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Mind & Meaning
The psychology of ambition, isolation, and meaning under extremes — and what frontier life teaches us about being human.
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."
The grandparents of Okinawa, Japan, are among the longest-lived humans on Earth. Their grandchildren are dying younger than the rest of Japan. Within a single generation, one of the world's most famous longevity populations has collapsed, in a peer-reviewed finding that has overturned decades of assumptions about the secret to a long life
A small wave breaking on a beach contains more living organisms than the total number of humans who have ever existed on Earth — roughly 10 million bacteria, viruses, and tiny plankton in every milliliter of seawater — meaning every wave that touches the shore carries a population of life that vastly outnumbers every person who has ever lived in the entire history of our species
There is no scientific basis for the seven-day week — unlike days, months, and years, which are tied to the Earth's rotation, the moon's cycle, and the Earth's orbit around the Sun — the week appears to come entirely from ancient Mesopotamian religious tradition, in a piece of structure that has organized the human workforce for roughly 4,000 years
We tend to think money can't buy lasting life satisfaction. But following Swedish lottery winners for up to two decades, one study found big prizes produced a durable rise in how satisfied people felt with their lives — even as the effect on their day-to-day mood proved much fainter
There is an entire continent on Earth that almost no one has ever stood on — Zealandia, a 1.9 million square mile landmass east of Australia, roughly half the size of the continent it sits beside — but 94 percent of it is submerged under the Pacific Ocean, with only the islands of New Zealand and New Caledonia poking above the waves, and it was only formally recognized as Earth's eighth continent in 2017
Many people aim for 10,000 daily steps without realizing the number traces to a 1965 Japanese marketing campaign for the 'Manpo-kei' pedometer
A survey across 142 countries found that about almost a quarter of people felt very or fairly lonely, but the loneliest group was not the old, as many assume: it was young adults aged 19 to 29
A trained dog can detect a single drop of blood diluted in 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools — a sensitivity so extreme that dogs can pick up the molecular traces of cancer in a person's breath — and a 2024 study found them correctly identifying breast, lung, prostate, and colorectal cancer with roughly 94 percent accuracy
We often credit perks and pay for engagement at work, but one analysis found something else mattered more — meeting workers' needs for autonomy, competence and connection, with well-being rising as stress and burnout fell
