Extreme Fear

The world is full of potential hazards. Unfortunately, the things that we're afraid of oftentimes aren't the things that are actually mostly likely to hurt us. Read More

What doomed the 228 men, women and children aboard Air France 447 was neither weather nor technological failure, but simple human error. Under pressure, human beings can lose their ability to think clearly and to properly execute their training—a well-known failing that has proven all too difficult to eliminate. Read More

"Here I am, under the ice, struggling upside down, and all but blind." Read More

If one addiction researcher's groundbreaking ideas are correct, then governments' plans tend to fall apart for the very same reason that our individual attempts at self-control do. Read More

Coaches are forever asking us to give "110 percent." But scientists have discovered that we always have more to give, no matter what form of exertion we're undertaking. We can't consciously choose to tap it, however, because our minds have a subconscious self-limiting mechanism. Read More

Storm chasers enjoying immersing themselves in a weather phenomenon as brutal and violent as a battlefield. Indeed, their activities may actively contribute to the death toll. Twelve years ago, I went storm-chasing and got caught up in the aftermath of a deadly F5 twister. There was one death in particular that made me forever question the morality of storm chasing. Read More

A researcher finds that right wingers have more in the amygdala and less in the frontal cortex. But what, exactly, does that mean? Read More

Athletes like Chris Drury and David Ortiz have earned a reputation for pulling off amazing feats under high pressure. Here's how they do it. Read More

It's the paradox of the internet age: never before has so much information been available so effortlessly, so quickly -- and never before has so much of it been completely erroneous. How do we decide what is true? Read More

To put it in Wolfgang Pauli's memorable phrasing, the mental universe of Inception isn't even wrong. From a scientific and a philosophical point of view, Inception doesn't make any sense at all. Read More

Wouldn't it be nice if we could travel at Mach speed through the drudgery and stretch out the champagne-in-the-hot-tub moments indefinitely? Read More

Millions of highly intelligent, well-educated consumers are continually being misled by erroneous information because they fall victim to a single simple error of logic. Read More

This is the mental trap of hanging on too long: hoping that a bad situation will get better, without contemplating the potentially fatal outcome that will result if it doesn't. This terrible conundrum was never more gruesomely played out than one morning in San Diego back in the spring of 1932. Read More

Losing the amygdala does more than just destroy one's sense of fear. Patients also exhibit a striking lack of self-control, behaving inappropriately, acting with excessive friendliness, and making crude sexual remarks. One woman wandered away from her hospital rooms and was soon after found performing fellatio on a fellow patient. Read More