The sakondry bugs of Madagascar are pulling off quite a feat: helping to thwart starvation, relieving biodiversity loss and saving lemurs. All while tasting like delicious bacon.
These small cricket-like insects have long been a well-loved snack for locals. Pro tip: Find the youngest ones (those are said to be the tastiest), give them a quick wash, pinch off the heads then toss them in a pan with some water and salt, and voila … a crispy, crunchy savory morsel.
“They’re quite soft when they’ve been fried … Like a nutty bacon,” Lewis Kramer, a conservation research coordinator, told Metro.co.uk.
“I would happily have a bowl of them with a beer,” he joked. Nutritionally speaking, however, the sakondry are much more than a snack. They might as well be singing Lizzo’s “Juice” ‘cause baby, they’re the whole damn meal.
Insects generally tend to provide a viable protein, fat and mineral source, all while requiring less land, water and feed than meat.These facts are more crucial than ever, as around 1.64 million people in Madagascar are enduring an undeniable food crisis. Horrifically destructive tropical storms and relentless droughts—which the UN directly links to climate change—have led to desperate measures. Metro.co.uk reported that people were forced to eat ash mixed with tamarind and leather from shoes to temporarily stave off hunger.
As a last resort, some villages have taken to hunting forest animals, including the already heavily endangered lemur. With nearly 94% of the species threatened with extinction, this is hardly a sustainable option.
But U.K.-based organization SEED Madagascar aims to address these issues with a novel solution: a bacon bug farm.
Created by anthropologist Dr. Cortni Borgerson, the program helps communities plant and grow the bean plants known to locals as tsidimy (also edible, so win-win). The tsidimy will attract colonies of sakonry after only six to eight weeks. Those colonies can then be harvested about a month later.
Knowing that a love for card playing is part Malagasy culture, Borgerson created a deck of cards to act as a creative user manual the farmers can refer to for best practices and troubleshooting. The deck includes everything from how to care for tsidimy seedlings to how to differentiate between male and female sakondry.
In only one year, these farms have raised more than 90,000 harvest-sized sakondry, which provided the annual protein equivalent of 2,700 eggs. Borgerson told Mongabay News that the program has also saved 25-50 lemurs per community each year.
As delicious and nutritious and sustainable as they are, the sakondry remain quite mysterious. But while research is still being conducted, these little bacon bugs are becoming a part of a well-balanced diet (and ecosystem) for Madagascar.
Now … who’s ready for an S.L.T.? Sakondry, lettuce and tomato sandwich, that is. Or perhaps some eggs with a side of sakondry? A maple sakondry donut, perhaps? The possibilities are endless.
A single door can open up a world of endless possibilities. For homeowners, the front door of their house is a gateway to financial stability, job security, and better health. Yet for many, that door remains closed. Due to the rising costs of housing, 1 in 3 people around the world wake up without the security of safe, affordable housing.
Since 1976, Habitat for Humanity has made it their mission to unlock and open the door to opportunity for families everywhere, and their efforts have paid off in a big way. Through their work over the past 50 years, more than 65 million people have gained access to new or improved housing, and the movement continues to gain momentum. Since 2011 alone, Habitat for Humanity has expanded access to affordable housing by a hundredfold.
A world where everyone has access to a decent home is becoming a reality, but there’s still much to do. As they celebrate 50 years of building, Habitat for Humanity is inviting people of all backgrounds and talents to be part of what comes next through Let’s Open the Door, a global campaign that builds on this momentum and encourages people everywhere to help expand access to safe, affordable housing for those who need it most. Here’s how the foundation to a better world starts with housing, and how everyone can pitch in to make it happen.
Volunteers raise a wall for the framework of a new home during the first day of building at Habitat for Humanity’s 2025 Carter Work Project.
Globally, almost 3 billion people, including 1 in 6 U.S. families, struggle with high costs and other challenges related to housing. A crisis in itself, this also creates larger problems that affect families and communities in unexpected ways. People who lack affordable, stable housing are also more likely to experience financial hardship in other areas of their lives, since a larger share of their income often goes toward rent, utilities, and frequent moves. They are also more likely to experience health problems due to chronic stress or environmental factors, such as mold. Housing insecurity also goes hand-in-hand with unstable employment, since people may need to move further from their jobs or switch jobs altogether to offset the cost of housing.
