Do you really know?

Talk of energy has been storming the headlines recently. A long, cold winter is approaching and prices are soaring, due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict... Russia has long been Europe’s main energy supplier, but reducing dependence on Russian energy has now become critical, with many countries putting sanctions or boycotts in place. Meanwhile Russia stands accused of sabotaging gas pipelines...

In June it emerged that Greek police had acquired two long range acoustic devices, designed to discourage migrants from approaching the country's border with Turkey. At the size of a small TV, the cannons don’t look particularly threatening, but are capable of emitting powerful sound waves as loud as a jet plane. An LRAD is an example of a sonic weapon, which is an umbrella term used to cover the...

No matter how prepared you are going into your normal day at the office, spending hours at your desk can get mundane and boring. Before you know it, your mind is wandering and you’ve lost focus... According to a study published by Economist Intelligence Unit in October 2020, a third of working time is lost to distractions. That’s equivalent to a whopping 581 active hours per employee per year. But...

In June 2022, Canadian superstar singer Justin Bieber took to Instagram to reveal that he has a rare neurological disorder called Ramsay Hunt Syndrome. He took a break from his world tour, and would do the same just a few months later, again using social media to tell fans about suffering with exhaustion and needing to “make health the priority”. After trying to restart the tour, he would eventual...

If you’ve ever seen an episode of 1990s series The X-Files, you’ll likely remember Dana Scully as an FBI detective. The character, played by Gillian Anderson for all 11 seasons, was also a graduate in medicine and physics. The combination made for an unprecedented representation of women on TV at the time, with audiences far more accustomed to seeing scientists played by white men. The fields of S...

It was back in January 2002 that euro coins and banknotes were introduced, and the biggest cash changeover in history took place across 12 EU countries. the story of the Euro actually goes much further back than that. It’s intrinsically linked to the very essence of the European Project. In 1946, shortly after the end of World War II, Josef Müller, resistance member, concentration camp survivor an...

Binge drinking is defined as consuming 5 or more drinks for a man, or 4 or more drinks for a woman, in about 2 hours, and the UK has a rather notorious reputation for drinking to excess, especially when abroad. But according to a 2022 survey from Drinkaware, 26 % so nearly a third of 16 to 24-year-olds in the UK are now completely teetotal, meaning they do not drink at all. Add to this that 29% of...

Vitamin D is known as the ‘sunshine vitamin’, and it’s not for nothing. Our bodies make it from cholesterol when exposed to sunlight. The sun’s ultraviolet B rays hit cholesterol in the skin cells, providing the energy needed for vitamin D synthesis to occur. Naturally, during autumn and winter, there’s less sunlight and government advice suggests that everyone should consider taking Vitamin D sup...

Musculoskeletal disorders, like back pain and arthritis, are recognized as occupational diseases in Western countries which have a large office workforce. The UK’s Health and Safety Executive lists some of the causes of these disorders as repetitive work, particularly using the same hand or arm action, carrying out a task for a long time and working with display screen equipment. Pain or stiffness...

You might have heard of ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ a motto with the aim of encouraging us to think about how we consume and consider the impact that buying lots of stuff has on the planet. But now the high end department store Selfridges has launched a new campaign, ‘Project Earth’ to try and change the way we shop: resale, repair, rental and refill is their response to customers' growing demands fo...

The online bullies have come up with a derogatory term for their targets; lolcows. Like cash cows, they are exploited, or milked, for entertainment purposes.  Longstanding American forum Kiwi Farms was shut down by Cloudflare in early September 2022. The reason: an “imminent and emergency threat to human life”, according to the internet infrastructure company. That’s because the forum is pretty mu...

Three days after his army invaded Ukraine, Russian president Vladimir Putin announced he was raising his country’s military nuclear deterrence threat level. He justified the move by citing the economic sanctions placed on Russia by the West, as well as what he called “aggressive statements” from NATO.  Concerns grew further quickly a few days later when Russia shelled Europe’s largest nuclear powe...

