Beginning in April, the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine will no longer be able to provide patients with homeopathic remedies funded by the UK’s taxpayers. This is part of a larger UK crackdown on homeopathy that has gotten underway over the past 18 months. Late in 2016, homeopathy was banned in one of the country’s […]
Behavior
Decision fatigue is real. Decision fatigue is the mental exhaustion and reduced willpower that comes from making many, many micro-calls every day. My modern American lifestyle, with its endless variety of choices, from a hundred kinds of yogurt at the grocery store to the more than 4,000 movies available on Netflix, breeds decision fatigue. But […]
The psychology department is a small, squatty building on the west side of campus. It has a weird exterior, a vaguely geometric set of slats that surround the building, probably to cover up the ailing stucco beneath. You’re five minutes late. With a backpack slung over your back, you hustle down the hall, looking for […]
I published this story at the beginning of 2017, ostensibly as a way to promote my book. But I keep coming back to read it because the study is just so astounding. It’s one of those wonderful moments in science where the tiniest tweak unlocks a whole new world. If you read science magazines – and […]
Today marks the publication of yet another study telling us that our screens are making us miserable. Psychologist Jean Twenge at San Diego State University looked at survey results from more than a million U.S. 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-graders and found that those who spent more than an hour a day gazing into the rectangular […]
Some years ago I attended a beach barbecue in Juneau, Alaska on a gray summer day. The adults drank beer in a ring around a fire where salmon collars sizzled and talked about the price of boats and politics. The kids ran in a mixed-age herd closer to the surf, clambering over driftwood and getting […]
Last night I went out with my kids to see the new Star Wars movie, followed by an hour and a half drive home along rivers and over a Colorado pass late at night. A car or two came by every twenty minutes or so. As my two boys slept in their pillows of jackets, […]
Last Sunday I saw a mountain lion, a full body profile, spotted from a dirt road. Healthy size and age, tail like a rope. By the time we backed up the truck, it was gone, disappeared into a brambly ponderosa forest. I don’t know why, to find tracks, or a scent, I jumped out […]