Deeply Personal Current: Analysis Paralysis The Uncanny Valley of Empathy All Posts Co-op Games Can Save Your Relationship Analysis Paralysis: The Psychology Behind Why We Can’t Make a Move My wife and I are experts at one thing: overthinking ourselves into complete paralysis. ...
Deeply Personal Current: The Uncanny Valley of Empathy Cooking with an Algorithm All Posts Analysis Paralysis The Uncanny Valley of Empathy: Why AI Therapists Feel ‘Almost’ Human I did something weird last month. ...
Deeply Personal Current: Comfort Food for the Soul Pawns & Paws All Posts Next Comfort Food for the Soul: What We Eat When We Win (And When We Lose) In our home in Finland, food is not just sustenance-it’s our primary love language, our apology mechanism, and our celebration protocol. My wife and I have an unspoken rule: when words fail, we cook. ...
You have 37,482 unread emails. 14,000 photos on your phone (5,000 screenshots you’ll never look at again). A Downloads folder with 2,000 files dating back to 2014. 42 browser tabs open right now. 7 note-taking apps, each with hundreds of notes you’ll never revisit. You tell yourself: “I might need this someday.” You never do. But you can’t delete it. Welcome to digital hoarding-the modern epidemic of keeping everything and finding nothing. ...
In 1951, psychologist Solomon Asch invited college students to participate in a “vision test.” The task was absurdly simple: look at a line, then choose which of three comparison lines matched its length. The answer was obvious. A child could do it. There was no trick, no optical illusion. Asch showed this card to the group: Reference Line: | Comparison Lines: A: | B: ||||| C: || The answer is clearly A. Anyone with working eyes can see it. ...
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. ...
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. ...
Two headlines compete for your attention: A: “Multifaceted approaches to ameliorating socioeconomic disparities” B: “Why poor people stay poor” Both convey similar ideas. But you clicked on B, didn’t you? Or at least your brain wanted to. This isn’t about intelligence or laziness. It’s about cognitive fluency-one of the most powerful forces determining which stories spread and which die in obscurity. What Is Cognitive Fluency? Cognitive fluency is the subjective ease with which our brains process information. ...
It’s 2 AM. You tell yourself “just one more episode” for the third time tonight. The show ended on a cliffhanger, and your brain refuses to let you sleep until you know what happens next. Or maybe you’re at work, supposedly focused on a spreadsheet, but part of your brain is still churning over that unfinished novel you put down this morning. Why do unfinished stories occupy so much mental real estate? The answer lies in a phenomenon discovered in a 1920s Berlin restaurant-and it might be the most powerful tool in a storyteller’s arsenal. ...
In the 1730s, Benjamin Franklin had a problem: a powerful rival in the Pennsylvania legislature hated him. This wasn’t just political disagreement. The man actively opposed Franklin, spread rumors, and worked to undermine him. Franklin needed this rival’s support, but direct persuasion had failed. So Franklin tried something counterintuitive. Instead of doing the man a favor or trying to win him over with charm, Franklin asked his rival for a favor. ...