Psychology
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.
Human Behaviour
Olive oil flavoured with oregano was recovered from clay jars sealed inside a Greek merchant ship that sank in the Aegean roughly 2,400 years ago during the lifetime of Socrates — meaning the salad dressing sitting on a table at your nearest Mediterranean uses roughly the same recipe
Human Behaviour
When Soviet cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev launched into orbit on May 18, 1991, he was a citizen of the Soviet Union — and when he returned to Earth 311 days later in March 1992, the country that had sent him no longer existed, his home city of Leningrad had been renamed St. Petersburg, and his spacesuit still bore the letters "USSR" and the red Soviet flag he had worn while the world below him quietly stopped existing
Human Behaviour
A Cambridge neuroscientist argues your brain fears not knowing more than it fears pain, and the people most at ease sitting inside that not knowing tend to be among the most creative ones in the room
Human Behaviour
The giant stone statues of Easter Island, some weighing more than 80 tonnes and standing 10 metres tall, were moved kilometres across rough volcanic terrain by groups of 18 people pulling them upright with ropes, because the statues were specifically designed with a forward lean and a wide D-shaped base that turned every step of their transport into a controlled fall
Human Behaviour
By the end of this century, the United States is projected to have more than one million centenarians — people aged 100 or older — for the first time in human history, in a demographic shift driven by sharply falling mortality among nonagenarians, and some demographers now believe that a majority of children born today in low-mortality countries can reasonably expect to reach their hundredth birthday
Human Behaviour
Frances Gerety, the copywriter who coined 'A diamond is forever' in 1947, wrote the line judged the greatest slogan of the 20th century — yet she herself never married
Human Behaviour
The idea that a man should spend two months' salary on an engagement ring was invented by De Beers marketing — in Japan the campaign set the figure at three, rewriting wedding customs where diamond engagement rings had barely existed
Human Behaviour
Quote by Neil deGrasse Tyson: “For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.”
Human Behaviour
Artemis II astronaut Reid Wiseman on spacewalking: "I used to think I was scared of heights — now I know I was just scared of gravity"
Human Behaviour
We keep asking whether humans can survive on Mars and skipping the more important question of whether we should go at all
Psychology
One of the biggest factors in whether a stranger finds you attractive may not be your face, your body, or your clothing — research suggests it is whether you appear to be enjoying yourself in the moment they first see you, with a smile substantially modifying how attractive you appear in the brief seconds when first impressions form
Human Behaviour
The face you see in the mirror every morning is not the face other people see — when researchers show people two photos of themselves, most prefer the mirror-flipped version, while their friends and partners shown the same pair consistently pick the unflipped one, meaning the face you have grown to recognize as your own is essentially the reverse of the one the world has been seeing all along
Human Behaviour
A brain-computer interface has, for the first time, restored fluent everyday speech to a person who had lost it — a man with ALS who had not spoken aloud in years until a small implant from the BrainGate clinical trial began translating his attempts to speak directly into computer-synthesised words, in a result researchers reported in June 2026
Human Behaviour
The 2013 film The Wolf of Wall Street — a movie about financial fraud — was financed in part with money U.S. prosecutors say was stolen from Malaysia's 1MDB national fund
Human Behaviour