Do you really know?

Have you ever picked up clothes or random items on a whim, because you were stressed, bored, or just felt like celebrating? That’s what experts call impulse buying. It feels good in the moment, but it often leaves you with regret, and a lighter bank account. On top of that, it fuels overconsumption and harms the environment. So how do you actually resist the urge? Are there any simple ways to stay...

Picture this: your boss asks you to do something that feels unfair or pointless. You disagree… but you go along with it anyway. It happens all the time. Most of us comply simply because we don’t want to risk conflict or consequences. Why is saying no so difficult? But how far can that instinct go? So why don’t we push back more often? Is it just about avoiding trouble? So is disobedience impossibl...

It’s more common than we tend to admit. Some children grow up with parents who are critical, emotionally distant, or unable to empathize. In that kind of environment, attachment bonds don’t always form smoothly. Children may internalize the idea that they don’t deserve affection and that makes it harder to give it back. Add in repeated abandonment, breakups, violence, or addiction, and some childr...

More and more of us are consuming digital content at increased speed. Whether it’s on social media, watching a Netflix series or listening to a podcast like Do You Really Know, speed watching and speed listening are becoming increasingly common. It’s a habit you tend to see more among younger people, who are very active on social media and sometimes speed things up so that they can consume even mo...

£2.99 for biscuits, £6.99 for moisturiser, £49.99 for a mixer. In shops, one small detail stands out: price tags overwhelmingly end in 99. It’s eye-catching, though not exactly convenient for anyone trying to track their spending. Is it really so common? Is that a recent invention? Is that why prices still end in 99? In under 3 minutes, we answer your questions! To listen to the latest episodes, c...

Whether it starts over a sock left on the floor or a political debate that erupts a little too early at the holiday table, conflict is part of life. It’s not that we argue all the time,  it’s that these moments stick with us. Sometimes they clear the air and help us grow; sometimes they shut us down and leave resentment simmering for years. So it’s worth knowing how to argue well. What actual...

Seven minutes, a freight elevator, and an angle grinder, that’s all a small team of robbers needed to steal jewelry from the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery on October 19, 2025. And this isn’t unprecedented: in 1911, the Mona Lisa was stolen by a museum employee and only resurfaced two years later. Faced with that kind of risk, some museums now quietly display reproductions instead of originals. Is this c...

We’re becoming increasingly accustomed to being connected at all times. Thanks to our smartphones, we can even let selected people see exactly where we are. Location sharing is now commonplace, and can be a practical safety tool for couples, friends and families. Still though, it can also be a source of problems, which we’re going to be talking about today. Why have we got into the habit of sharin...

When you reach a certain age, it often feels as though everything is in decline: your body, your memory, your energy.  But what if getting older didn’t have to be a purely downward slope? Research has shown that that idea may in fact be a misconception. That’s right: your intellectual peak may end up coming much later than you expect. Surly our most significant intellectual performances happe...

In many families, some children grow up with the uncomfortable feeling of being less loved than others, or worse, sensing that their parents have a “favorite.” Most parents insist they love their children equally. Yet multiple studies suggest that the majority do, in fact, favor one child. What determines which child becomes the favorite? Is favoritism only about the child’s personality? Can this...

The X platform formerly known as Twitter has often been in the spotlight for the wrong reasons since Elon Musk acquired it in 2022. But recent months have perhaps seen it hit a concerning new low, in terms of seediness at least. Users realised that Grok, X’s in-built AI, could be used to generate nude images of a person, based on an original image of them wearing clothes. How long has this Grok to...

We’ve all heard that reading builds imagination and vocabulary and helps us learn, but there’s more. Research suggests it may even help us live longer. In 2016, Yale University researchers followed more than 3,600 adults over 50 for 12 years, tracking their reading habits and life expectancy. Their finding was striking: people who regularly read books lived, on average, nearly two years longer tha...