Affordable homeownership creates a stable foundation for families to thrive, reducing stress and increasing the likelihood for good health and stable employment. Habitat for Humanity builds and repairs homes with individual families, but it also strengthens entire communities as well. The MicroBuild® Initiative, for example, strengthens communities by increasing access to loans for low-income families seeking to build or repair their homes. Habitat ReStore locations provide affordable appliances and building materials to local communities, in addition to creating job and volunteer opportunities that support neighborhood growth.
Marsha and her son pose for a photo while building their future home with Southern Crescent Habitat for Humanity in Georgia.
Everyone can play a part in the fight for housing equity and the pursuit of a better world. Over the past 50 years, Habitat for Humanity has become a leader in global housing thanks to an engaged network of volunteers—but you don’t need to be skilled with a hammer to make a meaningful impact. Building an equitable future means calling on a wide range of people and talents.
Here’s how you can get involved in the global housing movement:
Speaking up on social media about the growing housing crisis
Volunteering on a Habitat for Humanity build in your local community
Travel and build with Habitat in the U.S. or in one of 60+ countries where we work around the globe
Join the Let’s Open the Door movement and, when you donate, you can create your own personalized door
Every action, big and small, drives a global movement toward a better future. A safe home unlocks opportunity for families and communities alike, but it’s volunteers and other supporters, working together with a shared vision, who can open the door for everyone.
Every time NASA releases a stunning image from space of something like the Earth glowing against blackness, or the Moon’s cratered surface in sharp detail, the same question follows: where are the stars?
It happened again when NASA’s Artemis II crew, which launched April 1, 2026 and flew around the Moon before splashing down in the Pacific on April 10, began beaming back photos from their historic 10-day mission. The images were breathtaking. The backgrounds were pitch black. And the conspiracy theories started almost immediately.
The camera can only do so much
NASA’s answer, as explained in an Instagram post, is straightforward: it’s just how cameras work.
A camera captures a limited range between the brightest and darkest parts of a scene. When you’re photographing the Moon or the Earth from space, you’re dealing with an enormous difference in brightness. The sunlit surface of the Moon is extraordinarily bright, while stars are extraordinarily dim. To expose correctly for the bright object in the foreground, the camera’s settings have to be adjusted in a way that makes the faint stars in the background vanish into black.
Three settings control this. Shutter speed determines how long the camera’s sensor is exposed to light. ISO controls how sensitive that sensor is to light. And aperture determines how wide the lens opens. Getting the Moon in sharp, detailed focus means tuning all three for brightness, which is the opposite of what you’d need to pick up the faint glow of distant stars. You could technically try to capture both, but the result would be a blurry, overexposed mess where neither looks right.
The same thing happens on Earth. Try taking a photo of the night sky next to a bright streetlight. The stars disappear. The light itself isn’t unusual. It’s physics.
The photo that proves both sides
The most remarkable image from the Artemis II mission accidentally became the perfect illustration of exactly this phenomenon. On April 6, during their seven-hour flyby of the Moon’s far side, the crew captured a total solar eclipse. The Moon completely blocked the Sun for nearly 54 minutes of totality, far longer than any eclipse visible from Earth’s surface.
In that image, stars are clearly visible. Dozens of them, scattered across the frame around the dark disk of the Moon with its glowing halo of light. Venus appears as a bright silver glint on the edge. It’s one of the most striking photographs ever taken by humans in deep space.
The reason the stars appear is the same reason they normally don’t: the object in the foreground is dark. With the Moon blocking the Sun, there’s no blinding bright surface to expose for. The camera settings could be adjusted to capture the dim light of distant stars, and they showed up exactly as they should.
As NASA noted in the image description, stars are “typically too faint to see when imaging the Moon, but with the Moon in darkness stars are readily imaged.”
A historic mission
The Artemis II mission marked humanity’s return to the Moon’s vicinity for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972. The crew included commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency. They set multiple records. Koch became the first woman to travel beyond low Earth orbit. Glover became the first person of color to witness the lunar far side. Hansen became the first person from a nation other than the United States to go to the Moon. And the mission broke the all-time crewed distance record, reaching 406,771 kilometers from Earth, surpassing the mark set by Apollo 13 in 1970.
The crew also captured an Earthset, with Earth sinking below the Moon’s horizon, that deliberately echoed the iconic Earthrise photo from Apollo 8 in 1968. They photographed ancient lava flows, impact craters, and surface fractures on the far side. They witnessed six meteoroid impact flashes on the darkened lunar surface.
