Human Behaviour
Human
The universal psychology lane. Stories about how people relate to one another, themselves, and the world — written for readers who are curious about why we behave the way we do. Sister section to Space Psychology.
Psychology
A single sleepless night can raise anxiety levels by as much as 30% the following day, according to neuroscience research — as the brain’s emotional alarm grows louder and one of the regions responsible for keeping it under control becomes less active
Human Behaviour
Roughly 300,000 people took a Facebook personality quiz, but the app ultimately reached as many as 87 million accounts — pulling data from the quiz takers’ friends even though most of those people had never opened the quiz, agreed to participate or knowingly shared anything with it
Human Behaviour
Tigst Assefa’s 2:15:50 women-only marathon world record at London in 2025 would have been the men’s world record until August 1958—an extraordinary measure of how far elite women’s distance running has advanced.
Human Behaviour
The microwave oven traces back to a snack that melted near a Raytheon magnetron in 1945 — Percy Spencer tested the same invisible energy on popcorn and realised a wartime radar component could cook food
Psychology
A Swiss chemist synthesized LSD in 1938 while searching for a respiratory stimulant, decided the compound wasn't interesting enough to pursue, then returned to it five years later and accidentally experienced the world's first known LSD trip
Human Behaviour
Quote by author Ursula K. Le Guin: “It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
Human Behaviour
Britain imports biscuits from Europe while simultaneously exporting British biscuits back across the same borders — economists call it intra-industry trade, and it happens because shoppers don't just want biscuits, they want particular ones
Human Behaviour
Seoul is increasingly becoming a city built for one — nearly four in ten households now have a single occupant, giving rise to solo apartments, restaurants designed for one and an entire vocabulary for eating, drinking and living alone
Human Behaviour
The Chinese diaspora is the largest in the world, with an estimated 50 million people of Chinese descent living outside mainland China — spread across more than 150 countries, many in communities that have persisted for six or seven generations
Psychology
An end-of-life caregiver spent eight years with people in their final weeks, and the regret she heard most often wasn't about what they'd done — it was living the life others expected instead of the one they truly wanted
Human Behaviour
When corn arrived in Europe after 1492, it was hailed as a miracle crop, but eaten the wrong way it made skin crack and peel away in the sun, drove people into dementia and madness, and killed hundreds of thousands, and no one understood why for centuries.
Human Behaviour
Quote by Noam Chomsky: “If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.”
Human Behaviour
The Golden State Killer was identified in 2018 not by a fingerprint or a witness but by a genealogy website where a distant relative had uploaded their DNA without knowing what it would eventually lead investigators to
Human Behaviour
Male Neanderthal pelvises resemble those of modern women more closely than modern men—not because women are “less evolved,” but because modern men may be the anatomical outlier. A new study argues that men evolved forward-shifted hip joints that turn the pelvis into a spring-like shock absorber for long-distance walking.
Human Behaviour