Consciousness is notoriously hard to define — it's the lived experience of tasting chocolate or seeing the blue sky. Scientists are now developing new ways to measure it, explored in NPR's Shortwave podcast.
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At 4:55 · chapter starts 4:18
The newscast closes with two contrasting stories. First, the FDA reports it is tracing the source of a large and spreading cyclosporiasis outbreak — a parasitic intestinal illness — linked to multiple produce items, including lettuce [1] — Jael Snyder "A large cyclosporiasis outbreak has spread to more than 30 states, with over 3,300 cases in Michigan alone. The FDA is tracing multiple pro…" 04:15 . The CDC confirms cases have been reported in more than 30 states, with Michigan bearing the brunt at more than 3,300 cases, though no deaths have been linked to the outbreak so far. Then, in a lighter closing note, Sotheby's auction house reports that a Tyrannosaurus rex fossil known as 'Gus' sold for a record $50 million — the highest price ever paid for a set of dinosaur bones at auction [2] — Jael Snyder "A T. rex fossil nicknamed 'Gus' just set the all-time auction record for dinosaur bones, selling at Sotheby's for $50 million. A mystery bu…" 04:37 . A mystery buyer outbid six others to take home the prehistoric prize, capping a newscast packed with far weightier stories on a surprisingly whimsical note.
The CDC reports cyclosporiasis cases across more than 30 states, with over 3,300 cases in Michigan alone.
A Tyrannosaurus rex fossil nicknamed 'Gus' sold at Sotheby's for a record $50 million, the most expensive dinosaur bones ever auctioned.
A T. rex fossil nicknamed 'Gus' just set the all-time auction record for dinosaur bones, selling at Sotheby's for $50 million. A mystery buyer outbid six competitors to claim the prize.
Social norms compress behavior so effectively that we assume other minds are similar to ours. They almost never are. After running over 100 psychology studies, Greenberg's biggest finding is that humans are far more different from each other than we intuitively believe.
The widely shared claim that we have a credit card's worth of plastic in our brains may be a massive overestimate. Researchers used nitrile gloves to measure microplastics — and nitrile gloves shed microplastic particles onto the measuring device. A second paper found the original tool used was unreliable, and that we may have far less plastic than reported.
RSD isn't just hurt feelings — it's a dopamine-deficient brain with a hyperactive amygdala and a frayed connection to the prefrontal cortex. Add a surge of norepinephrine and you get chest pain, sweating, and trembling that convinces your body something catastrophic is happening.
In Dan Ariely's door experiment, participants sacrificed the highest-reward door — repeatedly — just to avoid seeing other doors disappear. Even when researchers trained them to use the best door, they kept wasting clicks to maintain options. This is the bias that runs our lives: we'll take a worse outcome to preserve the feeling of optionality.
Dan Gilbert discovered that the brain has a 'psychological immune system' — it misremembers, reframes, and rationalizes to keep you satisfied with whatever you chose. The fear before commitment is all about potential regret. But after committing, your brain quietly starts justifying the choice — and the more irreversible the decision, the stronger the effect.
The psychological immune system can get you through the first few months of any commitment. But durable, long-term well-being requires self-concordance — choosing commitments that are genuinely aligned with your values and what you actually want. Without that alignment, the satisfaction fades fast.
Vision didn't just help animals find food — it ignited the Cambrian explosion of speciation. Half of the human cortex is devoted to visual processing, and that same visual hierarchy directly inspired the neural network architectures powering today's AI.
Peptides come loaded with a powerful narrative: regenerative, subcutaneous, targeted, cutting-edge. That narrative can genuinely move outcomes, especially for pain, energy, and recovery. The RCT's job is to quantify how much additional benefit comes from the molecule itself — above and beyond the compelling story surrounding it.
A pharmaceutical is not an amino acid sequence — it is the successful solution to manufacturing, purification, formulation, and consistency challenges. When clinical trials prove a drug works, they validate a specific product under specific processes, not every preparation that shares the same sequence.
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