Why do we like sad art? From ancient tragedies to Sad Girl playlists, humans have been drawn to negative feelings in art for millennia. Combining her two areas of expertise, the cognitive scientist and operatic soprano Tara Venkatesan decided to find out why

‘Wherever people use a neighbourhood, they leave traces’ writes Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani in today’s Guide, where she describes how to get to know your neighbourhood better through practices of listening, noticing and taking part

Absolutely thrilled to have our film featured in the brilliant Psyche Magazine @psyche.co Feels awesome that Phil’s story has crossed the pond and been spotted by a journo in New York 🤘🤪 psyche.co/videos/take-...

The capacity to be alone depends on the sense of being held psyche.co/ideas/the-ca... The overwhelm of grief and parenthood showed me what psychoanalysis assumes – we need to be held to feel safe in solitude. Psyche Idea by @elizabethdyerphd.bsky.social @psyche.co

I wrote a piece for Psyche Magazine about how intimacy makes us vulnerable, why we should seek it despite its risks, and how thinking more carefully about the nature of intimacy can enrich our understanding of our own experiences and help us to be better to each other.

Do you know that feeling when… when… That feeling when… yes, exactly, that feeling when the next word in the sentence you were just uttering magically disappears? This TED-Ed video zooms in on what’s happening inside our brains during such ‘tip-of-the-tongue’ moments

To be close to another person is to enter uncertainty: no guarantee of how you’ll be seen or whether what you reveal will be met with care, indifference, or misunderstanding. Yet as @jasminegunkel.bsky.social writes, ‘It is only through intimacy that we can be accepted in the fullness of our selves’

Delivering sincere compliments is a skill you can learn – and, done well, it’s an easy way to spread more joy in the world. A Guide by @claritygeek.bsky.social

Ever feel ‘hangry’? What about ‘hundecisive’? To address the gaps in our emotional vocabulary, the writer Hannah Seo simply invent new terms – a fun language game that actually has some science behind it, as she shares in this Note to Self @hannahseo.com

Recent research gives some credence to running subcultures that have long believed in cannabis’s ability to boost the natural ‘runner’s high’. But is it actually true? The psychology researcher Michiel van Elk embarked on a self-experiment to find out

‘Giving more compliments has brightened my life,’ the communications teacher @claritygeek.bsky.social writes in this joyful Guide on how to diver compliments. Learn how to up your compliment game with her breezy how-to, from choosing the right details to not sweating potential awkwardness

In recent years, millions of young people have turned to chatbots for mental health advice. But while they can ‘deliver a pastiche of validation’, LLMs lack the capacity to truly witness us, the psychologist and AI researcher Wasseem El Sarraj writes in this thoughtful Idea

For someone experiencing a panic attack, fear can become an all-consuming feedback loop. In this short video, clinical psychologist Dr Julie details researched-backed do’s and don’ts to dampen symptoms in the moment, and to make future attacks fewer and more manageable

Forests thrive through hidden networks of cooperation and care, reshaping how we understand nature. In this Portrait, Erica Gies traces Suzanne Simard’s journey from groundbreaking ecological discoveries to embracing Indigenous knowledge, urging us to rethink our relationship with the Earth

Does freedom or control benefit society more? In this fascinating discussion from 1972, B F Skinner, the father of radical behaviourism, debates the benefits and drawbacks of behavioural engineering with the English philosopher Geoffrey Warnock @openuniversity.bsky.social

Solitude can feel profoundly restorative. But, when overwhelmed by responsibility and grief, the psychotherapist Elizabeth Dyer found that being alone didn’t provide respite anymore. This gentle Idea proposes that for solitude to feel restorative, we need to feel held by our environment

Needles, spiders, flying, high places – specific phobias are among the most common and treatable mental disorders. Having treated specific phobias for over 20 years, the clinical psychologist Bunmi Olatunji has crafted this Psyche Guide on how to identify them and get help

The question of ‘What if?’ has been an obsession of historians since the 1990s, what they call counterfactual history. But how can we think about counterfactuals in our own lives?

For the writer Adrienne Caldwell, her autism diagnosis meant she finally belonged somewhere. Hence she felt utter shock when, years later, her psychologist suddenly ‘revoked’ his earlier assessment – because her capacity for empathy went against his understanding of autism

‘An Exercise in Perspective’ asks the question: what does the world look like when you lose your sight? Infused with vivid colour of memory, raw energy of punk rock, and the sense of release Harrison found in running, the film offers an immersive portrait of his irrepressible spirit and perception

Does being a good person actually make you happier? Or is there some tradeoff between doing good and feeling good? Jessie Sun’s psychological research gives the question an empirical test and offers a nuanced look at what it really feels like to try to live well

We’re naturally bad at predicting what will make us happy. This #InternationalDayofHappiness, we’re sharing a short video with a data-backed approach on how to build a happier life over time

Are you afraid of the dark? On recent a trip to the telescopes of the Atacama Desert, the Psyche Editor Richard Fisher found that in the right circumstances, true darkness can have surprising mental health benefits and increase our sense of connection with nature

Fear is like a ‘threat radar’, warning us of potentially dangerous future events. So how come we so often feel scared about events that have already happened? In this Idea, the philosophers Davide Bordini and Giuliano Torrengo set out to untangle this philosophical puzzle

For more on Helene Stöcker, here's a short piece I wrote in @psyche.co last year--her complicated fight against war and fascism is more relevant than ever. #womenshistorymonth #herstory psyche.co/ideas/how-th...

