Do you really know?

If you've ever strolled down the dairy aisle of your local grocery store, chances are you've come across these little tubs of Icelandic goodness. Skyr yoghurt has really grown in popularity in the last five to ten years. But is it really as healthy as it’s touted to be, or is its reputation down to marketing hype?  It's a traditional Icelandic yogurt, which is said to have been brought to Iceland...

How our brains work during dreams is as fascinating as it is mysterious. Dreams can be hard to predict, and sometimes of course we end up having nightmares. Wouldn’t it be nice to have some control over what happens in our dreams? Well, as it turns out it may actually be possible to some extent. Well controlling dreams fully is a bit of a stretch. But according to neuroscience researchers from the...

Have you ever noticed a man explaining something to a woman in a supremely confident way which suggests he absolutely knows more than her about the subject? Well, there’s a term for that, which is mansplaining. A recent thread on parenting forum Mumsnet invited women to share their worst examples of mansplaining. Among them were patronising explanations of the offside rule, a gas man telling a qua...

Let’s be honest, sleeping with an open mouth isn’t the most graceful of images, but in reality it’s pretty common. If you’ve ever woken up with a dry mouth or a puddle of drool on your pillow, maybe it happened to you. One of the reasons is because the muscles in our face stay tense throughout the day, but relax when we go to sleep. People sleep with their mouths open when they breathe through the...

According to the government, air pollution is the “largest environmental risk to public health”, and accounts for between 28,000 and 36,000 deaths each year. But did you know that the air you breathe might be impacting not only your physical health but also your mental well-being? It's the largest environmental risk to public health because harmful pollutants like fine particulate matter, ammonia...

Do you ever feel frustrated about work dominating your life? Maybe in your free time, you try to make up for that by enjoying yourself and having a busy social life. You go to the cinema, fit in a workout and so on. But these activities sometimes end up putting more pressure on you than the pleasure you get out of them. What if I told you you could have a thoroughly satisfying evening, without it...

You may know Hugh Jackman as the star of X-Men, The Greatest Showman, and Les Misérables, but did you know that he has a secret to success that involves working less, not more? That’s right, Hugh Jackman follows the 85% rule, an unofficial guide to life that says we should try hard at things, but not too hard. In other words, we should aim to work at 85% of our capacity, rather than 100%. But why...

In January 2021, the European Parliament approved a “right to disconnect” policy which passed relatively unnoticed in the midst of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. This resolution recognises workers rights to switch off outside of working hours, in order to protect their mental health, wellbeing and private lives. A Eurofound survey estimated that one third of all workers were working remotely last...

In April 2023, Bloomberg.com published an article entitled "Tiktok’s Algorithm Keeps Pushing Suicide to Vulnerable Kids” in which it explained that Tiktok was facing a “flood of lawsuits” due to teen suicides that the victims’ parents blamed on the social media company. So if a user interacts with or views suicide-related content, even out of curiosity, the algorithm may suggest more of such mater...

According to a study conducted by the Statistic Brain Research Institute in 2016, 74% of the global population feels uncomfortable speaking in front of an audience. That might be an oral exam at school, a presentation at work, or even making a toast at a birthday party for example. The symptoms are often the same: sweaty palms, shortness of breath and a racing heart. You may feel like you’re froze...

According to the British Coffee Association, we drink around 98 million cups of coffee per day in the UK. That’s around one and a half cups for every single person in the country! It’s said that drinking coffee in the evening or even late afternoon has a negative impact on sleep quality, but a lot of people do so anyway. Coffee contains various molecules, such as antioxidants and caffeine, which h...

According to Chinese media outlet The Sixth Tone, butler cafés are enjoying impressive success. They’ve been springing up all over big cities since 2021. In China, an interesting trend has been catching on. An increasing number of women are paying for male companionship in establishments known as butler cafés. Review sites list dozens of outlets offering butler services. And how do they work? Is i...

Today we’re talking about a diabetes medicine which has gained a reputation for leading to weight loss. Ozempic became popular among Hollywood celebrities for its appetite-suppressing properties. Elon Musk has tweeted about it three times, giving it part of the credit for his having lost 30lb in late 2022. Over on Tiktok, users have also been singing Ozempic’s praises for a while now, with the has...

AI is transforming many industries and sectors, from manufacturing to healthcare, from education to entertainment which will inevitably affect the way we work. But will AI replace humans or create new opportunities? Artificial intelligence, or AI, is the ability of machines to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as recognizing faces, understanding speech, or making decisio...

Having grossed more than $40 billion over the years, Pokémon is the second-biggest franchise in video game history, surpassed only by Mario. It has sold 370 million copies-and shows no sign of letting up.  In 2022, Pokémon Legends of Arceus was released on Nintendo Switch. The latest instalment in the video game series aims to breathe new life into a licence which has been labelled conservative in...

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...

Let's be honest: being productive at work on Fridays can be a real challenge. A 2019 study by Accountemps found that Friday was the least common choice for American workers when naming their most productive day of the week. The slump is likely down to having worked hard over the first four days of the week, as well as thinking ahead to the weekend. What’s more, your colleagues are in the same fram...

Water footprint matters because scientists have calculated that the climate crisis makes drought 20 times more likely, while the UN predicts that demand for fresh water will exceed supply by 40% by 2030.  You might think that you only use water when you drink, cook, wash, or flush the loo, but actually, you use much more water than that. According to Water UK, the average person in the UK uses  14...

Each of us has our own unique experience of social bonds, influenced by our childhood, previous relationships, and personality. And there’s actually a psychological theory that helps explain how we experience our relationships: attachment theory. In psychology, attachment is the strong bond between an individual and an "attachment figure." In most cases, our first attachment figure is the parent w...

The SeptemberSurge hashtag has accrued 12.9M views on the platform at the time of recording. The trend suggests that September is the ideal time to find a job. You worked for hours on perfecting your CV and cover letter. You've already applied for ten different jobs at ten different companies. But despite having all the right credentials, you’re just not hearing back from anyone. Maybe the problem...

Some expired food products are easy to identify, due to an unpleasant smell, mould, swollen packaging or abnormal colour for example. But others show no visible changes in texture, colour, or smell. In such cases, you might well ask yourself if the item is still safe to consume. To begin with, it's important to note that some products don’t expire, as long as they’re stored in the right conditions...

Regular listeners will remember how astrology has undergone somewhat of a revival in recent years. Knowledge of terms like “Saturn return” and “retrograde Mercury” is now actually pretty common, in particular among young people.  The topic of today’s episode actually blends astrology with the modern insights of psychology. The idea behind astropsychology is that the positions and movements of cele...

House hushing is a decluttering method that aims to create peaceful spaces in your home by reducing visual noise. Visual noise refers to anything excessive, jarring, or inharmonious in your environment, such as clutter, mismatched colors, or loud patterns. According to interiors blogger Myquillin Smith of The Nester, "Everything in your room has a voice… taking up visual, physical and even emotion...

Have you ever noticed how your eyelids tend to start twitching at the end of a long day, or when you haven’t got enough sleep the previous night? Well, first of all there’s no need to panic, it’s actually a benign phenomenon. It’s known as benign fasciculation syndrome, or myokymia. But still there are some things you can do about it. What can be done to avoid this? What if the problem persists ov...

According to a YouGov study from 2022, 20% of Brits sleep naked. Men are actually more likely to do so than women, with a rate of 25% compared to 15%. And those who do so tend to talk up the health benefits. For example, science suggests that sleeping naked might help regulate your body temperature more effectively. Our bodies naturally fluctuate throughout the night, and wearing heavy pajamas can...