Awkwardness is ultimately a form of anxiety – often an uncomfortable, self-conscious feeling that the social order has been punctured in some small way. Yet there can be something quite funny about ...

A magazine to help you understand your self and live well ...

Cramming before exams, rereading notes obsessively and highlighting entire textbooks may feel productive, but research suggests these popular study strategies often fail to deliver lasting learning.

The sense that a dead person is still with us is both eerie and common: can we find a naturalistic explanation for it?

My first camera was a small camcorder – about the size and shape of an iPod – that could upload videos straight to YouTube. For a pre-teen from the New York City suburbs in 2009, it felt like the ...

The thought experiment known as Newcomb’s paradox pits participants against a supercomputer with near-perfect predictive ...

The way gambling is portrayed in the movies or in TV ads, it usually looks like a lot of fun. It’s exciting, and there’s often a social buzz. Maybe your own experiences with gambling started out this ...

The early Chinese philosophers knew that a healthy mind comes from a harmonious community, not a matter for individuals alone Mental illness is often thought to be a matter of individual disorder.

We used an electric-shock dilemma to test the strength of people’s moral principles when faced with real-world complexities You enter a quiet laboratory room. Three people sit silently on chairs, ...

Though a tramp and a misfit, Chaplin’s world fit him like a glove. His life of contingency appealed to the émigré Benjamin ...

The great historian came of age at the end of British rule in India. Now 94, she continues to defy a regime determined to forget the pluralism and dissent of India’s past Her science revealed that ...

A magazine to help you understand your self and live well ...