Like the location of Jimmy Hoffa’s body, the identity of Jack the Ripper and the fate of the Ark of the Covenant, the causes of Pruritus Ani (i.e., an itchy butthole), are largely mysterious. According to the Cleveland Clinic, up to five percent of the population suffers...
Some people are convinced that eating nothing but meat is the way forward. “Carnivore dieters swear by a litany of benefits from an all-meat regimen, first and foremost that it leads to immediate and sustainable weight loss,” writes my colleague Eddie Kim. Unsurprisingly, their thoughts are in sharp...
The boxers vs. briefs debate has raged on for decades. The long-and-short of it: If you want to have children, the answer is boxers; if you want to keep a partner around to sire children with, the answer is boxer briefs. But what if we just ditched...
Unlike the bodies it inhabits, testosterone is a complicated hormone. Men with too much turn into psychopaths, and men with too little are willing to risk the health of their testicles for just a little more. To further complicate testosterone-y things, researchers at the University of Florida have discovered...
People fear crowds in several different ways. There’s the aspect where people feel they have no means of escape (agoraphobia); there’s the more obvious or relatable fear of an unpredictable mob (enochlophobia); and there’s the terror that strikes many of us when standing up and talking or...
We can all agree that washing your hands is totally rational. But refusing to touch a door handle afterward and freaking out that you’ll die of some terrible disease if you do? Not so much. It’s officially known as contamination OCD, but colloquially, we tend to call...
Obviously, no one really enjoys getting shots. But some people really, really hate needles, to the point where they suffer from trypanophobia, or a legitimate phobia of injections, blood tests and the like. Often, this goes hand-in-hand with hemophobia (a phobia of blood), for pretty obvious reasons....
Ahh, the miracle of flight: Being hurtled over land or sea in a thin aluminum tube, at an altitude so high you can’t breathe the air, as the whole plane periodically shakes so violently without warning that you can’t even stand up (not to mention tiny, smelly...
What the hell is so irrational about being scared of standing on the edge of someplace really high, you ask? It’s a fair question, and it’s true that a lot of phobias are grounded in a very basic, primal danger. But standing on a second-story balcony behind...
Ever been in one of those MRI machines, where you’re held down and slid into a tiny tube, with the strange whirring sound of huge, invisible magnets scanning your prone, helpless body as you’re ordered to be as still as a statue for several minutes? It’s pretty...
There are three main motivators in life: Fear (“I should work late so my boss knows he shouldn’t fire me!”); anger (“I’ll show her! I’m going to hit the gym and get swole!”); and positive thinking (“I can achieve my goals if I work hard enough!”). But...
Last month, scientists at the University of Surrey developed a blood test that could someday help law enforcement and employers crack down on overly tired drivers, which have previously been extremely difficult to detect, since there was no universal definition for drowsiness. While some states have enacted...
