Human Behaviour
May 2026
Every article published in May 2026. 156 articles · Back to full archive
Science
Stanford scientists just reversed memory loss in old mice by changing their gut bacteria, and the same vagus nerve devices it points to are already FDA-cleared for other conditions
Human Behaviour
Nobody really talks about why the most reliable person in any family often goes quiet by their late fifties, and for many it isn't that they stopped being needed, it's that being dependable got mistaken, somewhere along the way, for not having needs of their own
Internet Space
Psyche Probe to Slingshot Past Mars, Tuning Instruments En Route to Metal Asteroid
Internet Space
Shadow-Earth-053: How Beijing Fused Espionage and Dissident Hunting Into One Campaign
Human Behaviour
Adults who keep the gas tank above half full, the pantry stocked beyond reason, and a little cash hidden in a drawer often grew up around people who knew what it felt like to run out
Human Behaviour
The funniest person in a friend group may be the most tired by the end of the night, because being entertaining can start to feel like the price of admission
Human Behaviour
The hardest part of having few people who truly know you isn’t the loneliness - it’s realizing your self-sufficiency convinced everyone you didn’t need them
Human Behaviour
Adults who replay conversations for hours afterward aren't always overthinking, they may have learned early that the wrong tone or wrong word could have consequences
Human Behaviour
Adults who keep birthday cards, voicemails from people who have died, and ticket stubs from ordinary nights aren't always just sentimental, they may have learned how quickly an ordinary life can become the thing you'd give anything to revisit
Psychology
People who browse social media but never comment, engage, or post usually aren't isolated — they have rich inner lives and close relationships maintained almost entirely offline, and the assumption that engagement on these platforms is the measure of social health is something younger users believe and older users have learned to politely doubt
Psychology
You know someone is aging remarkably well when they've stopped being interested in whether they're being looked at — the small, decades-long checking of the reflection, the casual self-monitoring in store windows, the half-second after a compliment to verify it — has quietly retired, and the absence of that interior labor is what gives their face the quality the rest of us are trying to describe when we say someone looks well
Psychology
Retirees with no close friends often aren't lonely in the way the world assumes — many of them are recovering from forty years of being surrounded by relationships that required them to be useful rather than known, and the quiet of late life is the first time they've heard themselves think without performing
Psychology
The most painful kind of loneliness isn't being alone — it's being with people who have known you for years and still don't quite see you
Psychology
People who grew up in the 60s or 70s are often praised by their adult children as having been "tough" — and the painful late-life recognition is that toughness was the family's word for a child who had figured out how to survive the absence of a curious adult, and the praise that arrives now is the same praise that was used at six to keep the child from asking for what they actually needed
Psychology