Build Yourself a Smarter Meeting
Teamwork is at the very heart of our idea of modern life. From sports to business, it's thought to be the bedrock of success. (Look at...
The Immortality Atlas: Mapping the Human Connectome
The Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci guaranteed his immortality when he literally put his name on the map—at least, if...
The Peak End Rule, or, The Secret to a Winning Colonoscopy
When we consider ourselves as individuals, we tend to think in terms of a single entity with agency. In essence, I take on information...
How Your Chair is Literally Killing You
Granted, when you think about all the things that are slowly killing you, things like second-hand smoke, the chemicals in your food, and...
What Dreams are Made of (or at Least, the Why)
Whatever happened to Sigmund Freud? Of course, the answer is that he died, but not before taking modern science down a fifty-year rabbit...
Performance Hacking Sleep
What is the evolutionary purpose of sleep? Doesn’t it seem like a huge concession to spend a third of your life inactive? Or is it an...
Forgetting to Learn, or, The Paradox of Memory
Memory is a fickle thing. There are times when the important information you need, like an email password, remains just out of your grasp....
How to Not Eat a Marshmallow (Willpower Part Two)
In last week’s post, we learned how Walter Mischel’s famous marshmallow test demonstrated that preschoolers with a willpower strategy...
The Marshmallow Connection: What Determines Success?
Although he didn’t realize it then, when Walter Mischel and his team turned their attention to preschoolers at the Bing Nursery School on...
Shaky Pedestal Syndrome: Why Our Heroes Let Us Down
General Patraeus, Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong, Jonah Lehrer, Tanya Harding: an incomplete list of those who, at the peak of their...
