In the 17th century, the wealthy people of Scotland would escape to the small town of Moffat for its healing sulfurous springs. Today, people appreciate Moffat for another kind of healing escape…into darkness.
That’s right. The healing power of the dark of night is a thing, not only for people but for the planet.
If you’ve ever had the bounty of sitting out under the stars far away from city lights, you know how magical it can be to gaze at the night sky, but there are benefits to natural darkness that go far beyond enjoying the aesthetic beauty of space. That’s the premise behind Dark Sky Communities.
Moffat became an official Dark Sky Community in 2016 after it invested in changing the town’s lighting to prevent light pollution. Now it’s an ideal place for stargazing, with a community observatory housing a state-of-the-art telescope and townspeople dedicated to preserving the night sky. Moffat was one of the first Dark Sky Communities in Europe and is one of just 38 around the world as of January 2023.
What exactly is a Dark Sky Community and why does it matter?
The International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) began designating places around the world, from natural environments to cities and towns, as Dark Sky Places in 2001 as a way of recognizing “excellent stewardship of the night sky.” Dark Sky Places preserve and protect the dark through responsible lighting policies and public education about the importance of reducing light pollution. A Dark Sky Community is a legally organized city or town that adopts outdoor lighting ordinances that reduce light pollution and undertakes efforts to educate residents about the importance of dark skies.
Darkness matters—a lot. Not only does light pollution make it harder to see the beauty of the night sky, but it also has a negative effect on wildlife and ecosystems. Many animals, from insects to migratory birds to nocturnal animals rely on the natural rhythm of sunlight and darkness, and artificial light can disrupt their natural behaviors, sometimes to deadly effect. Light pollution also has a detrimental impact on plants, disrupting the circadian rhythm of certain pollinators and leading to reduced plant-pollinator interactions.
Too much artificial light at night can impact human health as well, as light messes with our own circadian rhythms. It’s also just a waste of energy when lights are left on unnecessarily. The IDA estimates that around 30% of outdoor lighting is wasted, just in the U.S. alone. The Artificial Light at Night (ALAN) Research Literature Database provides a wealth of scientific literature on all aspects of artificial light at night research.
But as much as science tells us about the importance of reducing light pollution, there’s also what the IDA refers to as our “night sky heritage.”
The night sky has inspired scientists and poets alike throughout human history. Canva
The IDA website explains:
“Until recently, for all of human history, our ancestors experienced a sky brimming with stars—a night sky that inspired science, religion, philosophy, art and literature, including some of Shakespeare’s most famous sonnets.
The natural night sky is our common and universal heritage, yet it’s rapidly becoming unknown to the newest generations.
Van Gogh painted his famous “Starry Night” in Saint Rémy, France, in 1889. Now, the Milky Way can no longer be seen from there. If he were alive today, would he still be inspired to paint “Starry Night”?
Experiencing the night sky provides perspective, inspiration, and leads us to reflect on our humanity and place in the universe. The history of scientific discovery and even human curiosity itself is indebted to the natural night sky.
Without the natural night sky we could not have:
Navigated the globe
Walked on the Moon
Learned of our expanding universe
Discovered that humans are made of stardust”
Our relationship with natural darkness is both practical and poetic, but in a world full of lights and screens, most of us probably don’t it as much thought or care as we should. That’s the whole purpose of naming and certifying Dark Sky Places.
The IDA shares that as of January 2023, there are 201 certified Dark Sky Places in the world, including 115 Parks, 38 Communities, 20 Reserves, 16 Sanctuaries, 6 Urban Night Sky Places, and 6 Dark Sky Friendly Developments of Distinction.
You can find the list of Dark Sky Communities here and an interactive map of all official Dark Sky Places here.
Let’s all do our part to turn off lights and limit light pollution for the good of people and our planet.
An Operation Smile volunteer reverses an oxygen mask so a child with a cleft condition can blow a bubble for the first time in Guadalajara, Mexico. (Operation Smile Photos)
For thousands of children born with cleft conditions, Operation Smile provides simple, playful tools—like bubbles—to strengthen the skills they need to speak and thrive.
While a bottle of bubbles might seem out of place in a hospital setting, you might be surprised to learn that, for thousands of children around the world born with cleft lip and palate, they can be a helpful tool in comprehensive cleft care. Lilia, who was born with cleft lip and palate in 2020, is one of the many patients who received this care.
As a toddler, Lilia underwent two surgeries to treat cleft lip and palate with Operation Smile’s surgical program in Puebla, Mexico. Because of Operation Smile’s comprehensive care, it wasn’t long before her personality transformed: Lilia went from a quiet and withdrawn toddler to an exuberant, curious explorer, babbling, expressing herself with a variety of sounds, and engaging with others like any child her age.
Lilia is now a healthy five-year-old, with the same cheerful attitude and boundless energy. Her progress is the result of care at every level, from surgery to speech therapy to ongoing support at home—but it’s also evidence that small, sustained interventions throughout it all can make a meaningful difference.