It's back to school! Do You Really Know is dedicating a special week to sport. Because moving and doing regular physical activity is important for our physical and mental health! Listen again to our episodes about sport! With many types of personal goals, actually doing the task is only part of the battle. Being mentally prepared is also hugely important and can sometimes be overlooked. Sports and...

It's back to school! Do You Really Know is dedicating a special week to sport. Because moving and doing regular physical activity is important for our physical and mental health! Listen again to our episodes about sport! It doesn’t matter which fancy moisturizers or expensive skincare routine you use, nothing quite matches how your skin looks and feels after an intense workout. Just take a look in...

It's back to school! Do You Really Know is dedicating a special week to sport. Because moving and doing regular physical activity is important for our physical and mental health! Listen again to our episodes about sport! After an intense and sweaty workout, the first thing most of us want to do is jump into the shower to relax our muscles and wash off the sweat. However, that’s not actually the be...

We spend a lot of time in bed and there is nothing nicer than snuggling up in clean fresh sheets but apparently not everyone feels the same. According to a survey commissioned by Pizuna Linens of over 2 thousand people in the UK  it was discovered that 45 percent of single men are happy to wait up to four months to wash their sheets with a horrifying 12 percent only doing it ‘when they remembered’...

It's back to school! Do You Really Know is dedicating a special week to sport. Because moving and doing regular physical activity is important for our physical and mental health! Listen again to our episodes about sport! It’s been labelled the most controversial World Cup in history. Nevertheless, preparations for Qatar 2022 are in full swing and we’re now less than two months away from the start...

It's back to school! Do You Really Know is dedicating a special week to sport. Because moving and doing regular physical activity is important for our physical and mental health! Listen again to our episodes about sport! One of the biggest challenges that we have been facing and will be continuing to face in the coming years is protecting our planet. So it’s worth reflecting on how we can exercise...

Although it is quite usual to find insects in markets in both Africa and Asia it is rather more unusual for people in the West to eat them. However, with increased awareness of animal welfare and environmental concerns around eating meat people are beginning to think more seriously about insects as food rather than something to be swatted. The problem is that a lot of people find eating bugs prett...

It's back to school! DYRK is dedicating a special week to sport. Because moving and doing regular physical activity is important for our physical and mental health! Listen again to our episodes about sport! It's well known that we should all be doing half an hour of moderate physical activity every day. But sometimes our busy lifestyles make it difficult finding thirty consecutive minutes to do ex...

It's back to school! DYRK is dedicating a special week to sport. Because moving and doing regular physical activity is important for our physical and mental health! Listen again to our episodes about sport! CrossFit is a branded fitness regimen which combines weightlifting, gymnastics, endurance and other forms of physical conditioning. The name comes from the constantly varied nature of workouts,...

It may be a little taboo to talk about it, but there are a lot of people out there who, for a variety of reasons, don’t have as much sex as they would like, or arguably need. And there’s actually a form of therapy out there which is specifically designed to help people become more comfortable with sex and intimacy. The idea of sex surrogacy started catching on in Europe in the 2000s, and these day...

According to the American National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, around 9% of the US population are affected by an eating disorder. We’ve all heard of anorexia, bulimia and binge eating, which are among the most commonly diagnosed. But there is also orthorexia. It’s called orthorexia, coming from the Latin words “orthos”, meaning correct and “orexis”, meaning appetite....

How do you like the idea of going to sleep and waking up richer? Sounds pretty sweet, huh? Well believe it or not, sleep streams have actually become a big trend among influencers on streaming platform Twitch.  Influenceurs film themselves asleep, set challenges and go through sleep marathons in interactive formats. Meanwhile, viewers try to annoy the streamer or wake them up by playing videos and...

As we head into the final quarter of 2022, the world’s biggest entertainment franchises are going head to head. HBO struck first with Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, and then Amazon followed up with The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. So it was only a matter of time before Disney got involved. Just as well for them then that they have one of the most lucrative licenses of all t...