Do you really know?

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...

There are different types of anti-anxiety patches, but one of the most popular ones is from a company called NuCalm, they say that its discs provide the neurochemistry to accelerate the onset of the relaxation response. You may have seen them on celebrities like Meghan Markle, who was recently spotted wearing a NuCalm biosignal processing disc on her wrist. It’s a small blue sticker which claims t...

Incel is a portmanteau word which is short for “involuntary celibate”. These people are single despite themselves, and have abandoned any hope of one day finding love or even sex. The incel community is overwhelmingly made up of young men, who are particularly active online, expressing their hatred towards women. Members of this subculture are obsessed by the fact that women apparently refuse to h...

Avoiding weight gain is just so difficult sometimes, isn’t it? It’s not enough to eat only healthy foods, you also have to combine those healthy foods in the right way.  That’s because when we eat different types of foods together, they interact with each other in our digestive system. Depending on their characteristics, some foods get digested faster  than others. What can happen to our bodies if...

In July 2023, the White House recognised that the United States was facing a “grave threat” in the form of a highly addictive drug called xylazine, introducing a six-point plan in response.  Dealers mix xylazine into supplies of fentanyl, itself a dangerous drug which kills thousands of Americans each year. The street name for xylazine is “tranq” or “tranq dope”, but it has also been called the “z...

A lot of things happen to our bodies when we fall in love. Some of the obvious physical reactions are getting butterflies in the stomach, dilated pupils and a racing heartbeat. Another one that many of us have experienced is losing our appetite.  You know the feeling: you're so smitten with your new crush that you can barely eat a bite. You skip breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and instead spend hour...

The olive theory actually started trending on Tiktok as of early 2023, leading younger generations to get familiar with How I Met Your Mother and one of its most popular relationship theories. At the time of recording, the #olivetheory hashtag has accrued over 130M views. Fans of 2000s sitcom How I Met Your Mother can no doubt remember how the main character Ted Mosby is a hopeless romantic, and s...

The vagus nerve is the longest and most complex of the cranial nerves. It carries both motor and sensory information and supplies reinforcement to the heart, major blood vessels, lungs, stomach, esophagus, and intestines. It is often called the “rest and digest” system, because it helps the body to calm down and conserve energy after a stressful situation. It plays an important role in the parasym...

The idea of carbon footprint dates back to the early 2000s and ironically was introduced by oil giant BP. But recently, a new concept was created: the climate change shadow. It's a relatively recent addition to the ever growing list of terms relating to climate change. American writer Emma Pattee introduced the idea of the climate shadow in a blog post for Mic.com in December 2021, as a more compr...

Have you ever cursed your luck at having a partner who snores, or spends the whole night tossing and turning in bed? It can be tempting to consider abandoning them to go and sleep on the sofa instead. Evidence suggests that sleeping next to someone does indeed have a pretty significant impact on adults’ sleep, whether that’s a partner, family member or even a pet. Researchers from the University o...

During the 15th annual BRICS summit in Johannesburg in 2023, the South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that 6 new member countries would be joining the bloc in 2024.  Historically composed by Brazil, Russia, India and China, the BRICS countries control a significant amount of natural resources, making it a key actor in the world. They started to organize summits as an intergovernmental...

You might think that shampoo is essential for keeping your hair clean and healthy, but there  are other ways to wash your hair that don’t involve harsh chemicals or plastic bottles.  In fact, some people claim that ditching shampoo altogether can make your hair softer, shinier, and more manageable.  Why do we use shampoo in the first place? So, how can you clean your hair without using shampoo? Wh...

Do you have an ex who seems to always get back in touch whenever they’re feeling lonely and have no one else in their sights? Or how about this: Perhaps you had a crush on someone, and that person played along, taking you out from time to time only to eventuall you they’ve finally hooked up with another person they’d been in love with for ages, but never told you about? Well if either of those sce...

For many people, asserting themselves at work is a real challenge. There’s a lot of possible reasons for that, including stress, anxiety, new responsibilities, deadlines, personal issues or a lack of self-confidence for example. But there is an active congitive strategy, actually a pretty simple one, based on the psychological concept of "self-distancing," that could help you overcome these obstac...

Think back to when you were a kid and there was a type of vegetable you simply wouldn’t go near, let alone eat. It might have been broccoli, Brussels sprouts or spinach for example. Or perhaps another type of food like seafood, which now as an adult you actually quite like, or  can tolerate at least. It’s not a coincidence; there are scientific explanations for why our taste preferences evolve wit...

Eating raw fish like sushi and sashimi has never been more popular, whether that’s in restaurants or on supermarket shelves. The good news is that such dishes are rich in fatty acids and vitamins from the A, D, and E groups, which brings a host of health benefits. But on the flipside, they can also be sources of contamination. It’s mostly down to improper handling and storage at seafood markets, o...

Salt is a common ingredient in many foods, and it’s essential for our health. Salt is made up of sodium and chloride, two minerals that help regulate fluid balance, blood pressure, nerve and muscle function.  According to the World Health Organization (WHO), adults should consume less than 5 grams of salt per day, which is equivalent to about one teaspoon. However, most people eat more than that....