Koch described the experience with characteristic simplicity: “The Moon really is its own unique body in the Universe. It’s not just a poster in the sky that goes by. It’s a real place.”
And it turns out space is full of stars. You just need the right conditions and the right camera settings to see them.
Richard Bernstein walked around barefoot a lot at home, so when his right toe started hurting in 2017, he assumed he’d stubbed it. A visit to his podiatrist confirmed nothing was broken and nothing was wrong. He moved on.
Over the next few years it crept upward from his toe to his ankle, then to his knee. A sports medicine doctor suggested stenosis and recommended physical therapy. That didn’t help either. Walking became gradually harder. On a trip to Greece, Bernstein had to sit out while his friends climbed to hilltop monasteries. He took his dog to the park less and less.
In March 2022, his right leg swelled noticeably. His doctor ordered an abdominal scan. What it found changed everything.
What they found when they finally looked
Bernstein had a massive cancerous kidney tumor that had grown into his vena cava, the main vein that returns blood from the lower body to the heart. The tumor and tumor thrombus were a foot long and weighed around two and a half pounds. Because the vena cava was almost completely blocked, blood was backing up in his lower extremities, which explained the years of unexplained pain creeping up his right side. His two main coronary arteries had also been compromised, with 99 percent of their function lost.
He was referred to Dr. Michael Grasso, chair of urology at Phelps Hospital. Grasso’s assessment was direct. “He told me I had four days to live,” Bernstein said.
A 12-hour surgery, three specialists, one chance
The surgery required three specialists working simultaneously over 12 hours at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. Dr. Grasso handled the kidney and tumor removal. Cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Jonathan Hemli performed a double bypass on the coronary arteries, which had been discovered only once Bernstein was already admitted, an unexpected complication that Hemli said they couldn’t ignore. “It would have been really disappointing to cure him of his kidney cancer only to learn in six months, nine months, a year that the poor man had a heart attack and didn’t survive,” Hemli told TODAY. Vascular surgeon Dr. Alfio Carroccio opened the vena cava to remove the tumor thrombus, which extended all the way into the heart.
To do the work safely, the team had to cool Bernstein’s body, stop his heart, and run him on a heart-lung bypass machine while they operated. Then they slowly warmed him back up and restarted his heart.
Bernstein spent three days sedated afterward, a week in intensive care, and nearly three weeks in cardiac rehab relearning to walk. He lost around 30 pounds. He gained it back.
He’s now on ongoing immunotherapy and doing twice-yearly scans. Dr. Grasso’s update: “The cancer hasn’t spread anywhere else, which is amazing, considering where he came from.”
Bernstein’s own assessment of how he got through it: “My attitude is ‘it is what it is, and there’s not much we can do about it.’ That got me through.” His advice for anyone else in a similar situation: “If something is wrong and they can’t find it, don’t give up looking. Trust your feelings about your own body.”
And on the swollen leg that finally triggered the scan that saved him: “If my whole leg hadn’t swollen up, I would have dropped dead.”
Death is a mystery in so many ways, despite the fact that we all know for sure it’s going to happen. We don’t know when we will go and can’t really be sure of what comes next, so whether we’re thinking about ourselves or a loved one, there’s understandably a lot of fear and uncertainty around death.
That’s why Julie McFadden’s work is so important. As a palliative care nurse in the Los Angeles area, who has seen over a hundred people die, her videos shed light on the process to make us all a bit more comfortable with the inevitable. McFadden is also the author of the bestseller, “Nothing to Fear.” The nurse’s experience helping people in their final stages has given her a unique perspective on the process.
In one video, she shared how she can see the first symptoms that someone is going to die a natural death about 6 months before they finally do. In other words, she can determine that someone only has half a year left to live when most of us have no idea they have entered the final stages of life.
What are the signs a person is dying at the 6-month mark?
McFadden says that people who are dying are usually placed in hospice care when the symptoms begin to appear around the 6-month mark.
“You will have very generalized symptoms. Those symptoms will usually be, one, you will be less social. So you’ll be more introverted than extroverted,” McFadden said. “Two, you will be sleeping a lot more. And three, you will be eating and drinking a lot less. Literally, everyone on hospice, I see this happen to.”
A heavenly view of the sky. Photo credit: PIxbay/Pexels
What are the signs a person is dying at the 3-month mark?
