Texting My Mom Photos of My Dinner Is How I Tell Her I’m Okay
In China, instead of "How are you?" people often ask, "Have you eaten?" During the pandemic, sending my mom a picture of my dinner was a reassurance that I was safe.
A Thousand Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection
Professors are starting to orient Charles Darwin within a rich history of people from all cultures who have grappled with the mechanisms of life.
There Might Be Illegal Drugs in Your ‘Cognitive Enhancing’ Supplements
Taking nootropics—supplements that promise to enhance mental function—could expose you to high doses of unapproved drugs, in combinations that have never been studied in humans.
What Smells Can Teach Us About History
How we perceive the senses changes in different historical, political, and cultural contexts. Sensory historians ask what people smelled, touched and tasted—all to learn more about the past.
We Want Grief To Follow a Timeline. It Doesn’t
Cultural stories about grief promise it gets better with time. This is largely true, but grief can also set its own messy course—feeling delayed, surging unexpectedly, or lasting too long.
The Movement Against Psychiatry
The contentious debate of whether to fix—or completely overthrow—the way we treat mental illness.
What Waking Up in a Friend’s Body Does to Your Mind
Body illusions can give a person the experience of inhabiting another's body. When that happens, we learn just how much the physical self can influence the way we think and feel.
Pedophilia Is a Mental Health Issue. It's Still Not Treated as One
“This is a topic that scientists in the fields of mental health are not just uninterested in—it is actively repugnant."
The Algorithm in the Armchair
Can machine learning more accurately diagnose mental disorders, and prescribe the right medications? Maybe one day.
COVID-19 Is Proof of Just How Socially Determined Health Is
A virus doesn’t care how much money you have or where you live. Yet, the pandemic has shown in the starkest terms that inequality kills—and what to do about it.
Brain Science Is Ignoring Left-Handed People
"It’s one of these 'rules of thumb' that people learn when they start doing neuroscience, that including left-handed individuals is bad.”
Is Racism a Mental Illness?
If racism were thought of as a mental disorder, would it help the efforts to make the world a less racist place, or make them harder?