, Healthy Life
ing is like being enrolled in a subscription service you never signed up for and every month they remove a feature, add a new bug, and raise the price. It begins with Spontaneous Joint Editorializing (SJE): knees and shoulders begin to offer opinions. But, of course, that’s not the end of it. Not only does hair start falling out but it begins arriving in places you never asked for it, never wanted it, never even knew were zoned for hair.…
9 minutes
4 Secrets to Smarter Thinking
2005, Philip Tetlock did a study, “Expert Political Judgment”, where he basically asked, “Hey, what if we tested whether all these Very Important Experts™ were any good at predicting the future?” Surprise: they weren’t. He collected over 28,000 forecasts made by 284 political analysts, economists, foreign policy bigwigs, and all the usual loud-talking necktie people. What Tetlock found (and I’m condensing 20 years of depressing data here) is that the average talking head was terrible at predicting real-world outcomes.…
9 minutes
This Is How To Increase Confidence: 5 Secrets From Research
nfidence, for most of us, is not a steady flame. It’s a tea light in a drafty hallway. You’re feeling good. But then something happens you weren’t prepared for. Or your inner critic begins chattering away. And you make the mistake of listening… Poof. Confidence gone. Your brain starts doing that thing where it narrates your life in real time: You’re standing weird. Your smile is too long. Why are you smiling like that? Stop smiling. Now you’re not smiling…
9 minutes
How To Control Your Dreams At Night: 3 Secrets From Research
e basic premise of sleep is completely insane. Imagine you’re designing a species. You want it to survive predators, adapt, innovate, build complex societies, eventually invent memes. At some point, someone in the cosmic design meeting says: “What if we make them spend a third of their life unconscious and defenseless?” And instead of firing that individual into the sun, the team goes, “Brilliant. Ship it.” But the weirdness doesn’t stop there. Oh no, it gets an exponent. Because we…
9 minutes
This Is How To Avoid Being Scammed: 8 Secrets From Experts
don’t need to tell you that you shouldn’t send $500 to someone claiming to be a stranded astronaut trying to get back to Earth. Or that if some guy calling himself the “Royal Commander of the International Refunds Bureau” asks for your PayPal login, you shouldn’t give it to him. If a stranger texts saying, “Hello, dearest, you seem trustworthy and strong” you know that’s not how people talk. That’s how villains in telenovelas address their enemies before stealing…
10 minutes
This Is How To Save Money On Travel: 6 Expert Tips
avel is wonderful. It promises enlightenment, new experiences, and the smug satisfaction of saying, “Well, when I was in Portugal...” But traveling these days feels a bit like being punched in the wallet. Modern airlines use a combination of arcane rituals, machine learning, and revenge to set prices. There’s a fee for everything short of blinking. Seat reservation? Extra. Cabin baggage? Extra. Want to sit next to the person you love? Better love them from row 32. You suddenly realize…
10 minutes
This Is How To Increase Self-Esteem: 4 Secrets From Research
ere are days when you feel like you can do anything. And then there are other days… Days where your self-esteem is playing hide and seek, and let's just say it's really good at hiding. You're looking for it like, "Come out, come out, wherever you are," and it's under the bed, snickering and reading old issues of "Inadequate Weekly." We hear a lot about how to increase self-esteem. Unfortunately, most of that stuff should be filed under “Hooey and…
9 minutes
This Is How To Feel Better And Achieve Your Goals: 4 Secrets From Research
all reach a point where we feel hopeless. Your inner monologue sounds like a rejected Alanis Morissette lyric and any level of optimism you possessed is now playing varsity level hide and seek. You’re Cinderella’s ugly stepsister in this fairy tale, and those shoes were never meant for you. You could use a little hope. Yeah, the thing people love to tattoo in cursive on their ribcage next to a butterfly. It’s the kind of word that feels like…
10 minutes