You are going to notice more debility,” McFadden continues. “They will be staying in their house most of the time. It’s going to be difficult getting up and just going to the bathroom. Again, sleeping a lot more and eating and drinking a lot less.”
What are the signs a person is dying at the 1-month mark?
Something usually begins to happen in the final month of someone’s life. They start to believe they are in contact with others they have lost. It’s like they are there to make the dying person feel comfortable with their final transition.
“Usually around the one month mark is when people will start seeing ‘the unseen’, they have the visioning. They’ll be seeing dead relatives, dead loved ones, dead pets, old friends who have died,” McFadden said. “Again, not everyone — but many, many people will start seeing these things at around one month.”
Angela Morrow, a registered nurse at Verywell Health, agrees that people in the final stage of life often hear from those who have passed before them. Morrow says we should refrain from correcting the patients when they share their stories of talking to people and pets who have died. “You might feel frustrated because you can’t know for sure whether they’re hallucinating, having a spiritual experience, or just getting confused. The uncertainty can be unsettling, but it’s part of the process,” Morrow writes.
At the end of the video, McFadden says that the most important factors palliative care nurses look at to determine the stage of death are eating, drinking and sleeping. “Most people, a few weeks out from death, will be sleeping more than they are awake. And they will be barely eating and barely drinking,” McFadden said.
In the end, hospice nurses “allow the body to be the guide” as they help their patients transition from life to death.
McFadden’s work has brought a lot of peace to her followers as they go through trying times. “My mom is in hospice right now and she’s currently, I think, hours or days from death. YourTikToks have helped me out tremendously,” Deb wrote. “My grandma passed away in February, and she experienced all of this. this page brings me peace knowing everything she went through was natural,” Jaida added.
“Thanks, Julie. I volunteer in a hospice end-of-life facility, and this helps educate the families. Your posts are wonderful,” Grandma Nita wrote.
One of the things that makes death so scary is the number of unknowns surrounding the process, so it’s important that McFadden shares her stories of helping people to the next side. She shows that death is a natural process and that hospice nurses are here to help make the transition as peaceful as possible.
This article originally appeared two years ago. It has been updated.
There are just so many ways for important information held on your phone to be swiped—from subscription based apps that secretly send private customer data to Facebook to fake accounts that get your friends to invest in some kind of fake crypto.
And of course—this is more than a modern day inconvenience. It poses real threats to democracy and global human rights, which is why so many are calling for more regulations and safeguards. Of course, as with most regulations, change isn’t coming fast. Which isn’t good news, considering how rapidly technology evolves.
However, Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Ronan Farrow has an incredibly simple tip for preventing our phones from being hacked: Turn them off more often.
Why Ronan Farrow says we should all be ‘freaking out’
While appearing on the Daily Show to promote his new documentary, Surveilled, Farrow told host Desi Lydic that we as a society should be “freaking out” more about the lack of government restraints about spyware technology, saying that it could turn the country “into an Orwellian surveillance state,” affecting anyone who uses a device, essentially—not just political dissidents.
But, as Farrow noted, turning your phone off and on every day is an easy way to protect yourself, since most current forms of spyware “will be foiled by a reboot.” And even if you aren’t, say, a journalist or a political activist (i.e. common targets for malware), you’re thwarting apps from monitoring your activity or collecting your data. And better still, you’re making it more difficult for hackers to steal information from your phone. Privacy protection aside, it’s a great way of just keeping your device healthy. Basically, it seems like the age-old solution for virtually all tech issues still holds up.
More easy steps you can take right now
Remembering to turn it off…that’s a different challenge altogether. Photo credit: Canva
There are a few other things worth turning off now and then, such as bluetooth and location devices when you’re not using them, according to the NSA. In addition, Farrow also suggested keeping devices updated, and perhaps most important of all, actually writing to your representative about the issue.
However, when it comes to wrapping devices in tinfoil as a makeshift Faraday cage…that might not be the best use of one’s aluminum.
“Experts vary on exactly how effective that approach is,” Farrow told Lydic, just before quipping, “we need better policies. Not just better tinfoil.”
The documentary that started it all
Expanding on Farrow’s 2022 New Yorker investagative exposé on the notorious spyware Pegasus, Surveilled, which is available to stream on Max, delves into the multibillion-dollar industry of commercial spyware and its potential threats, making it evidently clear that this is not an issue for the elite few, or one to ignore until the future.
