Human Behaviour
June 2026
Every article published in June 2026. 837 articles · Back to full archive
Science
Scientists drilling into sediment beneath the South Pacific Gyre pulled up microbes from seabed layers as old as 101.5 million years. Starved in one of the poorest habitats on Earth, many of the cells were still viable: when given nutrients under oxygen-bearing laboratory conditions, they repaired their metabolism, took up carbon and nitrogen, and began to multiply. They are among the oldest microbial communities ever revived from dormancy.
Science
In 2019, BaFin banned short-selling in Wirecard shares for two months and filed criminal complaints against the Financial Times reporters investigating its accounts, the first time Germany’s market regulator had shielded one listed company that way
Human Behaviour
Rolex is owned by no billionaire or family — a single Geneva charitable foundation has held it since founder Hans Wilsdorf died childless in 1960, making the company effectively impossible to buy
Human Behaviour
Until 1905, wristwatches were considered women's jewelry — a gentleman who wore a timepiece on his wrist was a punchline, a prejudice one orphaned watch clerk decided to bet against
Mind & Meaning
Thought of the day from Stoic philosopher Epictetus: "Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things."
Science
Beneath Oregon’s Blue Mountains, a single honey fungus has been spreading through the roots of the forest for thousands of years, now covering nearly 10 square kilometres. Mostly hidden underground and betrayed at the surface by dying trees and seasonal mushrooms, it is one of the strongest contenders for the largest living organism on Earth.
Black Holes
In 2022 the Event Horizon Telescope revealed the first image of the monster at our galaxy's center, Sagittarius A* — a black hole 4 million times the Sun's mass, sitting quietly 27,000 light-years away the whole time
Constellations
In 2017, the first confirmed visitor from another star system tumbled through the solar system on a path that should have been simple to read, then accelerated slightly as it left without showing the coma or tail of an active comet — a gap that let Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb argue it might be alien technology, a claim most astronomers reject but one that has never quite gone away.
Science
Nearly three kilometres beneath a Canadian mine, geologists found water that may have been isolated in the rock for roughly two billion years — older than animals, plants and almost everything we think of as complex life. The brine was so salty and bitter that, when one researcher tasted it, she was sampling a flavour shaped by a world humans never knew
Mind & Meaning
Many people assume the path to happiness is to want it and aim for it, but some research suggests the opposite can be the case — people who prized happiness most, or were nudged to, often felt less of it, especially when things were going well
Mind & Meaning
Older adults who took a weekly fifteen-minute walk for eight weeks felt measurably better, but the difference came down to one instruction: those told to seek out small moments of awe reported more gratitude and compassion and less daily distress
Mind & Meaning
Many tend to assume the mind dims as the years pass, but when researchers tested how people reasoned through conflict, adults aged 60 to 90 reasoned more wisely than the young
Psychology
Quote by Carl Jung: "Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible."
Mind & Meaning
Thought of the day from Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius: "No one loses any other life than this which he is living, nor lives any other than this which he is losing."
Science