Sarah Todd

Charles Darwin spent a lot of time hanging out with worms.

Nature poets aren’t normally associated with controversy. But the New York Times’ Friday morning briefing on the death of poet Mary Oliver couldn’t resist a bit of negging:

From a psychological perspective, the best part of any Disney movie is the villain’s song. That’s when you finally get inside the mind of evil and find out what motivates a sea witch to put a mermaid’s voice inside a seashell,  or why a giant coconut crab is super into shiny objects. And almost every villain’s song has one thing in common: It’s about how, when you get down to it, the villain is actually a really good guy.

Research suggests that there are real social benefits to offering one another hot beverages

Instagram sent the internet into a panic spiral today (Dec. 27) by rolling out a new interface that invited users to tap through posts or scroll horizontally. The crisis was brief and quickly contained; within an hour of the initial alarm, Instagram head of product Adam Mosseri tweeted that the rollout was “a very small test that went broad by accident,” and had already been rescinded. But in the process, the outrage machine taught Instagram a valuable lesson: Don’t mess with vertical scrolling.

According to Gary Chapman’s theory of love languages, different people need different things in order to feel loved. Some people will feel most appreciated when they spend quality time with their loved ones, while others prioritize physical touch, and still others need words of affirmation in order to feel truly cherished. Show your affection to your partner in their preferred manner, the theory goes, and it will go a long way toward reducing conflict.

It’s both fun and rewarding to explain why things are bad—whether the issue at hand is Goop’s peddling of pseudoscience or Gucci’s choice to have runway models mosey down the catwalk carrying replicas of their own heads.

When you’re feeling down or stuck in a rut, it can be tempting to think about quitting your job, packing your bags, and going to someplace to snorkel with sea turtles on a journey of self-discovery. But not all of us have the financial means—or the desire—to blow up our lives full-stop. (Plus, even if you reach turtle nirvana, chances are you will eventually have to head home to replenish your funds.) Thankfully, in the age of wifi and international data plans, there’s a middle path: Taking your work on the road with you.

This post contains spoilers for The Witch Elm.

In a classic Sesame Street sketch, Ernie sings a song called “I Don’t Want to Live on the Moon.” “I’d like to visit the moon,” he sings, “but I don’t think I’d like to live there.”

Britain’s conservative tabloids were in a decidedly sunny mood in the run-up to the Brexit vote in June 23, 2016. “Independence Day!” The Sun cheered on its cover the day of the vote, featuring an image of the Sun dawning over the UK. “You can free UK from clutches of the EU today,” an accompanying caption declared.

Elon Musk isn’t scared of taking risks. “I gave basically both SpaceX and Tesla from the beginning a probability of less than 10% likelihood to succeed,” the billionaire entrepreneur said at a SXSW panel in Austin, Texas earlier this year.

Bats are the only mammals that fly, with wing membranes stretched between their arms, fingers, legs, and tail while their thumbs and feet remain free. That’s a pretty cool achievement all on its own, to be able to flap your arms and flutter off into the darkness to catch a delicious insect or twelve.

In the second season of the NBC sitcom The Good Place, a character named Jason Mendoza offers a deep, unexpected insight into the human psyche.

Picture this: It’s Christmas morning. Your loved one hands you a beautifully gift-wrapped box. “Open it!” they squeal, clapping their hands with delight. “It’s one of Oprah’s Favorite Things.”

Shall I compare thee to a charming literary con man?

Would it be nice to live in a chocolate house?

When astronomer Galileo Galilei got in trouble with the Catholic Church over his theories of the universe in the 17th century, he didn’t have the benefit of a public-relations flack to help him with damage control. So he took matters into his own hands, and engaged in some old-fashioned trickery.

UK prime minister Theresa May sounded steely today (Sept. 21) as she made a surprise speech in the wake of stalled Brexit talks with the European Union. But despite her fierce tone, analysts pointed out that her speech contained no changes to the current Brexit proposals—and was more about saving political face.

When Serena Williams went to the French Open this spring for the first time since giving birth, she showed up in style. The record-breaking tennis star faced off against the Czech Republic’s Kristyna Pliskova while wearing a sleek black catsuit designed by Nike.

The moon is a large and peaceful rock that lives in outer space. It’s big, it glows, it’s friends with the stars, and it moves around in a curved and well-trodden path.

Summer jobs stick with you. It’s been more than a decade since I worked as a counselor at a sleepaway camp in northern Michigan. But I still dream about the job all the time: The shock of plunging into the chilly, algae-covered lake; tossing bananas and chocolate wrapped in tinfoil into the bonfire; bawling over a 10-year-old’s performance as Wilbur the pig in a production of Charlotte’s Web. (What can I say? She was really good.)

Cocofloss is no ordinary floss. It comes in flavors including strawberry and mango. It is more fibrous than typical drugstore brands, and at $8 a pop, considerably more expensive. And it is coated in coconut oil, the wellness world’s tonic of choice.

The US celebrated the 242nd anniversary of its independence this week, roiled by fallout from the Trump administration’s family-separations policy at the same time it considers long-simmering questions over addressing its racial history and confronts the world with an isolationist trade policy.