On a (slightly) brighter note, Farrow debuted another new work in 2025, this time a true crime investigative podcast, titled Not a Very Good Murderer, which he himself narrates. Find it on Audible.
This article originally appeared two years ago. It has been updated.
In a culture obsessed with instant reactions, being a person who treads softly, asks pertinent questions, and is genuinely curious is an under-appreciated advantage. It can even feel like a flaw.
However, psychology keeps arriving at the same conclusion: the habits that make us feel awkward and out of place are actually signals of a sharper, more complex mind at work. Let’s walk through what that looks like in real life.
1. Hitting pause in a world that expects quick replies
You’re in an all-hands meeting. Someone asks a question, and the rest of the call quickly starts talking at once, voices overlapping. Everyone else seems to fire back instantly, and there you are, taking a visible beat that feels like an eternity. That pause can often be read as hesitation or timidness. Maybe even insecurity.
But here’s what’s actually happening: your brain is doing quality control.
In 2025, researchers found that people who paused briefly before answering were perceived as more confident, trustworthy, and competent than those who responded immediately. Instead of blurting out the first thing that comes to mind, you pause, scan the situation, and test your thinking. Psychologists call this dual-processing reasoning, a slower and more deliberate way of reasoning. Think of it as a strength, not a delay: a built-in review process that helps you catch mistakes, sharpen your judgment, and make more reliable choices. In effect, you are double-checking the math before showing your work.
2. Why you can’t just “go with it”
Maybe this situation feels familiar: someone proposes a plan, and everyone else seems ready to move forward. Yet you still sense that something is off. Perhaps a step has been overlooked, the conclusion came too quickly, or an important risk has not been fully acknowledged. So, it makes sense to start by asking questions. Isn’t it natural to want to understand the why before agreeing to the what?
Suddenly you’re “difficult.” Or “negative.” Or “not a team player.” Underneath the labels lies a simple truth: your brain has a low tolerance for fuzzy reasoning. It can’t stand incomplete information. Psychologists link this to high cognitive complexity; you’re acutely aware of how many things can go wrong when the math doesn’t add up.
Your brain has a low tolerance for fuzzy logic. Canva
3. You watch the room before joining in
In group settings, you tend to hover on the edges first, never leaping headfirst into the conversation. You hang back, tracking carefully who interrupts whom; who laughs at what. You pay attention.
In reality, your brain is collecting data. Your working memory is taking in large quantities of information, some verbal, many not: tone, timing, body language, and power dynamics, to name a few. You’re the furthest thing from checked out. You’re loading. And the moment your brain finishes mapping the room, your moment arrives. You’re ready to step into the conversation.
4. You ask questions that feel obvious
If you’ve read this far, you may know that uneasy feeling when you raise your hand and say, “Sorry, just to make sure I understand—what exactly do you mean?”
This can feel like a declaration of incompetence. But people who are truly competent are very aware of what they know—and what they don’t. Refusing to assume is one of the clearest markers of mental acuity, according to the Dunner-Kruger effect. In psychology, it’s described as a cognitive bias in which people with lower skills or knowledge in a specific domain vastly overestimate their competence. To recognize your own gaps, you need a minimum level of that same knowledge. In simpler terms, you really don’t know what you don’t know.
5. You rehearse conversations before they happen
As we’ve already discussed, you don’t like to feel unprepared. So, you rehearse pretty much everything, like you’re starring in a very meta, very tedious play.
This can feel neurotic or exhausting. But it’s also incredibly sophisticated: you’re predicting how another person might think, feel, and respond before you walk into the moment. This is called predictive social modeling. It’s the mind’s ability to simulate what another person is likely thinking, feeling, or about to do based on what is already known about their traits, current state, and past behavior. In plain English, it means mentally running a social forecast: “If I say this, they’ll probably react that way,” or “They seem stressed, so this joke may not land well.”
6. Why your brain refuses to leave the meeting you exited an hour ago
The conversation is long over. You left the meeting room an hour ago. You’re literally at your desk, eating rice crackers, and drinking your afternoon coffee. So why does it feel like you’re still in that room?
Although not physically, mentally, you’re stuck there: rewinding a slightly off-color (or was it?) comment you made, wondering how you came off to everyone, and whether you’ll ever be truly understood by another person. ‘Was I too assertive?,’ you may ask yourself. Too soft? Too quiet? Did I take up too much room?
