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The Electricity-Generating Bicycle Desk That Would Power the World
The story of Pedal Power's bike machine is spreading quickly. The two-man company has more than tripled its crowd-sourced fundraising goal, and its bike desk is being used to power laptops, grind grain for beer, and churn butter.
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Robert S. Donovan/flickr How to Walk on Hot Coals: The Singular Power of Belief
A history of selling the idea that positive thinking can conquer disease; and how good intentions took me across hot coals.
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Crafty Dogma/flickr The Shape of Your Head and the Shape of Your Mind
How the archaic study of brain shape and head reading — the origin of terms like “highbrow” and “lowbrow,” “well rounded,” and “shrink” — shaped the modern obsession with the mind. One reason phrenology attracted so many followers was that it seemed to provide the toolbox for the American dream.
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Troy Maben/AP Bringing Dementia Patients to Life
The importance of ritual
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This Is Anxiety
Stories from Atlantic readers on how to think about anxiety, what is helpful, and what isn't.
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bachmont/flickr Study: Training Brains for Self-Control May Not Help in the Real World
Researchers saw changes in the brain after training exercises, but only for specific tasks.
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Sam Edwards / Getty The Dark Side of Emotional Intelligence
In some jobs, being in touch with emotions is essential. In others, it seems to be a detriment. And like any skill, being able to read people can be used for good or evil.
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Pichi Chuang / Reuters The Sugar-Addiction Taboo
When can you call a food addictive?
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Instant Vantage/flickr Love in the Time of Chronic Illness
When should you disclose medical conditions to a date? When is illness too much for a relationship to survive?
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adamiwebb/flickr How Sleep Deprivation Decays the Mind and Body
Getting too little sleep can have serious health consequences, including depression, weight gain, and heart disease. It is torture. I know.
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Navesh Chitrakar / Reuters Religion as a Product of Psychotropic Drug Use
How much of religious history was influenced by mind-altering substances?
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This Is Your Brain on Gluten
A No. 1 bestseller by a respected physician argues that gluten and carbohydrates are at the root of Alzheimer's disease, anxiety, depression, and ADHD. What to make of the controversial theory?
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kozumel/flickr Make Time for Awe
Novelty and perceptual vastness force us into the present moment, which has health benefits.
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Wikimedia Commons The 'Curing' of Australia’s First Transgender Man
One Irish maid lived as a man in 19th-century Melbourne for decades. The horrifying story of his discovery and “treatment” speaks to attitudes about transgender people that circulate to this day.
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Son of Groucho/flickr Study: Jokes Can Indeed Be 'Too Soon'
Hurricane humor was least funny 15 days after the event, and funniest 36 days after.
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Experts Decisive Against Multivitamins: 'Stop Wasting Money'
A panel of physicians wrote today in a major medical journal about which vitamin and mineral supplements are bad and which are null, and how we keep buying them.
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GlaxoSmithKline to Stop Paying Doctors for Endorsements
The drug company has issued an ethical challenge.
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♥ jules/flickr Midwives for the Dying
A physician and nurse practitioner discuss the emerging role of medicals professionals who ease the death process. There is no one right way to die, but just as we need help coming into the world, we need support and love going out of it.
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Am I Evil Because of the Darkness? Vitamin D Explains The Hobbit
A medical journal's scientific analysis of diet, sunlight exposure, and of the role of vitamin D in fantasy characters is excellent.
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Reuters The First Baseball Player Diagnosed With Chronic Traumatic Brain Injury
Ryan Freel committed suicide after a career marked by blows to the head.
