The Scientific Reason You Can’t Stop Watching Baby Animal Videos

Admit it: You have more important things to do than watch a baby giraffe being born or a baby hippo playing with a lawn sprinkler. So do most people. But that didn’t matter on April 15, when a mama giraffe gave birth at Animal Adventure Park in upstate New York and the park live-streamed the event. There were 232 million views, amounting to a collective 7.6 billion minutes watching, accor…

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Menopause Is Finally Going Mainstream

Kathryn Clancy wrote an entire book about menstrual cycles. But even she was surprised by some of the pre-menopausal symptoms she recently began to experience at age 44.

“A lot of things that have to do with my uterus, ovaries, and breasts, I have been massively underprepared for as a Ph.D.-level expert in this field,” says Clancy, a professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Cham…

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Why Hurricane Harvey Is So Scary

Hurricane Harvey brought torrential rain, wind and flooding to the Texas shoreline, as it made landfall as a Category 4 storm Friday night. It has since weakened to a Category 1 storm.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott urged people in the hurricane’s path to evacuate, while weather forecasters employed uncharacteristically dramatic language as they warned of potential catastrophe.

The st…

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Why Happiness Isn’t a Project of Pollyanna-ism

Looking at the world around us, happiness may seem an unattainable goal. As we move into the fourth year of a pandemic that has killed millions and continues to threaten health and well-being worldwide, compounded by devastating consequences of climate change, spikes in hate crimes, and continued fallout from systemic oppression and inequality, there seems little reason to be happy. Indeed, res…

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