Category
The Things We Were Told About Life
Investigating the sayings and life advice everyone repeats — and whether they actually hold up.
You Only Live Once - Perhaps That's the Problem.
"YOLO" gets used to justify both life-changing leaps and reckless impulses. Behavioral economics and regret research say they deserve completely different advice.
What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger - Or Does It?
A study literally titled "Whatever Does Not Kill Us" found the relationship between adversity and resilience is a U-shaped curve, not a straight line.
You Can Be Anything You Want. Can You?
The odds of out-earning your parents fell from 92% to 50% across two generations. The advice "you can be anything" didn't change to reflect it.
Follow Your Passion - What If You Don't Have One?
A Stanford study found that believing passion is pre-formed and waiting to be discovered makes people quit faster when things get hard.
Never Give Up - Really?
Research on "goal disengagement" found that people who can let go of unreachable goals have better health and well-being than people who refuse to quit.
Good Things Come to Those Who Wait - Or Do They?
The famous marshmallow test was redone with 10x more kids in 2018. Most of its predictive power disappeared once family income was accounted for.
Everything Happens for a Reason - Does It?
Grief professionals consistently flag "everything happens for a reason" as harmful. The psychology behind why we say it explains who it's really comforting.
That's all 7 articles