A friend of mine knew a wealthy man who had decided to live forever. That made him hard to be around, my friend told me, in an e-mail, because he was “always dropping to the floor to do ab crunches or running out for bottles of water or falling asleep or outgassing Chinese herbs.” Immortality … Read more
Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock THOMAS EDISON is said to have held a steel ball in each hand as he prepared for a nap. When he nodded off, they would drop, waking him and allowing him to capture the ideas he had in the moment just before sleep – a period he believed to be one of the most … Read more
WHEN an ancient Egyptian sought an encounter with Bes, the god of fertility and childbirth, they would draw an image of the deity on their hand, wrap that hand and their neck with black cloth, and then settle down to sleep. This practice, described in a papyrus that dates to around 1350 BC, is the … Read more
For many people, the start of a new calendar year is a chance to pause and reflect on the year just gone and the year ahead. And to attempt to clear a path through clutter: physically and mentally. The cognitive neuroscientist Charan Ranganath, author of a forthcoming book Why We Remember, tells Nosheen Iqbal that … Read more