Lilia at age 1, before surgery, and at age 5, 4 years post-surgery
Cleft Conditions: A Global Problem
Since 1982, Operation Smile has provided cleft lip and cleft palate surgeries to more than 500,000 patients worldwide with the help of generous volunteers and donors. Cleft conditions are congenital conditions, meaning they are present at birth. With cleft lip and palate, the lip or the roof of the mouth do not form fully during fetal development. Cleft conditions put children at risk for malnutrition and poor weight gain, since their facial structure can make feeding challenging. But cleft conditions can have an enormous social impact as well: Common difficulties with speech can leave kids socially isolated and unable to meet the same developmental milestones as their peers.
Surgery is a vital step in treating cleft conditions, but it’s also just one part of a much larger solution. Organizations like Operation Smile emphasize the importance of multi-disciplinary teams that provide comprehensive, long-term care to patients across many years. This approach, which includes oral care, speech therapy, nutritional support, and psychosocial care, not only aids in physical recovery from surgery but also helps children develop the skills and confidence to eat easily, speak clearly, and engage in everyday life. This ensures that each patient receives the full range of support they need to thrive.
Marie, 11 months, with her mother at Operation Smile Madagascar before her cleft surgery (Operation Smile Photos)
A Playful (and Powerful) Solution
Throughout a patient’s care, simple tools like bubbles can play a meaningful role from start to finish.
Immediately before surgery, children are often in a new and unfamiliar environment far from home, some of them experiencing a hospital setting for the first time. When care providers or loved ones blow bubbles, it’s a simple yet effective technique: Not only are the children soothed and distracted, the bubbles also help create a sense of joy and playfulness that eases their anxiety.
Milagros Rojas, a volunteer speech therapist in Peru, using bubbles in a screening with a patient. (Operation Smile Photos)
In speech therapy, bubbles can take on an even more important role. Blowing bubbles requires controlled airflow, as well as the ability to form a rounded “O” shape with the lips, which are skills that children with cleft conditions may struggle to develop. Practicing these skills with bubbles allows children to gently strengthen their facial muscles, improve breath control, and support the motor skills needed for speech development. Beyond that, blowing bubbles can help kids connect with their parents or providers in a way that’s playful, comforting, and accessible even for very young patients.
Finally, bubbles often follow patients with cleft conditions home in the “smile bags” that each patient receives when the surgical procedure is finished. Smile bags, which help continue speech therapy outside of the hospital setting, can contain language enrichment booklets, a mirror, oxygen tubing, and bubbles. While regular practice with motor skills can help with physical recovery, small acts of play help as well, giving kids space to simply enjoy themselves and join in on what peers are able to do.
Bubbles at Home and Beyond
Today, because of Operation Smile’s dedication to comprehensive cleft care, Lilia is now able to make friends and speak clearly, all things that could have been difficult or impossible before. Instead of a childhood defined by limitation, Lilia—and others around the world—can look forward to a childhood filled with joy, learning, discovery, friends, and new possibilities.
CTA: Lilia’s life was changed for the better with the care she received through Operation Smile. Find out how you can make an impact in other children’s lives by visiting operationsmile.org today.
Roadkill. Car crashes. Sickening news stories. Talking about death. Even doomscrolling endlessly. Many of us find that it’s the most unappealing sights and topics that pique our interest the most.
It’s a phenomenon called “morbid curiosity,” and even though it’s perfectly natural, it’s a source of shame for a lot of people. It’s easy to feel like there’s something wrong with you for not being able to resist reading about a murder or craning your neck to look at roadkill. Psychologists say otherwise.
Morbid curiosity has been studied for decades
Morbid curiosity has long been understood as an evolutionary mechanism. But our grasp of its function, and where it comes from, has evolved over time.
In 1986, one of the first published papers on morbid curiosity introduced a scale known as CAME: Curiosity About Morbid Events. Early research like this study focused on the kinds of people who were interested in death and things that can lead to death, rather than the why. It was viewed as a trait of people who sought thrills and stimulation.
Later theories began to link morbid curiosity to our will to survive. Some researchers posited that morbid activities—say, watching a violent horror film—were a way to “practice” the act of being mortal while still being safe. In other words, it’s a rehearsal or a test-run that prepares us for more life-threatening situations.
Later still, psychology began to understand that morbid curiosity could be related to our ancestors’ need for threat detection. A dead animal could indicate that there’s a predator nearby, for example, so it would make sense that we’d be drawn to look at it and not away for our own safety. Scientists were interested in how this mechanism could override our natural sense of disgust.
But there were gaps in all of these theories that couldn’t explain all the different forms morbid curiosity can take.
New paper makes key distinctions about our morbid fascinations
A paper in the Psychological Review builds on previous research through an evolutionary lens.
