We save "please" for our enemies
Some wonderbringers for me this week:
The science of human connection: New social-science research on how much we quietly rely on one another turns up some lovely surprises. We ask the people around us for small favours every couple of minutes — and they say yes far more often than no. Stranger still, English speakers use "please" in fewer than 10% of requests to family or friends, saving the magic word mostly for moments of friction. And the lab of Naomi Eisenberger has found that acts of kindness do more to ease depression, anxiety and loneliness than acts of self-care — proof that being good to others may be one of the kindest things you can do for yourself too.
A tiny reef fish that may experiment with its own reflection: Give a cleaner wrasse a mirror and a fake parasite, and it won't just scrape the spot off — some drop a bit of shrimp in front of the glass and watch how the reflection moves, the same "test how this works" curiosity we've only ever credited to dolphins and manta rays. It's reopening one of biology's biggest questions: who, exactly, gets to count as self-aware?
Why almost all of us are right-handed: A new study traces our overwhelming right-handedness back to two turning points in human history — standing up on two legs, which freed the hands for fine work, and then the growth of a bigger brain that hardwired the preference in. The thing your hand does without a thought, written into us millions of years ago.
Wondermaker of the week: In May 2021, a Home Office immigration van arrived at dawn on a Glasgow street on the morning of Eid — and within minutes, neighbours poured out and surrounded it, a handful swelling to hundreds, until after an eight-hour standoff their two detained neighbours walked free. Felipe Bustos Sierra's joyful documentary, Everybody to Kenmure Street, built from the crowd's own phone footage and executive produced by Emma Thompson, just won Sundance's Special Jury Award for Civil Resistance. Proof of what ordinary people can do when they simply turn up.
I’m on the road the next few weeks. First, I’ll be in Haarlem, Netherlands at the Interdisciplinary Conference on Psychedelic Research. Then I’ll be heading up to Lusty Beg, Northern Ireland to kick-off the SheVentures Summit with the opening keynote. (Most ticket packages are sold out for SheVentures, but I have a cheeky discount code if you were shut out and want to join us!)
If you’ll be attending either of these conferences, please find me and say hi!
With wonder,