You may not know it, but post-event processing like this is a sign of high-self awareness. Your brain is running a highlight reel in slow motion, replaying what happened and grading it against a complex internal standard most people don’t catch. The upside is that this inventive mental system also helps you learn quickly and improve at a rapid pace. The downside? It’s exhausting, isn’t it? Turns out, that same mental system has a hard time distinguishing between “actual mistake” and “totally fine moment that nobody else noticed.” A good rule of thumb? You’re usually harder on yourself than the situation calls for.
This is what happens when your brain is built for depth. Canva
7. Small talk makes you want to climb out of your own skin
The weather. Weekend plans. “What do you do for work?” The latest in local sports (spoiler alert: they’re doing badly).
But give you a real topic to work with—one with substance—and it’s off to the races. You could talk for hours. This is what happens when your brain is built for depth. Psychologists call this a high need for cognition: you like thinking about big ideas, and shallow exchanges are genuinely under-stimulating. You’re not anti-social. You’re just waiting for substance.
8. You thrive in one-on-one conversations
Parties and big groups feel like a sporting event, or something like social juggling:
Whose turn is it to talk? Who hasn’t spoken yet? Why? What did that facial expression mean? Can I change the subject now?
But in one-on-one situations, when you sit across from another person who’s really just there with you, it’s like a new gear unlocks. You become a completely different version of yourself. While group settings demand social multitasking, one-on-one hangouts allow space for depth, nuance, and actual connection. Science says that highly intelligent people prefer this sort of deliberate, high-impact communication, with Jean Granneman, author of The Secret Lives of Introverts, explaining: “Happiness and meaningful interactions go hand-in-hand.”
9. You over-explain when something excites you
When you start talking about something you love, you tend to keep going. The excitement is real, and so is the instinct to follow every interesting tangent: right up until you notice the other person’s polite nod and realize you may have gone a bit farther than necessary.
Messages are carefully crafted in your notes app, where the other side can’t see your typing bubbles. You read your words back, editing, snipping, and reworking, as if you’re publishing a novel. And this was all for a simple, “You free Thursday?” text.
It’s easy to call this anxiety. And yes, sometimes it is. But underneath that is something else: you care how your words land. You understand that tiny shifts in phrasing can completely change the feeling on the other side of the screen. You want the person receiving your words to feel what you actually meant, not some clumsy, half–translated version of it.
It’s not a big deal, but you often feel just a little…out of step. Like, there’s a script everyone else got, and you’re left to improvise. You’re not anxious, exactly, nor unfriendly or shy. It’s difficult to explain.
All of this—the pausing, the scanning, the rehearsing, the replaying, the extra explaining, the little movements that keep you grounded—is work. Mentally, you’re doing gymnastics, but from the outside, that can read as quiet. Or a bit awkward. Or a bit “too much.”
You’re doing your best to move through the world thoughtfully, carefully, and with compassion. That isn’t a flaw you need to fix. It’s something meaningful to recognize, honor, and, yes, hold on to.
Perimenopause is certainly having a moment. This set of transition symptoms that appear before menopause was first identified in the 1970s and more firmly documented in the 1980s. However, Google Trends shows a massive spike in interest over the past few years. Now, it seems like everywhere you look, people are talking about perimenopause.
After decades of relative silence, social media has given millions of women a platform to finally share what they’ve been going through.
It has also, funnily enough, given a platform to the husbands who support them through these challenging times.
Comedian shares reality with the world
Matt Hyams struck a nerve in late 2025 when he posted his first video about what he affectionately calls his “perimenopausal wife.”
“If your wife is entering perimenopause, I’m going to give you some tips I wish someone had given me at the beginning,” he said in the video. “Number one, stop chewing your food, okay? Just swallow it whole … Maybe you’re thinking, ‘But I might choke and die.’ Good. Even better.”
The joke was a hit and quickly went viral, inspiring him to keep digging for humor. Soon, he was back with a brilliant reenactment of “how my perimenopausal wife looks at me when I’m eating cereal and clearing my throat.” The hilarious skit references how perimenopause can cause sensory overload, or even misophonia—a rage-inducing response to chewing, breathing, or tapping.
