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3–5 minutesMorbid Curiosity: Why We Are Drawn to True Crime
Millions of people fall asleep to podcasts about murder, feeling a little guilty about how much they’re enjoying it. It’s one of entertainment’s strangest contradictions — violence repels us in real life, yet we can’t look away from it in story form. Here’s the surprisingly old, surprisingly useful psychology behind our fascination with true crime. Read more
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3–5 minutesWhy Doing Someone a Favor Makes You Like Them More
You’d think we like the people who help us — and feel less for the people we help. Psychology keeps finding the reverse. It’s called the Ben Franklin effect, and it reveals something unsettling: sometimes you don’t help people because you like them, you like them because you helped. Here’s why. Read more
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5–8 minutesCockroach Janta Party: The Joke That Became India’s Most Honest Political Statement
A Supreme Court judge called India’s unemployed youth “cockroaches.” Within 24 hours, 350,000 people signed up to be exactly that. The Cockroach Janta Party is a joke — but it might be the most honest political statement India’s Gen Z has ever made. Here’s what’s really going on beneath the meme. Read more
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8–12 minutesThe Social Media Experiment That Proved Loneliness Is Engineered
Half of all American adults report feeling lonely — and the Surgeon General has called it an epidemic. But the research points to something more unsettling than a personal problem. Social media loneliness, the experiments show, is not a side effect of the technology. In many respects, it is the product. Here is the evidence. Read more