One hundred ways to improve your life without really trying

Small ways to improve your health today: an animated guide

What are some ways that you could start making a positive impact on your health today? This animated gallery overviews several health topics, including sleep and hydration, and offers ways to improve that aspect of your life. Clicking on the...

Four psychological tools for a happier, calmer life

The perennial debate on how to be happy involves various aspects of life, and one of the most essential is our psychological attitudes toward experiences. This piece lists and explains four basic tools to strengthen your "psychological immune...

The eight habits that could add up to 24 years to your life

A study presented at the American Society for Nutrition's annual meeting revealed that adopting eight healthy lifestyle habits in middle age can significantly increase life expectancy. The habits include being physically active, avoiding opioid...

Fifty-two acts of kindness for each week of 2023

Whether fostering kittens, donating blood, or delivering boxes of biscuits to striking workers, there has never been a better time to help out. Here's a kindness suggestion for each week of 2023.

Two 100-year-old sisters share their tips for staying mentally sharp

Shirley Hodes, 106, and her sister Ruth Sweedler, 103, don’t routinely do crossword puzzles, but both have stayed sharp as they aged. Though they live states apart, they share similar advice for maintaining mental acuity. They sum up their strategies for cognitive health with four verbs: work, connect, learn, and appreciate. Read this article to learn more about their approach to staying 100-plus years young.

A list of one guy's hundreds of fortune cookie fortunes

Simple idea: Eat lots of Chinese food, collect wisdom in the form of fortunes. Josh Madison held onto hundreds of these and lists them here, noting the ones he received more than once with a number.

Doctors are prescribing social activities—and seeing good results

Physicians, especially in the UK, are asking patients what they enjoy and then prescribing a consistent regimen of doing that type of activity to improve fitness and overall health, including community exercise classes, volunteering, and spending time in nature. This approach may provide better incentives to stick with an activity.

'This is my invariable advice to people: Learn how to cook—try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless and above all have fun.'

- Chef Julia Child (1912-2004)

'Slow productivity' as a humane approach to work

Work is increasingly encroaching on every part of our lives, while digital technologies enable supervisors to micromanage every part of an employee’s day. “Slow productivity” is a movement to alter the pace and quality of one’s work to avoid burnout and provide a more humane approach to work.

'Practice, which some regard as a chore, should be approached as just about the most pleasant recreation ever devised.'

- Legendary athlete Mildred "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias (1911-1956)

A quote by Lucille Ball

"Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world."

'Life is like a ten speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.'

- "Peanuts" cartoonist Charles M. Schulz (1922-2000)

An existentialist reading list

If you’re looking for a starting point for diving into existentialist thought, this is a great resource. Its titles are not exactly obscure—Albert Camus’ “The Stranger,” Franz Kafka’s “The Trial,” and Søren Kierkegaard’s “Either/Or” are among the most famous works in Western literature—but the list provides some digestible context for each text, which will help you decide the best place to begin your journey.

Read a 19th-century guide to writing a Valentine's Day card

Thomas Richardson's "London Fashionable Gentleman's Valentine Writer" offers readers romantic messages they can send to the objects of their eyes—along with some chippy kiss-offs for unwanted suitors. It might be sincere, or it might be satire. Either way, it's an entertaining read. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

Improve your typing speed by retyping classic literature

Why practice with nonsense letters and syllables when you can retype full books you always wanted to read, from Jane Austen and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to George Orwell and W.E.B. duBois. And it's free.

'After you make a fool of yourself a few hundred times, you learn what works.'

- Musician Gwen Stefani (1969-present)

10 things you need to know before going to Barcelona

If you’re planning a trip to Barcelona, you might want to check out this tip sheet before you go. Barcelona-based travel writer Jamie Ditaranto shares her insider tips. From an endorsement of the public transportation system to a warning about pickpocketing, this guide is practical and doesn’t sugar coat.

A guide to avoiding single-use plastics

Here’s everything you need to know about the most ubiquitous (and avoidable) kind of plastic waste: single-use plastics, the kind made to be tossed in mere minutes

Read 10 of the best quotes about nature from David Attenborough

From reflecting on the interconnectedness of life and humanity's shared responsibility to protect biodiversity to the power of young people in driving change and understanding nature's beauty and importance, this list highlights some of the most noteworthy things said by the famed natural historian.

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

The 3.5% rule – how 3.5% of the population can drive change in the world

Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.

10 items that could have saved your life in the trenches

Soldiers settled into trenches to defend themselves against shrapnel and bullets, but weapons such as mustard gas crawled along the ground and settled in these low-lying areas. Here are 10 items that could have helped you survive the trenches, according to this article.

A failed resolution still defines directional exploration

The new year practice of making resolutions is so popular it can often inspire ironic dismissal from those all-too-aware of how many fail. This piece argues failure doesn't matter: Making the resolution itself helps define one's focus in life, arguably more important than racking up achievements.

Experts argue some frugal habits—like driving farther for cheaper gas—aren't worth it

Other frugal habits experts suggest might not be worth the squeeze include driving to multiple stores in one trip to hunt for deals, as well as buying everything in bulk.

The Ig Nobel Prizes honor scientific achievements that make people laugh, then think

These prizes show that even seemingly trivial work can gain attention, build momentum, and connect with broader audiences when presented engagingly. Winners include creating a toilet that analyzes your poop and understanding why scientists lick rocks.

Prison money diaries: the thriving underground economy behind bars

How people in prison earn money, how much they spend, and the lengths to which they go to secure basic needs and comforts.

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

Studies suggest when you sleep is as important as how much you get, and syncing with your circadian rhythms may lead to less fatigue and improved long-term health outcomes

Watch how algorithms can be designed to train themselves and self-improve without human input, to the point where the optimized code is too complex for programmers to understand.

To reduce wrinkles in clothing, research recommends gentle wash cycles with more water and tumble drying with smaller loads and longer times.

Learn how your body is, scientifically, like a firework with its own slow, controlled burn.

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

Telehealth demand for GLP-1s for weight loss is booming as consumers seek easier access.

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

Fish populations in the Great Barrier Reef have increased after installing waterproof speakers on the ocean floor that played recordings of sounds from healthy coral reefs.

See 33 images that became central to huge scandals, including a young Charles and Camilla, Michael Jackson's baby on a hotel balcony, and Hugh Grant's mugshot.

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.

Use this calculator to find the dollar value of your mental load, from meal planning to coordinating after-school care for your children.

Scientists testing how climate change affects plants found, in a years-long simulation study, that poison ivy grew 70% faster with the resulting extra carbon dioxide.

For centuries, Niagara Falls has been a magnet for daredevils seeking to conquer one of nature's most powerful wonders, with its 200-foot drop and water rushing at 32 feet per second with 280 tons of force.

Lesser-known phobias include turophobia, or the fear of cheese, and nomophobia, the fear of being without your cell phone.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

In 1963, a basement renovation in Turkey revealed a passageway to a hidden, multilevel underground city that once housed as many as 20,000 people

The first steps to rebuilding your credit score include getting to know exactly what's on your credit report and figuring out how far you are from the '700 club,' or 'good score' range.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.