Perhaps Hyams’ best, and most accurate, work is his reenactment of his wife’s newfound—and frighteningly precise—sense of smell. Dressed in what has become his trademark wig, he demonstrates how she can identify extremely specific odors thanks to perimenopausal changes to her senses:
Perimenopause can affect a woman’s sense of taste and smell. In some, these senses fade or even seem to disappear. In others, it can cause “olfactory hallucinations.” And in still others, people can detect real, powerful smells that others barely notice.
“If you ask a Harvard researcher, they’re going to say, ‘We don’t have enough data to support that.’ If you ask someone that talks to women every single day, they’re going to say, ‘Absolutely,’” Atlanta-based nurse practitioner Daniela Ezratty told Gloria.
The comments section under Hyams’ video proves the point perfectly:
“I’ve always had a heightened sense of smell but now I can smell things from the future”
“I found a gas leak at work. Apparently it was such a small leak that no one else could smell it and they had to bring in a gas detector to find the source.”
“I can smell what they had for dinner 3 days ago, 4 houses away.”
“I can’t smell anything except the huge imaginary cigarette that gets blown in my face and wakes me out of a blackout sleep at 3am.”
“COFFEE!! IT DOES SMELL LIKE TUNA and it makes me emotional”
Coffee that smells like tuna is a common complaint, and it’s not an olfactory hallucination. Certain chemical reactions during the roasting process can produce oils that smell fishy, especially to people with heightened senses of smell.
Hyams’ other videos use comedic reenactment to show how perimenopause can cause overwhelming mental load, fatigue, brain fog, hot flashes, and more—and they’re far more entertaining than reading WebMD.
“I seem to have hit the perimenopause train at the right time, with the right tone, and the right amount of respect for the struggle,” Hyams told Upworthy. “I’m coming at it from my wife’s perspective, validating her opinions and her reality. So I think women, which make up 88% of my followers, were so happy to see and hear it.”
It’s an accessible and fun way for women to gently teach their partners what they’re going through. Hyams said women tell him all the time that they send the videos to their partners, and those conversations often improve their relationships.
But it’s not just women who appreciate his handling of a sensitive topic. Even OB-GYNs say supporting a partner through perimenopause isn’t easy—it takes a lot of love, patience, and self-education.
“I also get messages from men thanking me for making them feel less alone,” Hyams said.
As for the real wife behind the wig, Hyams said she likes the videos and gives final approval before he posts anything. That’s definitely the right call.
“Job treating you alright?” “Looks like this weekend is gonna be a real scorcher.” “That Cowboys game was outrageous.” These are some conversational snippets one might hear that could lead to immediate panic—that insufferable “small talk” lies ahead. But new research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychologyclaims that people actually like, and often benefit from, these kinds of conversations.
Researchers discovered that even though people reported not looking forward to “boring” conversations, a majority found them quite fun.
The team mixed and matched respondents to cover all bases. In one experiment, they observed conversations in which “one person finds the topic boring.” In another experiment, they created a situation where both participants “find the topic boring.” They also tested groups based on whether the participants were strangers or friends.
In a piece published by the American Psychological Association (APA), researchers reported that, after studying 1,800 participants, “people consistently underestimated how interesting and enjoyable conversations about boring topics would be.”
Some might question what topics are considered (potentially) “boring” in the first place:
“Topics were many and varied, including World Wars I and II, nonfiction books, the stock market, cats, and vegan diets. In some cases, participants were asked to suggest a topic they found boring (responses included such topics as math, onions and Pokemon).”
Elizabeth Trinh, a doctoral student at the University of Michigan and lead author of the study, said she was excited about the results.
“We were both surprised and excited by how robust the effect was,” she said. “People consistently expected conversations about seemingly boring topics to be less interesting than they turned out to be.”
“Serves a real purpose”
Upworthy spoke with licensed therapist Rebecca Tenzer, owner of Astute Counseling and Wellness Center. She explained why many of us feel anxious about so-called small talk, only to find it entertaining.
“While it gets dismissed a lot, small talk actually serves a real purpose when it comes to mental health,” Tenzer said. “These smaller, everyday interactions help people feel connected, acknowledged, important, and can even build self-esteem. Even if the conversation is simple or surface-level, there are meaningful impacts and a lot of gain.”
Tenzer also supported the idea that these micro-conversations, no matter the topic, have significant benefits.
“We’re seeing more evidence that even brief social exchanges can improve mood, teach social norms, and reduce feelings of loneliness,” she said. “Along with those interactions are often positive body language exchanges, smiles, and even laughter, all of which are happiness chemical hacks needed to boost mood.”