Ten-step skincare routines, anti-ageing serums and wrinkle creams are increasingly becoming part of children’s lives. This growing obsession with skincare and appearance, sometimes affecting children as young as nine or ten, is known as ‘cosmeticorexia’  a combination of ‘cosmetics’ and ‘orexia’, meaning appetite or desire. Why are we talking about this now? So, what exactly is the AGCM inves...

In 2024, a French government watchdog estimated that around 500,000 people were involved in cult-like groups, with tens of thousands of children growing up in these environments. While these figures come from France, experts say the patterns are similar in many countries. What is a cult? How can you tell if you’re dealing with a cult ? In under 3 minutes, we answer your questions! To listen to the...

Over the course of a woman’s life, their hormone levels change in ways that can have a real impact on mood and daily routine. For example, it’s pretty well known that libido tends to decline at the time a woman is premenopausal. Now to address that loss of libido, an increasing number of women have turned to testosterone, or T for short, to rekindle their sexual desire. And if you believe accounts...

What are the latest advances in lung cancer treatment? In April 2022, findings from the large scale CheckMate 816 clinical trial were presented to the American Association for Cancer Research. The trial looked into the effectiveness of immunotherapy drug Nivolumab, combined with chemotherapy to treat lung cancer patients. The findings were promising, showing that this particular treatment com...

Lucid dreams are dreams in which you become aware that you are dreaming while you are dreaming. This means that you can recognise that the events and characters in your dream are not real, and that you are actually asleep in your bed. Some people can even control their dreams to some extent, and shape them according to their wishes. Imagine being able to fly, visit exotic places, or meet your favo...

Ever checked the time on your phone or TV set and seen a quirky number like 13:13, 11:11 or 20:20? Well of course you have, but what you may not know is there’s actually a name for such numbers: mirror hours! Basically, when you’re looking at a digital time display, you see a mirror time if the minute number and the hour number are the same. It refers to the symmetry you see on either side of the...

Getting older frightens a lot of people and for some it even becomes an obsession. American multimillionaire and biohacker Bryan Johnson is perhaps the most prominent example from this day and age.  Now of course some aspects of ageing, including our genes, are totally beyond our control. But still, our everyday behaviour can influence our healthspan, which is the number of years we remain in...

Beauty standards are always shifting. Back in the '60s through the '90s, especially in the West, the ideal body for women was all about being slim, think long, lean silhouettes and flat bottoms. But by the late '90s and especially in the 2010s, that completely flipped. Celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Nicki Minaj helped usher in a new trend, one that celebrates curves, especially a fuller derri...

When we talk about the Holocaust, most of us immediately think of death camps like Auschwitz or Dachau, chilling symbols of the Nazis’ “Final Solution”. But before they reached that level of industrialised brutality, the Nazis explored other ways to remove Jews from Europe. One plan, both absurd and terrifying, was to send all Jews to the distant island of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. How on ea...

We've all experienced those gut feelings, hunches, or flashes of insight that seem to come from nowhere. But what exactly is intuition, and can it be explained? Even though scientists haven't yet unraveled all of its secrets, intuition isn’t as mysterious as we might think. One expert definition of intuition says that it is: "the universal ability to grasp information in a non-conventional way, ou...

Microwork is paid work which usually involves short and repetitive tasks carried out on a smartphone or computer. It could be identifying objects shown in an image, watching videos, labelling data, translating short sentences or recording one’s voice for example. It can also be charging electric scooters or taking photos of products for an app. It’s as simple as registering on a platform which act...

According to the World happiness report, of the 137 countries they include, the UK has fallen to 19th position. This follows a steady decline over the past few years although they are happier than Lithuania in 20th position and France in 21st position. As ever Finland has continued its winning streak and stays at number one just above New Zealand.  The report combines both subjective well-bei...

Figures from Cancer Research UK show that there are an average of nearly 57,000 new breast cancer cases detected each year in the country. It’s the most common form of cancer, accounting for 15% of all cases. While the vast majority of breast cancer cases are in women, there are actually around 370 diagnoses in men each year too. That’s right; men also have breast tissue around the nipples, so are...