David S. March argues that morbid curiosity isn’t just about thrill-seeking, fear management, or even survival. It’s a combination of many of these things; a concept he calls “resolving ambiguity.”
Simply put, when something is related to death or danger, we want to know more about it. It could mean that a predator is nearby, but it could also be an opportunity: a dead animal, to use the example again, could also have been a food source for earlier humans.
It’s a theory that helps unify all the ones that came before, and it helps explain why our morbid curiosity takes many forms. It’s not just roadkill and horror movies; it’s also doomscrolling and true crime. It’s natural, and evolutionary, for us to be interested in anything that might contain survival-relevant information.
One study referenced in Psychology Today found that true crime listeners, for example, were adept at paying attention to and remembering tricks potential victims used to escape or spot a threat before they got hurt. That’s the kind of survival relevant information we can glean by not shying away from things that would otherwise trigger disgust or fear.
March’s new theory has yet to be put to the test. It’s a new theoretical model rather than a revealing new dataset. But it changes the way we think about our own morbid curiosities and, hopefully, helps reduce any feelings of shame we might experience.
Being drawn to murders and roadkill and the worst news stories imaginable doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. It’s just your brain seeking to make sense of all the information available, reduce ambiguity, and find any and all information that might later help you survive.
There are many reasons why most of us struggle with self-doubt, and much of it has nothing to do with our own choices. Self-doubt is often a symptom of being raised by hypercritical parents, and it can also be caused by trauma or bullying in school.
For others, self-doubt can stem from negative self-talk, perfectionism, unrealistic expectations, or good old-fashioned overthinking. Self-doubt can severely limit how we show up in the world by preventing us from pursuing our dreams, taking chances, and reaching our full potential.
How to overcome self-doubt
In a recent appearance on The Mel Robbins Podcast, Dr. Shadé Zahrai explained how a clear acknowledgment of our doubts, paired with a simple practice, can help us become more self-assured and confident. Zahrai is a former lawyer who transitioned into a self-leadership expert, researcher, and author of Big Trust.
How do you accept yourself if you don’t feel good about yourself? According to behavioral researcher and confidence expert Dr. Shadé Zahrai, self‑acceptance is something you build through small, intentional shifts in your focus. She says one way you can do that is with this simple but powerful tool called the Care Less List: Write down everything you want to care less about – your appearance, other people’s opinions, the comments your family makes… Then make a Care More list: write down what you want to care more about: growth, showing up, staying true to your values. This practice helps you notice thought patterns that are keeping you stuck, and where you should direct your mental energy instead. @Dr. Shadé Zahrai says it’s one of the most powerful confidence tools you have. If you’re tired of being your own worst critic, this will help you shift your attention back to what actually matters. In this episode of The Mel Robbins Podcast, Dr. Zahrai is teaching you the practical tools to strengthen self‑acceptance, rebuild your confidence, and finally beat self-doubt once and for all. 🎧 “How to Eliminate Self-Doubt Forever & Build Unshakeable Confidence” Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube – search “Mel Robbins Podcast Self Doubt”
It all began with a big question from Robbins: “How do you accept yourself when you don’t like yourself?”
The first step, according to Zahrai, is to clearly acknowledge our self-doubt.
“The first one is that you need to acknowledge that until you accept yourself, nothing will change,” Zahrai said. “A lot of people don’t actually want to acknowledge their fears because they’re afraid that they’ll make them real.”
Zahrai is on point with her advice here, as the influential psychologist Carl Jung once said: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Psychologists call this practice emotional labeling. Putting our feelings into words can reduce activity in parts of the brain associated with fear and increase activity in areas linked to emotional regulation. Dr. Daniel Siegel calls this the “Name it to tame it” strategy.
Step 2: Write a “care less” list
“What you’re gonna do is grab a sheet of paper divided into two columns. On the left, I want you to write down all the things you want to care less about,” Zahrai said. “‘I want to care less about my physical appearance. I want to care less about what people in the street think of me when I walk by. I want to care less about what my family keep saying about my acne or my weight, or how I look.’”
“The next step is, ‘okay, what do I wanna care more about? What do I actually want to shift my attention to?’ Because attention is such a superpower. If we’re not aware of it, we’re going to be stuck in patterns that keep us stuck. But if we can become more aware of it, be a bit more curious about how we’re thinking,” Zahrai said. “This is called metacognition. It’s the ability to think about your thoughts. And it is a fundamental superpower, cause the moment you start thinking about your thoughts, you’re no longer in your thoughts.”
A 2025 study in Frontiers in Psychology found that people with healthy self-esteem are better at “decentering,” or stepping back to view negative thoughts more objectively. Therefore, learning to use metacognition can boost mental health and emotional resilience in people with low self-esteem.
Ultimately, Zahrai’s advice is to clearly identify what you don’t want and focus on what you do. Once we have a clear roadmap for where we want to go and what we want to leave behind, the journey becomes much easier than fighting against the things we’re afraid to confront.
