Deeply Personal Current: Dopamine Fasting 101 Zero Waste on a Budget All Posts Next Dopamine Fasting 101: How to Reset Your Brain in a Hyper-Connected World My wife and I were sitting on the couch the other night, supposedly “relaxing” after dinner. ...
Deeply Personal Current: Nostalgia on a Plate Cats and Empathy All Posts Next Nostalgia on a Plate: Why We Crave Foods from Our Childhood My wife was chopping vegetables when she stopped, knife mid-air, and said: ...
You’re watching a movie. A character reaches for a doorknob. Just as their fingers touch the metal, you wince-because you know what they don’t: someone is waiting on the other side with a knife. Or you’re reading a novel. The protagonist is about to make a terrible decision based on incomplete information. Your chest tightens. You want to shout at them, warn them, stop them-even though they’re ink on paper. ...
On September 1, 1953, a 27-year-old man named Henry Molaison underwent experimental brain surgery to treat his severe epilepsy. The surgery worked. The seizures stopped. But when Henry woke up, he had lost the ability to form new memories. For the next 55 years, until his death in 2008, Henry lived in a perpetual present. Every person he met was a stranger minutes later. Every conversation was new. Every day was the first day of the rest of his life-literally. ...
Have you ever missed your bus stop because you were engrossed in a podcast? Stayed up way too late because you needed to know how the book ends? Felt your heart race during a movie scene even though you knew it wasn’t real? That’s not a character flaw. That’s neuroscience. Stories don’t just entertain us-they hijack our brain chemistry. And understanding how this works can transform you from someone who tells stories to someone who creates irresistible narratives. ...
On November 4, 1970, a social worker in Arcadia, California encountered a girl who appeared to be six or seven years old. She wasn’t six. She was thirteen. She weighed 59 pounds. She couldn’t stand up straight. She couldn’t chew solid food. She couldn’t speak-not a word, not a sound beyond occasional whimpers. She’d been locked in a small room for nearly her entire life. Tied to a potty chair during the day, confined to a sleeping bag in a crib at night. No toys. No conversation. No human interaction beyond someone occasionally bringing food. ...
Dr. P. was a distinguished music teacher and singer who could tell you the exact interval between any two notes you played. He could identify a Brahms sonata from the first three measures. He could conduct a choir through complex harmonies without missing a beat. But he couldn’t recognize his wife’s face. Worse than that-when Dr. P. went to leave the neurologist’s office after his examination, he reached for his wife’s head and tried to lift it off her shoulders. ...
Every few seconds, Clive Wearing wakes up for the first time. He opens his eyes. He looks around. And he experiences what he believes is his first moment of consciousness after years of being unconscious. He writes in his journal: “8:31 AM: Now I am really, completely awake.” A few minutes later, he crosses it out and writes: “9:06 AM: Now I am perfectly, overwhelmingly awake.” Then he crosses that out too and writes: “9:34 AM: NOW I am awake.” ...
In 1941, during a German air raid on Norway, a young woman named Astrid L. was struck in the head by bomb shrapnel. She survived. She recovered. But when she started speaking again, something was wrong. Her accent was different. Not slightly different-completely different. She was Norwegian. She’d lived her entire life in Norway, speaking Norwegian with a Norwegian accent. After the injury, she spoke Norwegian with what sounded like a strong German accent. ...
A man is waiting for his wife outside a restaurant. A woman approaches him. She’s smiling, clearly recognizing him. She starts talking as if they know each other well. He has no idea who she is. He politely engages, trying to figure out from context clues who this person might be. A colleague? A neighbor? Someone from his wife’s social circle? The woman seems confused by his confusion. She touches his arm, says something about “the kids.” ...