Libby Houston is an accomplished botanist who, at 80, still climbs the steep limestone walls of the Avon Gorge in England in a quest to document every whitebeam tree. This Psyche exclusive film crafts a beautiful ode to the power of patient, careful observation

In this Guide, Mohsen Askari describes a process he calls Write Yourself Every Day which involves speaking your thoughts to a voice-to-text tool then reading the transcript back. Doing this each day can help you step outside of your feelings and see yourself more clearly

The choices you make now shape how your mind ages. For #BrainAwarenessWeek, we’re sharing this expert Guide by a psychiatrist and specialist in brain health, on how to nourish your brain and reduce your risk of dementia and cognitive impairment

Many of us have songs that cheer us up – but is there any scientific basis to a ‘happy’ playlist? The neuroscience researcher Stefan Koelsch has spent years investigating this question. In this Idea, he breaks down the research and provides guidance on how to harness the power of music

Through vivid illustration and sharp storytelling, this short animated instalment of the Aeon series ‘Philosophy Feuds’ revisits the frenetic friendship and epic fallout between Freud and Jung, and the ideas that made their split so consequential

Often, in order to fit into a neurotypical world, autistic people feel that they have to ‘put on a mask’, which can come at a cost. Improving understanding and acceptance of autism across society is essential. Revisit this Idea from the archive during #NeurodiversityCelebrationWeek

At age six, Vooris encountered her future lifelong ally: her sister, adopted into the same foster home. A simple childhood meeting blossomed into a profound connection, shaping their lives. This Turning Point reflects on sisterhood and the quiet strength of having someone by your side from the start

Sleep can become elusive the more we try to force it. On #WorldSleepDay, we’re revisiting this Guide from the archive for research-backed approaches such as cognitive behavioural therapy to rebuild the natural link between bed and rest

In this delightful video from Tate, the artist and curator Siobhan McLaughlin introduces the work of Scottish artist Alan Davie while leading an art class that incorporates a trio of jazz musicians to create a feedback loop between painting and music

Some science terms feel very self-explanatory – perhaps dangerously so. This is particularly true for the term ‘heritability’, perhaps one of science’s most egregious examples of ‘it doesn’t mean what you think it means’, as the sleep researcher Alice Gregory has found

Visualising hurt parts of ourselves as an inner child can help us heal, as the psychotherapist Nickan Arzpeyma writes in this Psyche Guide on how to connect with your inner child. Learn more about how this process can help us move on from patterns that no longer serve us

This Psyche Idea examines the nature of love through a thought experiment which asks: if your beloved were to be cloned, could you love them in the same way as the original?

Knowing how the brain learns and stores new information is essential for studying effectively. In this helpful TED-Ed explainer of the memory encoding process, insights from cognitive psychology inform tips for the smartest study methods

Kaya Genç’s portrait of Burhan Sönmez is so beautifully written it reads like a novel, except it is a life. The opening is cinematic, then it turns tender, angry, hopeful. This is political writing with an actual human heart.

As a therapist who specialises in treating patients with OCD and anxiety, Ken Cunningham has dealt a lot with fear. But it wasn’t until he was caught in the aftermath of a terrifyingly bad trip on an edible that he gained a new understanding of all its dimensions

On Roblox, play takes place inside a thriving digital economy. As the platform offers an early education in the logics of capitalism, for many children, their first encounter with markets, value and digital labour now unfolds inside a game

In this funny and deeply felt short, the director Max Henderson captures the journey of a ‘wingwalker’ and an aerobatic display pilot as they recover from becoming members of The Goldfish Club – a group for people who’ve survived an aircraft crash into water – and return to the air

Since the 2000s, intelligence researchers have been faced with a strange new trend – average IQ scores have been decreasing across the West. But the ‘negative Flynn Effect’ is not all it’s made out to be, writes the author Stuart Jeffries – and neither are IQ tests

For those who’ve been subjected to physical or emotional abuse by a partner, re-entering the dating world often feels unnerving. If this reflects your experience, this Guide will give you practical advice on how to clarify what you want, increase your sense of safety, and build trust again

What if your family refuses to honour how you’d like to be remembered after your death? Starting during the AIDS crisis, the LGBTQ+ community has a long legacy of planning elaborate and personalised funerals, as captured in this moving short by Mariana Leal

Having always had a complicated relationship with her body, Sarah Boon relished swimming as a young woman. Years later, after medication-induced weight gain, she finally returned to the pool. It was a revelation, as she describes in this moving Turning Point

Written by the the European Press Prize laureate Kaya Genç, this carefully told Psyche Portrait of the Kurdish novelist Burhan Sönmez traces his journey from despair to purpose in the wake of political violence, capturing his extraordinary drive and intellect @kayagenc.bsky.social

If you’re one of the many millions of people around the world living with chronic tics, you may feel like you’re constantly juggling between your mind and body. However, there is hope: this Guide explores strategies and that might help you manage your tics and grow your confidence

What if the future is already judging us? In this Note to Self, Matt invites us into a disquieting thought experiment: is there something we’re doing today that future generations will see as morally contemptible? And more unsettling still – do we already sense it’s wrong, yet carry on regardless?

How do you respond when someone you love begins to inhabit a reality you cannot share? Reflecting on his father’s dementia, a philosopher writes with warmth and humble honesty about the emotional tightrope his family walks each day, capturing the moral complexity of deciding what care truly means