How do you get ahead at school? Well, most researchers will point confidently to two key qualities. One is intelligence. Being able to understand the concepts of what is being taught is a pretty good way of measuring how successful a student will be. The second skill is conscientiousness, or
Really? The world already seems like a pretty angry place, why does it need more people already? Bear with me. Before we start, it's important to separate violence, hostility and aggression from anger. Those first three things are not what we're talking about. Anger is an
Here's a puzzler: why did a game where the aim is to create a virus so deadly it kills the global population before humans can develop a vaccine have the highest number of downloads this year? That's exactly what happened with Plague Inc, a game you
These are trying times. The world is heaving under the pressure of seismic events: the end of a global pandemic, global warming, the deep, silent currents of the global economy and its ability to shock countries, communities and citizens, seemingly at random. No one is immune to these shifts. But
When I take my dog for a walk on a windy day, she goes bananas. And it's not the usual bananas. It's a very special type of bananas. A banana's bananas. While my dog is an idiot at the best of times, it turns
While we've all been on lockdown, things have been, well a lot quieter. There have been fewer cars on the roads, fewer people (except when you go to buy food), and we've been exposed to less noise. While that has led to many of us feeling,
Loneliness: the subject no one likes talking about, but everyone is aware of experiences in very private, and sometimes devastating ways. At the best of times, there are 1.2 million chronically lonely people in the UK, with 500,000 going five or six days without speaking to anyone. These
In a bad mood? Go for a walk. We all know that changing location is good for us. In my freelance days I would tour five coffee shops across a normal working day to "keep things interesting" (read: I couldn't stand the guilt of nursing one
I try anything to avoid being bored. My phone is the first port of call. If that doesn't suffice, I'll haphazardly try to reorganise what's on my desk. If that fails, I'll go annoy the dog. You get the picture. It'
If there's a word that most aptly sums up the age we live in, it'd probably be "anxiety". That word has become common parlance for those moments we feel overwhelmed, uncertain, and out of control. In the NHS Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey, it said
Everyone is really anxious right now. In the US, it's the most common mental health disorder, affecting 18.1 percent of Americans each year and nearly one-third of Americans over their lifetimes. In the UK, it's one in six people, according to the NHS Adult Psychiatric
Ever seen the Virgin Mary in a slice of toast? Probably not. But a few years ago, Diane Duyser from Chicago was so convinced she'd found a woman in a cheese toastie, a casino paid her $28,000 to buy the sandwich and display it for the world