Sagan passed away in 1996, 30 years ago, from pneumonia. He was only 62, and it was a tragedy that he was taken so soon with so much good work left to do.
His final warning was about all of us
Shortly before his death, however, Sagan appeared on “Charlie Rose” and made one final prediction: A dire warning about how susceptible America would be to the next “charlatan” politician who might come along.
Sagan said that Americans’ lack of skeptical, scientific thinking could lead to disastrous consequences down the road. As a man who dedicated his life to science and education, he knew exactly how bad things could and would get.
How accurate was his warning?
Today, we can see the problems that are happening due to America’s anti-science streak whether it’s anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theories, or climate change deniers.
Sagan was right, America will suffer due to a lack of scientific skepticism. Not skepticism of sound, peer-reviewed science, but skepticism of salesmen and frauds and conmen who come along and claim to have all the answers despite having put in none of the work.
“We’ve arranged a society on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology, and this combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is going to blow up in our faces,” he told Rose. “I mean, who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don’t know anything about it?”
He then warned that our lack of critical thinking leaves us vulnerable to those who wish to exploit our ignorance.
“Science is more than a body of knowledge, it’s a way of thinking,” he says. “A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along.”
“It’s a thing that Jefferson lay great stress on. It wasn’t enough, he said, to enshrine some rights in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the people had to be educated and they have to practice their skepticism and their education,” he says. “Otherwise, we don’t run the government, the government runs us.”
What scientific skepticism actually means
One key to remember is that good scientists are inherently skeptical. NASA writes beautifully about the difference between scientific skepticism and the “do your own research” crowd, “Skepticism helps scientists to remain objective when performing scientific inquiry and research. It forces them to examine claims (their own and those of others) to be certain that there is sufficient evidence to back them up. Skeptics do not doubt every claim, only those backed by insufficient evidence or by data that have been improperly collected, are not relevant or cannot support the rationale being made.”
Part of the problem we face in the present is that what constitutes education, including science and technology education, is being debated at the highest levels.
Institutions of higher learning are undergoing attacks by the government, traditional education is being devalued by powerful parts of the political world, and positions that were traditionally filled by public servants with credentialed expertise are now being filled by political loyalists instead.
In fact, many believe there is a concerted effort to discredit science; not just for kicks, but because those with ulterior motives need the populace to be uneducated, uninformed, and skeptical of those that might speak truth to power. This is not a new phenomenon, but it’s reached new levels in the modern age.
Have we already reached that place?
Some might even say we’ve already reached the place Sagan tried to warn us about. The “next political charlatan,” certainly sounds more than familiar to some. Of course, that’s up for debate as well, but regardless, Sagan certainly seemed to have his finger on the pulse of humanity’s tendencies. Hopefully people will heed his words and put science education in its rightful place as part of a thriving democracy.
This article originally appeared six years ago. It has been updated.
If there’s one thing individuals and Fortune 500 companies have in common, it’s the inability to resist a personality test. Employers have long used tests like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or the Enneagram to understand their employees better and build more compatible teams. And people in general seem strangely addicted to quizzes that categorize them by personality type.
It’s long been known that most personality tests aren’t scientifically sound, but that doesn’t stop people from taking them. Part of the reason is that those tests tell us something about ourselves as individuals while also making us feel like we’re part of a group identity. They seem to help us understand ourselves and one another better, and thus appear to “work.”
“Personality tests and profiles take advantage of a weird psychological tendency that also benefits everything from horoscopes to fortune tellers to Buzzfeed quizzes,” Leembruggen said. It’s called the Barnum effect.
“The Barnum effect was named after P.T. Barnum, the iconic and problematic showman known for his ability to captivate, and often manipulate, an audience,” she explained. “The Barnum effect is the phenomenon where if you give someone a personality test, they’re pretty likely to believe that the results are true and accurate, regardless of how hard the profile-maker actually tried. There’s something about taking the test itself that makes an audience more likely to believe the end result.”
Personality tests became popular after WWI, when someone developed an assessment to determine which soldiers might be prone to PTSD. In the decades that followed, personality profiles appeared in popular magazines and psychologists’ offices alike. But researcher and college professor Bertram Forer felt skeptical about their accuracy. He basically said the results weren’t any more specific than saying that a person has opposable thumbs.
Professor Forer’s 1949 personality test experiment
In 1949, he conducted an experiment to test his hypothesis. He gave his Intro to Psychology students a personality questionnaire. Then, he told them he’d analyze the results and create a unique personality profile for each student. When they got their results, they rated them for accuracy. Only one student rated their results below a 4 out of 5, indicating nearly all students felt their results reflected their personality. However, Forer had duped them. He had actually given every student the exact same analysis.
“Forer made a list of general, vaguely flattering, and universally relatable statements,” Leembruggen explained. “So, why did everyone believe that their list was so perfectly tailored to them? Well, that’s the Barnum effect.”
