You’ve heard of Cocaine Bear by now, the Georgia black bear that overdosed on cocaine dropped from a smuggler’s overburdened Cessna aircraft. But have you heard of Beer Bear? In 2004, a curious bear raided a camper’s cooler at Baker Lake Resort in Washington State and somehow made off with about three dozen beers, including Rainier Beer and Busch (which he eschewed). While Rainier suffers from a “Poor” score at BeerAdvocate.com, the bear drank the grainy beer until it reached an altere ...read more

The Gravettians dominated Ice Age Europe, where they hunted mammoths with particular aplomb. But in a warming world, their particular movement fell by the wayside. With so much of the world's water locked up in ice, the Gravettians built houses out of mammoth bones and carved early art — including the Venus of Willendorf statues. The Gravettian people first established themselves in Europe about 32,000 years ago, according to a new study that traces their movement across the continent, and su ...read more

These days, it seems like the word “gaslighting” is everywhere. The term has surged in popularity over the past decade, given new life by political commentators and columnists and buoyed by social media, where it now attracts billions of views across Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. In 2022, Miriam-Webster crowned gaslighting its word of the year.  But despite the term’s increasing ubiquity in pop culture, it underscores a serious reality.  What Is Gaslighting?  Broadly speaking, ...read more

Radioactive materials, also known as radionuclides, are chemicals in which the atom is unstable. As atoms try to restore balance, they break down and decay-causing the release of energy, known as radiation. Small amounts of radiation are all around us, including in everyday products such as microwaves and smoke detectors. Other uses include killing germs in food as well as helping diagnose and treat certain medical conditions. However, exposure to large amounts of radiation (by inhalation, abs ...read more

The extent of sea ice around Antarctica has reached a record low level — for the second Southern Hemisphere summer in a row. This year’s low is 405,000 square miles below the 1981 to 2010 average minimum extent of sea ice around Antartica, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. That amount of ice loss is equivalent to more than half of the land area of Alaska. As Antarctic sea ice shrivels, it opens the way for waves to violently pound ice shelves that hold back the flow of gia ...read more

Cats have a reputation for being self-sufficient, especially when compared to their canine counterparts. Little bath time is required, for example, thanks to their overzealous grooming habits. They also don’t need to be taken outside for bathroom breaks multiple times per day. But make no mistake: Cats are not low-maintenance pets. Find out just how long it's okay to leave your cat alone. How Long Can Cats Stay Alone? “I would never describe any pet as low-maintenance if you’re providing ...read more

In the 2012 film Silver Linings Playbook, Pat, the main character played by Bradley Cooper, stays up all night reading Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. Enraged by the book’s ending, Pat snaps it closed, yells an expletive and throws it through the window. He then wakes his parents up at 4 a.m. to rant about it.  This is an example of a manic episode.  Viewer Discretion Advised: This Video Uses Strong Language While mania can impact people in different ways, those who experience manic ...read more

One of the great questions for humanity is whether we are alone in the universe. Indeed, astrobiologists appear tantalizingly close to being able to spot the signs of life on other Earths — should it exist elsewhere — using modern observatories such as the James Webb Space Telescope. Now a group of astronomers have taken this question further by asking whether life could exist in other universes. In other words, they want to know whether we are alone in the multiverse. And they have develope ...read more

Four decades ago, philosopher Hilary Putnam described a famous and frightening thought experiment: A “brain in a vat,” snatched from its human cranium by a mad scientist who then stimulates nerve endings to create the illusion that nothing has changed. The disembodied consciousness lives on in a state that seems straight out of The Matrix, seeing and feeling a world that doesn’t exist.  Though the idea was pure science fiction in 1981, it’s not so far-fetched today. Over the past decad ...read more

Metacognition is a fancy word for "thinking about thinking." We all do it, but how we do it can mean the difference between exacerbating depression and getting over it. When thoughts pop into our heads, they usually pop right back out. But sometimes we invest a lot of importance to them. If you do that, explains Aaron Brinen, assistant professor of psychiatry at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, you're going to pay much more attention to them. Then these thoughts begin to mean something; yo ...read more