People often think they know what causes chronic depression. Surveys indicate that more than 80% of the public blames a “chemical imbalance” in the brain. The unbalanced brain chemical in question is serotonin, an important neurotransmitter with fabled “feel-good” effects. But the causes of depression go far beyond serotonin deficiency.
In a recent interview on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” which has an estimated audience of 11 million listeners per episode on Spotify, a guest from Alaska presented an explosive discovery: There are tens of thousands of priceless woolly mammoth tusks lying on the river floor. “I’m going to start
When the doctor in Alabama saw what a hornet sting had done to Eli Schlageter, his advice to Eli’s parents was unequivocal: Get an EpiPen. But they were stunned to learn that a single dose of the lifesaving drug, used to treat severe allergic reactions, cost $800 — even with
Earth’s inner core has recently stopped spinning, and may now be reversing the direction of its rotation, according to a surprising new study that probed the deepest reaches of our planet with seismic waves from earthquakes. The results suggest that Earth’s center pauses and reverses direction on a
Eleven pairs of shoes were dangling over the New York City skyline. It was September of 1932, as the Great Depression was reaching its height. Unemployment and uncertainty could be felt throughout the city and the entire country. But on West 49th Street, a pillar of hope was under construction:
Last September, Swiss cheesemaker Beat Wampfler and a team of researchers from the Bern University of Arts placed nine 22-pound wheels of Emmental cheese in individual wooden crates in Wampfler’s cheese cellar. Then, for the next six months each cheese was exposed to an endless, 24-hour loop of one
Unlike what history tells us medieval women were like, these "trobairitz" or female troubadors openly criticized men and even made fun of their romantic advances. They felt no need to submit or be meek simply because society expected it of them. Some of them, such as Comtessa de
The widespread use of colorful terms like “bomb cyclone” and “atmospheric river,” along with the proliferating categories, colors and names of storms and weather patterns, has struck meteorologists as a mixed blessing: good for public safety and climate-change awareness but potentially so amplified that it leaves the public numb to
A professor of evolutionary biology explains: "We inherited the major nerves we use in breathing from fish. We became heir to this design from fishy ancestors with gills closer to the neck, not a diaphragm well below it. The characteristic pattern of muscle and nerve activity of hiccups occurs
Singer Nick Cave has dissected a song produced by the viral chatbot software ChatGPT that was supposedly written in the style of Nick Cave, calling it “bullshit” and “a grotesque mockery of what it is to be human." Writing in his newsletter the Red Hand Files on Monday, Cave
Richard Dadd was a young British painter of huge promise who fell into mental illness while touring the Mediterranean in the early 1840s. Among the symptoms of Dadd’s illness were delusions of persecution and the receipt of messages from the Ancient Egyptian deity Osiris. He spent over forty years
Just after Christmas, the writer Hanif Kureishi was taking a long walk in Rome, where he and his wife, Isabella D’Amico, were spending the holiday, when he suddenly collapsed onto the sidewalk. He fell awkwardly, twisting his neck and grievously injuring the top of his spine. Taken to the