Essentially, most personality descriptors in personality profiles are fairly relatable to most people. And when you combine any sense of the trait being positive, most people will see themselves in it.
The SciShow video gives these statements as examples:
“You have an analytical mind, though you also might space out at times.”
“You pride yourself as an independent thinker, and don’t accept other people’s statements without good proof.”
“You love variety and tend to rebel against too many restrictions and limitations.”
“You don’t always reveal all of yourself to others.”
“You have a great desire for other people to like and admire you.”
Most people see themselves in some, if not all, of those statements because they’re vague enough to feel true.
However, 1949 was a long time ago. Haven’t psychologists gotten better at creating real personality profiles?
Many personality tests have binary categories of traits. (Photo credit: Canva)
How accurate is the Myers-Brigg Type Indicator, though?
One of the most popular personality tests of the past 50 years is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, or MBTI. This test splits people into 16 personality categories based on combinations of eight traits or preferences: Introversion/Extroversion, Sensing/Intuition, Thinking/Feeling, and Perceiving/Judging. Your “type” would be a combination of four letters, like INTP or ESFJ, with a corresponding description of that personality.
Many people have taken an MBTI test at work, but is it really accurate?
“When researchers want to see how well a certain assessment tool, test, or survey actually works, one thing they’ll do is have the same people take the same test multiple times,” Leembruggen said. “If they get the same score each time, we’d say that tool has good test-retest reliability. And in studies of MBTI where participants took the assessment multiple times, up to half or even more test takers received a different result for at least one of the four letters.”
Accurate or not, people love their Myers-Briggs. However, psychologists prefer a more recent personality indicator known as the Big Five Personality Trait model.
12 Things Everyone Should Know About Personality
1. Most psychologists agree that most personality variation can be captured with just a handful of higher-order traits. The most popular approach posits five traits, often known as the Big 5.
In the Big Five, people rank as low, medium, or high in five personality dimensions: extroversion, neuroticism, openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. (A more recent test known as HEXACO includes honesty-humility as a trait.)
“These tests, and newer variations that include subcategories of these five, do seem to show better test-retest reliability,” Leembruggen shared. “One major reason that newer tests based on the Big Five are more reliable is that they’re based on accumulating data from multiple long-term studies from the 1990s onwards. And they’re rooted in the principle that, if a personality trait exists in humans, languages will adopt words to describe it.”
However, she notes, most research only includes people from WEIRD countries: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. That reality alone makes it hard to extrapolate universal personality traits or types.
The way personality tests are designed is inherently flawed
Finally, the nature of personality tests with multiple-choice answers, most of which only offer two options, is flawed.
“When you have to answer every question from a list of predetermined options, it’s called a forced-choice measure,” Leembruggen explained. “These tests are easy to administer and to grade, but the downside is that they’re really rigid and can flatten nuance, including how people’s personality traits can change due to the passage of time and other variables. We’ve all stared at a multiple-choice question and wished there was an option to check ‘other.’ So trying to make a questionnaire-style test that can accurately gauge anybody’s personality might be kind of impossible.”
That certainly won’t stop a lot of people from taking those tests, though. Accurate or not, there’s something about them that draws us in. Maybe it’s just fun to self-analyze. Maybe we yearn to know ourselves better, and those tests offer a structured and largely harmless way to do that—or at least to feel like we’re doing it.
Since the dawn of man, right-handedness has reigned supreme without much intel as to why. While our ape brethren also develop strong preferences toward one hand over another, there is generally an equal number of left- and right-handed individuals. Conversely, 90% of humans are right-handed. And now, scientists think they have discovered when this prevalence developed.
A new study led by researchers at the University of Oxford suggests that it went hand-in-hand (pardon the pun) with two other major evolutionary shifts: walking on two legs and developing much larger brains.
Thousands of primates helped narrow the possibilities
The research, published in PLOS Biology, analyzed data from 2,025 monkeys and apes representing 41 different primate species. All the evolutionary factors tested—tool use, diet, habitat, body size, social structure, brain size, movement patterns, etc.—seemed to match human data, leaving no real clues as to why our species decided to become almost exclusively right-handed.
However, that changed once researchers added brain size and the ratio between arm length and leg length to their analysis. Suddenly humans, with their larger brains and legs much longer than their arms (a hallmark trait of bipedal walking), stood out from an evolutionary standpoint.
These factors, along with other fossil records, help us imagine a timeline that looked something like this:
Human ancestors (Ardipithecus and Australopithecus, respectively) began walking upright, allowing one hand to become specialized over the other. At this point, there would likely be an equal number of left-handers to right-handers.
As our brains grow to incorporate more complex activities like using tools, communicating through a wide array of gestures, and participating in complex tasks like cooking and performing rituals, so too does our right-hand bias. In fact, the same 90% right-hand dominance is already present around 2.6 million years ago…before Homo sapiens and Neanderthals entered the scene.
