What's up in
Mind & Meaning
The psychology of ambition, isolation, and meaning under extremes — and what frontier life teaches us about being human.
The human body synthesises roughly 1 gram of creatine a day in the liver and kidneys — and stores about 95% of it inside skeletal muscle
Astronauts returning from long missions can initially struggle to stand, walk, and judge the weight of ordinary objects — because the brain must relearn a gravitational world it once treated as automatic
Thought of the day by Stoic philosopher Seneca: "What is more foolish than refusing to learn, simply because one has not been learning for a long time?"
Spaceflight pushes fluid toward the head, flattening the back of the eye and blurring some astronauts' vision in ways that don't always fully recover
A 2012 University of Westminster study measured horror-film viewers burning about 113 calories on average, roughly a short walk, as fear and jump scares pushed their heart rates higher
Nearly every atom in your body is swapped out over the years, so in a real sense you aren't made of the same material you were a decade ago — yet you feel like the same person
In 2012, researchers mapping census data across England found that communities closer to the coast reported slightly better general health, with the strongest pattern appearing in more deprived areas. Later studies found similarly modest associations with mental health, including better scores among some urban adults living within one kilometre of the sea.
Japan created a national ministerial post for loneliness in 2021, becoming only the second country after Britain to appoint such a minister, after data linked prolonged social isolation to a measurable rise in suicides during the pandemic.
An ant carrying a crumb across your kitchen floor can lift and haul around 50 times its own body weight — the human equivalent of a person carrying a small car up a flight of stairs without slowing down
Quote by Sigmund Freud: “One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”