“Small talk acts as a low-pressure way to engage with others, which can help regulate the nervous system and make social interaction feel easier over time,” Tenzer added. “Not every conversation needs to be deep to have value. It’s nice to force yourself to slow down, take a minute to chit-chat, be in the moment, and stay present. It’s not a huge time commitment and often has lasting benefits throughout the day.”
“Predictable, consistent, and not threatening”
Lisa Chen, a licensed psychotherapist, concurred, telling Upworthy that these types of conversations can help put people at ease, even if they might not expect it.
“As a psychotherapist who works with high-achieving, often socially guarded clients, I see how ‘low-stakes’ interactions create a sense of safety in the body,” she said. “Even brief exchanges like saying ‘hello’ to the barista making your coffee or making casual conversation at work help remind our nervous system that the world is predictable, consistent, and not threatening.”
Chen says small talk can help lower anxiety.
“It lowers social anxiety over time, builds relational confidence, and gently reinforces that we belong in shared spaces,” she said. “But small talk isn’t just for those who struggle with social anxiety. It’s for everyone. Small talk strengthens our sense of belonging, improves our mood, and keeps us from becoming too transactional or isolated from others. It also softens intensity and creates moments of ease that prevent stress and burnout.”
We know that collectively performing under pressure requires some special qualities, but what are they? That’s the question NASA seeks to answer as it looks ahead to sending humans to Mars. When it comes to team dynamics, a small crew on a 10-day stint around the moon is one thing. A team stuck on a spaceship for months and living together on a planet two million miles from home is another.
NASA’s Human Research Program studies human behavior in teams to analyze the implications of long-duration space missions. After observing team dynamics and roles in groups in various studies, one delightful conclusion can be drawn.
Every team needs a clown.
NASA ran a study on a potential trip to Mars and found the most important trait for team dynamics was humor pic.twitter.com/tB3gQlKZPL
According to NASA, astronauts have returned from stints on the International Space Station and reported that humor played a critical role in diffusing tension between people working on the I.S.S. The same finding has come from research studies in analog environments. (Analogs are places like Antarctica, where the desolate and extreme environment somewhat mimics a place like Mars.)
“You need a clown on the team,” said Noshir Contractor, Ph.D., professor of behavioral sciences at Northwestern University. In other words, you need someone who can make their teammates laugh.
Contractor is conducting a study titled Crew Recommender for Effective Work in Space (CREWS). Using research data from an analog study, her team is developing a computer model to help select the best individuals to form a crew.
“We don’t have a perception that we’re going to tell them who to send on a mission,” Contractor said, according to NASA. “But if they have a collection of people, it will work like a weather forecast model. It’s a predictive model that says if you choose this particular crew, here is what you are likely to see in terms of team dynamics. And, if problems arise, here is how to intervene to ease those problems.”
Easing problems is one place where the clown plays an important role. Research shows that positive humor can increase communication and social support and create a pleasant environment. Most of us have experienced how a well-timed joke or witty response can stop tension in its tracks.
Tension often manifests physically. We feel it in our bodies when emotional stress is high. According to the Mayo Clinic, laughter can stimulate circulation and help muscles relax, easing some of the physical symptoms of stress. Laughter also releases endorphins that make us feel good and promote social bonding.
What about teams that aren’t in as extreme circumstances as going on a mission to Mars or wintering in Antarctica? Dr. Adil Dalal of the Forbes Coaches Council says humor has a “transformative power” that unlocks the ability to do serious work well in the professional world.
Photo credit: Canva – Laughing with your colleagues may help improve team performance.
“When we laugh, cortisol, the stress hormone that can narrow thinking and trigger defensive behavior, drops significantly,” writes Dalal. “Laughter also causes the release of dopamine, oxytocin and endorphins, which are associated with motivation and learning. In the workplace, this means that laughter can encourage new behaviors and insights. It can also strengthen trust, which is essential for psychological safety and sustained high performance among employees.”
So if you’re leading a team or part of a team that appears to be struggling, perhaps some clowning around is in order. As Dr. Dalal writes, “Fun is not the opposite of seriousness—it is the pathway to sustainable excellence.”
If NASA touts the vital role humor plays in teamwork and success, perhaps we all ought to give it a little more weight in our own teams.