One side of the brain might hold an important clue
That third factor (complex tasks) is particularly interesting. Sequentially organized behaviors, also known as hierarchical action, are often believed to be something managed by the brain’s left hemisphere. The left hemisphere also controls all the motor functions and movements on the right side of the body. That said, all three elements, along with the fact that humans learn by imitating their parents, likely played equally important roles in the evolutionary narrative.
Ancient “hobbits” added another intriguing clue
Backing this theory is the “hobbit” species discovered in Indonesia. This ancient humanoid species maintained smaller brains and the ability to climb while also walking. Conversely, it did not have nearly the same amount of right-hand dominance.
There are, of course, more mysteries to unravel. Why some of us are still left-handed, for instance. Or whether the limb preference of other animals suggests a similar evolutionary pattern. But, regardless, the study reminds us that even the most seemingly simple quirks that make us human actually tell an incomprehensibly vast story of how we came to be in the first place.
Many of us have walked into an old building and felt some kind of eeriness. Depending on your own personal beliefs, you might be inclined to attribute this feeling to the presence of something supernatural. But science has found another culprit that haunts our psyche in these places, and it’s not ghosts.
Researchers at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Canada, found that when people were exposed to infrasound, which is typically imperceptible to humans, they still experienced a rise in cortisol levels and irritation.
“In an old building, there is a good chance that infrasound is present, particularly in basements where aging pipes and ventilation systems produce low-frequency vibrations,” noted senior author Rodney Schmaltz.
Therefore, many people who notice a mood shift in a place regularly defined as “haunted” might attribute that agitation to something supernatural. In reality, the infrasound waves are to blame.
How the study worked
The study, published this year in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, randomly assigned 36 participants to one of four groups. Each group would listen to either “calming” meditative music or “unsettling” horror-themed ambient audio. Each group would also be near hidden speakers playing infrasound between 75 and 78 decibels, a range consistent with what mechanical systems commonly produce inside buildings. These speakers were turned off and on once throughout the study.
Each participant provided saliva samples immediately before the music started and again 20 minutes later, which were analyzed to measure cortisol, the hormone the body releases under stress.
Researchers found that, regardless of which type of music they heard, the participants showed a notable increase in salivary cortisol when exposed to infrasound.
And while anecdotal, participants in the infrasound condition rated themselves as more irritable, less interested afterward, and even described the music as noticeably sadder.
Interestingly, what people didn’t seem to feel when exposed to infrasound was anxiety or fear, but rather irritability, disinterest, and a low-grade emotional discomfort…all of which correlate to a spike in cortisol.
Infrasound in nature
The researcher explained that in the animal kingdom, some species (such as elephants) use it to communicate with one another over great distances. Others, like some birds, detect coming storms from infrasound.
Others still have an aversion to the discomfort it causes. Some fish have tiny stone-like organs in their inner ear that help them stay away from it and remain balanced and upright in the water.
Humans happen to have similar structures, and researchers theorize that this balance system, which connects to brain regions involved in emotion, may register infrasound without conscious awareness.
Still, given the small amount of study participants (as well as the lack of diversity, most were female undergrad students), no major conclusions can be drawn. So ghost hunters, fret not!
Whether you lean paranormal or skeptical, the science does confirm that humans are more sensitive to unseen forces than we realize, whether those forces come from vibrations in the environment or something we simply don’t yet understand. Either way, our minds and bodies seem capable of picking up signals long before we consciously recognize them.
Ever heard of “highway hypnosis”? If you never went over it in American Driver’s Ed, it’s the phenomenon during which we tend to zone out while driving on long, repetitive stretches of highway or on routes we’ve taken a thousand times. It’s that feeling of pulling into your driveway and having very little recollection of actually getting there.
Suffice it to say, going into pure autopilot mode on the road isn’t ideal. It’s not safe, and we tend to ignore important signage, like speed limits.
One high-traffic area in Wisconsin just debuted a new, eye-catching speed limit
The Outagamie County Recycling and Solid Waste facility in Appleton gets a lot of through-traffic. Big trucks, commercial haulers, and plenty of civilian cars make their way through the facility on any given day.
Keeping a low posted speed limit helps keep everyone safe. Usually, in places like this, you’d see speed limits of 15, 10, or even 5 miles per hour.
Outagamie County went in a slightly more offbeat direction: 17.3 mph. No, it’s not a typo. See for yourself:
The sign isn’t just for laughs. It’s not a temporary fixture meant to get a few likes on social media or encourage people to stop for photo ops.
Its purpose is far more important: to get people to pay attention. The unusual number causes people to do a double-take. Instead of eyes glazing over at yet another 15 mph limit, the 17.3 sticks out like a sore thumb and makes drivers’ brains perk up—and hopefully, their feet ease off the gas.
