Youth Feel Pressured to Maintain Happiness Façade

Donna Freitas in her thought-provoking book The Happiness Effect, argues that the real downside of social media is that it demands fake happiness. She ...

Every Contact Leaves a Trace

In his beautiful TEDx talk, John Sutherland, an officer in London's police department, explains a principle in forensic science called Locard's ...

Competitive Chickens Spend Time Fighting Not Producing

An evolutionary biologist at Purdue University named William Muir studied chickens. He was interested in productivity—I think it's something ...

Girl Had 50 Questions for Father, but didn't want Answers

An episode of the This American Life podcast explored the touching relationship of a single dad, Matt Salyer, and his daughter, Rosie. When she was nine-years-old, ...

Kids Try to Describe Love to an Illustrator

It can be difficult to find words that properly articulate the rush of feelings and emotions that accompany being in love—for adults, at least. ...

Middle-Aged Men Biggest Threat: Loneliness

Dr. Richard S. Schwartz, a Cambridge psychiatrist who has studied the problem of loneliness in America, notes that over four decades of studies have shown ...

College Admissions Committee Accepts Recommendation by School Custodian

Rebecca Sabky, an undergraduate admissions counselor at an Ivy League School, reads over 2,000 college applications every year. She writes: "The ...

Heartbreak Looks Like Drug Withdrawal in the Brain

A few years ago, Yeshiva University neuroscientist Lucy Brown and her research team distributed flyers across several campuses in the New York area to ...

Has Romantic Love Become an Idol?

Is it possible to make an idol—or even a whole religion—out of romantic love? Consider the lines from these popular songs:

Gonna build my whole ...

Psychologists Say Self-Justification Chokes Love Out Of Relationship

In their book Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson describe how a fixation on our own righteousness ...