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Ideas from philosophy at work in real lives, studies and decisions.

Human Nature

For 50 years, Kitty Genovese's 1964 murder was the story of 38 neighbors who did nothing. Then the New York Times admitted the number was grossly exaggerated, and that one neighbor, Sophia Farrar, had run out and held her in her arms until help came.

By Ainura Kalau · October 25, 2026

In 2023 the heads of OpenAI and Google DeepMind signed a warning that ranked AI's extinction risk alongside pandemics and nuclear war, yet in a 2025 Pew survey half of Americans said AI will worsen people's ability to form meaningful relationships, and only 5% expected it to improve

By Graeme Brown · October 24, 2026

In 2014, customers at a Florida Starbucks paid for the next person's coffee in at least 378 consecutive transactions, but when the chain started again the next day, a local blogger deliberately ended it, saying it was guilt, not generosity

By Mal James · October 23, 2026

Thought of the day from Stoic philosopher Epictetus: “Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions, which they form concerning thing.”

By Mal James · October 22, 2026

Research suggests a meaningful life and a happy one are not the same thing: the people who rate their lives most meaningful often report more stress and worry, because meaning grows out of the very commitments that make an ordinary day harder

By Nato Lagidze · October 21, 2026

In 1845 Henry David Thoreau built a cabin at Walden Pond for $28.12 and said he went to the woods to “live deliberately” — to face only the essential facts of life and see what they had to teach

By Mal James · October 20, 2026

Descartes said animals were machines. Scientists now say the question isn't whether they feel.

By Justin Brown · October 19, 2026

After 50, roughly a third of Americans are living for something beyond themselves, and a Stanford survey of nearly 1,200 older adults found it as often among those on lower incomes or in poor health as among the better-off or healthy

By Mal James · October 19, 2026

Human Nature

Parents usually feel closer to their grown children than their children feel to them, and it isn't a sign something went wrong but proof something went right, because a child who needs you a little less is exactly what you spent 20 years raising

By Daniel Mabanta · October 18, 2026

Human Nature

In a 2010 study of 2,250 adults, minds were wandering in nearly half the moments people were asked about, and what they were thinking about explained more of their happiness than what they were doing

By Nato Lagidze · October 18, 2026