Kraig Van Groll, the site’s solid waste superintendent, said the sign is working, per Supercar Blondie:
“We’ve definitely seen positive engagement and behavior changes across the site. That includes residents using the site daily, people visiting on tours, and commercial users operating here regularly. If nothing else, it’s really opened the door for more conversations around overall site safety and awareness for all users of the site.”
Jordan Hiller, recycling and solid waste program coordinator, told WBAY-TV that the sign has caused a bit of an “uproar” on social media—in a good way. People get a kick out of it, and it has ultimately done its job: drawing more attention to road safety around the facility.
Not just Wisconsin: Odd speed limits are becoming more common
While major roads and highways will probably stick with nice, round speed limits, smaller areas—shopping centers, parking lots, private facilities—are turning more and more to eye-catching numbers like Outagamie’s 17.3.
A shopping center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, features an 8.2 mph speed limit:
Some areas are resorting to even more unusual and eye-popping methods, with speed limits that include fractions. This one was featured on Denver local news: a parking lot with an official posted speed of 6 and 7/8 mph:
Safety officials have all kinds of methods to try to keep distracted drivers focused
The science of being behind the wheel is fascinating and often studied. Tons of experiments and studies were conducted on how to get drivers to slow down in certain areas before we came up with radar signs that tell drivers their speed in real time, for example. That visual feedback has been shown to be effective at reducing speeds.
Roads in America are also full of speed bumps, rumble strips, and reflectors designed to break drivers’ autopilot patterns.
It’s part psychology and part neuroscience; a big reason we slip into autopilot mode, or highway hypnosis, has to do with the way our brain waves work. According to Radar Sign, “Shifting a driver from a Theta ‘autopilot’ state to a Beta ‘engaged’ state requires a trigger, identified by the Reticular Activator (RA), responsible for categorizing sensory input.”
Simply put, one of the best ways to keep drivers safe on the road is to present them with something unusual: an input that disrupts the expected pattern. It could be a radar sign, a strip in the road that causes your tires to gently buzz, or now, a speed limit sign so bizarre you can’t help but look twice.
Nearly everyone has suffered from the dreaded flu and can agree that the hacking coughs, achy bones, and sneezing are more than just a tad miserable. The silver lining, if there can be one, is that the flu (and colds in general) brings out some old remedies that some might find rather charming. Even better, some of them may actually work.
In a clip from the late 1950s on the BBC Archive Facebook page, a random assortment of men and women are asked for their personal “flu cures.” Their answers ranged from typical homespun ideas like hot tea and plenty of water to more curious alternative remedies. But many were eager to share their personal treatments and seemed sure of their effectiveness.
Shot on black-and-white film, British interviewers Fyfe Robertson and Alan Whicker ask people what they do or take when they have the flu. One woman answers, “Well I take Vitamin C and lemon, barley, and whiskey.” The next man agrees that he can “defy the virus” with whiskey and tea, but adds bacon, porridge, and eggs.
In fact, quite a few included whiskey in their flu routine. “I’m a great believer in whiskey,” one man proudly shares. “I’m like a Scotch man. I believe in a drop of whiskey, warm, and it sort of kills the germs.”
In keeping with the alcohol angle, another Brit answers, “A jolly good hot rum punch. And a jolly good sweat, and stop in bed until it’s all over.”
“Elderflower wine,” says an older woman. “If you take a good glassful tonight, and you go to bed, and you sweat it out, you know, and you’re alright in a day or two.”
Not everyone used alcohol in their remedies. One woman swaps the whiskey for water: “Rinse your inside out continually with boiled water. About four or five half-pint glasses a day, boiled water.”
But then things get interesting. A woman clad in an oversized sweater coat shares this trick: “Well my remedy for the flu is to get a small Spanish onion, chop it up finely, and put some brown sugar over it and a little vinegar. And then when it turns into a syrup, take a spoonful before you go to bed. It’s a very good remedy.”
A man, seemingly eager to share his mother’s recipe, steps in: “Well my mother recommends an old sweaty sock with salt right round your throat. A good pullover and a good hot water bottle. Sweat it out.”
Now things take a turn for the more unique. “There is a good cure in mustard and lard,” one woman says. “And you rub the two well together and get a good blend. I don’t know how to do it, but my father does.” After the interviewer asks if one should eat it or rub it on one’s chest, she clarifies: “Rub it on your chest, on the front and the back, and it’s a good cure.”
Just when it seemed that possibly “mustard and lard” were the most interesting answers, the woman next to her takes the cake: “Goose grease. You can rub that on your chest. You know, after you’ve been cooking the goose, then keep the grease and run it on your chest.”
This next idea is a bit complicated, but it also involves goose grease: “A large piece of brown paper and cut it to go under the arms and you warm it first, and get hot warm goose grease and then spread mustard over the brown paper first. Get warm goose grease, which most people have got in the house. You spread it over the mustard on the paper to avoid burning of the skin. And should inflammation be setting in, as the doctor says does sometimes, you boil the elderflower and give the patient a dose of elderflower water.”
