Mind & Meaning
June 2026
Every article published in June 2026. 837 articles · Back to full archive
Science
The danger now is not only that the planet is warming, but that the pace of human-driven warming is accelerating — quietly bringing forward the climate deadlines many people assumed were still years away.
Climate Science
A single cotton T-shirt requires approximately 2,700 litres of water to produce, the equivalent of one person's drinking water for two and a half years, and the global fashion industry now consumes approximately 79 billion cubic metres of fresh water annually, much of it drawn from regions already facing severe drought.
Mind & Meaning
Life only ever happens in the present, yet most of us spend it somewhere else — rehearsing the future, replaying the past, half-watching the moment we're actually in
Human Behaviour
Scientists have discovered that air filters can capture DNA floating in the atmosphere and it can identify wildlife, viruses, and even plants linked to drugs nearby
Constellations
An AI trawled through 35 years of Hubble images and found more than 800 strange objects that had never been documented before, showing that one of astronomy’s most famous archives is still hiding discoveries in plain sight
Psychology
Life slowly becomes whatever we give our attention to, whether we notice that choice or not
Mind & Meaning
There's a reason "the good old days" tend to look sunnier in the rear-view mirror. Memory, it turns out, is often kinder than experience ever was
Mind & Meaning
A study of nearly 20,000 people found there's a weekly amount of time in nature linked to real gains in health and wellbeing — and it's probably less than you think
Science
China produces about 99 percent of the world's raw gallium, the metal hidden inside the radio chips of almost every smartphone, and in late 2024 it banned exports of it to the United States as the chip war escalated
Human Behaviour
The kiwifruit was once called the Chinese gooseberry, until New Zealand growers renamed it in 1959 to escape Cold War suspicion, berry tariffs, and a name shoppers did not want
Human Behaviour
Hearing is widely believed to be the last sense to fade, and a 2020 University of British Columbia EEG study on dying hospice patients found their brains still responded to sound in the final hours of unresponsiveness, suggesting the voices of loved ones in the room are genuinely reaching them
Human Behaviour
A 2013 University of Michigan study on rats found that in the 30 seconds after cardiac arrest, the brain produced a surge of high-frequency gamma waves more coherent than during waking life, a neural fireworks display some researchers think could underlie the vivid imagery reported in near-death experiences
Human Behaviour
New Zealand soldiers in the First World War were nicknamed Kiwis by their British counterparts long before the fruit took the name, and by 1919 a giant kiwi bird had been carved into the chalk hillside above Bulford Camp in Wiltshire, where it remains visible today.
Science
Fold a single sheet of paper just 42 times and it would be thick enough to reach the Moon, because each fold doubles the thickness and doubling grows far faster than anyone expects
Psychology