Understandably, the reporter pushes back: “But then do you go to bed with this brown paper? Don’t you find it a bit messy?” She answers with a resounding yes, adding, “And the goose grease avoids it from burning.”
And just when it seems like someone is going back to a more popular cure, it takes a turn: “I take a nice big tumbler full of hot lemonade. Put in about three teaspoons full of rum. Two aspirin. Get into bed and cover myself well. Tie the stocking that I’ve been wearing around my feet. One of them around my throat with a safety pin, and stay in bed and sweat it out.”
Finally, a younger gentleman is asked his “best way to cure the flu.” His answer is rather philosophical: “Well, just think that you haven’t got it.” He adds a few other ideas about onions and then shocks the interviewer with this final thought: “I’ve still got it now, and I’m about.”
“You’ve got the flu now, have ya?” the interviewer asks. “Well in that case, I won’t keep you another minute.”
Reactions
Just this clip has 35,000 likes and over a thousand comments. And perhaps not super surprisingly, many Facebook users back up the remedy claims:
“After all, where do people think ‘medicine’ comes from? My Hungarian grandfather would eat raw garlic if he felt under the weather. Drank tea daily with a little red wine in it. Lived to be 101.”
“Whiskey and stinky socks are to men as goose grease and mustard are to women.”
“How Alan Wicker (sic) kept a straight face to these people being interviewed is amazing.”
Putting some of these cures to the test
Onions
According to the National Library of Medicine, onions do in fact contain antibacterial properties: “Onion skin possesses various health benefits due to its phenolic and antimicrobial components.”
Time published an entire piece called “Medicine: The Healing Onion,” where they discuss the roots of this theory:
“The onion, at one time or another, has been enthusiastically recommended as a remedy for colds in the head and worms in the intestines. For centuries, the onion’s medicinal value has been praised by witch doctors, old wives, and bartenders. Rome’s Pliny the Elder listed the onion as a cure for 28 diseases. Early New England settlers believed that the onion would prevent fits; Neapolitans of the Middle Ages thought it averted the evil eye. A 16th Century French surgeon, Ambroise Parè, used it instead of ointment to heal powder burns.”
While they have more recently found that the onion itself doesn’t create health benefits, cutting the onion actually does, according to Time:
“Food Chemist Edward F. Kohman has found that the active chemical agent in onions is a thioaldehyde, a close relative of the common antiseptic, formaldehyde. Chemist Kohman put raw onions through an ordinary household meat grinder, distilled the onion vapors, put them through a series of chemical tests. In a recent issue of Science, he reported finding about 1/20 of a gram of thioaldehyde in a pound of raw onions.
The germ-killing thioaldehyde, Kohman said last week, probably does not exist as such in the onion. More likely, it is produced by the complicated enzyme activity that goes on in the onion when it is cut. Cooking would eliminate it completely; a boiled onion is no more good for a cold than a boiled turnip. But chewing a raw onion might help a cold (it would undoubtedly prevent the spread of colds by keeping non-onion eaters away from the cold sufferer).”
“Although no clinical research supports their claims, advocates of wearing wet socks to bed to cure a cold are convinced that the practice is effective. Here’s their explanation: When your feet begin to cool, the blood vessels in your feet contract, sending good nutrients to your tissues and organs. Then, when your feet begin to warm up, the blood vessels dilate, which releases the toxins in the tissue. The technique most recommended includes two pairs of socks: one pair of thin cotton socks and one pair of heavy wool socks.”
And while they can’t claim it works completely, they note that many believe it does, which can be enough:
“There’s no scientific evidence that wearing wet socks to bed will cure your cold. But there’s anecdotal evidence. One explanation for people believing that it works could be the placebo effect.”
Whiskey and other alcohol
Since so many mentioned whiskey (and rum), we took a look at that claim too. Sad news: this one appears to be nothing but a myth.
Again, turning to Healthline, they take the claims step by step to debunk them. Some believe that because alcohol is a “disinfectant,” it should help kill viruses and bacteria:
“It’s true that alcohol is a key component of hand sanitizers, which help kill germs that you may pick up when you touch contaminated surfaces. However, alcohol is only effective as a topical disinfectant. In other words, it works on the surface of your skin, but not as a disinfectant when you drink it. This means alcohol doesn’t help kill cold viruses or other germs inside your body.”
In fact, though many believe it helps open up the sinuses, it’s not accurate.
“Alcohol is rumored to work as a decongestant, but actually, the reverse is true,” the Healthline article noted. “Small amounts of alcohol can cause vasodilation — a widening of blood vessels — which can worsen a runny nose or congestion. Medicines with pseudoephedrine will tighten blood vessels (vasoconstrict), which is why they can help relieve congestion.”
This doesn’t stop people from sharing their flu-fighting whiskey recipes. Perhaps these, too, create a placebo effect. At least they might be more fun than wet socks.
