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Math reveals the six plots of fiction (and yoga). Messy room affecting your mood? These pessimistic pigs agree! Money buys happiness—if you pay in advance. That smile makes you look…
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Julia Ostmann
34 posts
Julia F. P. Ostmann writes from Southern California about nineteenth-century mushrooms, hybrid burritos, and brain science. Next year she’s excited to move into Stephen Hawking’s old dorm at Cambridge, where she'll be studying history and philosophy of science. If you follow her at @JuliaOstmann, she will probably retweet you.
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Harry Potter reduces prejudice towards immigrants. Why facts don’t change your mind. Kafka (unsurprisingly?) had insomnia. A new clue in the great German crime drama of 1694. Hands-free typing with…
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Fan fiction writers, rejoice: the future of TV is yours. Yoda-like lizard extracts water from sand without moving a muscle. Holy relics, bacteria, and the Ivy League reveal how to…
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Los Angeles: capital of science fiction? The latest Rx craze: novels. Richard Dawkins on Robert Frost. The scariest costume yesterday? A mite. Evolutionary biologists have a grudge against Frankenstein’s bride.…
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Goethe, book reviews, and why you shouldn’t use TripAdvisor. The brother-figures of bear conservation. Barack Obama talks brain-bots and “chasing the unicorn.” Meet your future neighbors: oysters. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow…
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The plot thickens: literary fiction may not affect empathy after all. China’s solution to producing entrepreneurs? Science fiction. Kids of all races prefer black and Latinx teachers to whites. Science…
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Is HBO’s bookish Westworld poised to give science fiction the Game of Thrones treatment? Antelopes, Bollywood, climate change, Brönte. National Geographic‘s autumn book recommendations—sushi, hiking, murder, oh my! Elon Musk name-drops Hitchhiker’s…
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Love = addiction. And both hijack the brain’s learning circuit. Langston Hughes and Edna St. Vincent Millay, resurrected on YouTube. The top traits of bestselling books. (Hint: Not sex.) The language…
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Forget yoga—hallucinogenic ayahuasca is the new health cure du jour. H.G. Wells’s BFF was editor of Nature. Also from Nature: Wave goodbye to the 10,000-hours rule. Neurofiction, or stories that…
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Biotech might give Icarus his wings. Solar eclipses, laser physicists… and mosquitoes? New Muslim voices in science fiction. Happy 50th, Star Trek. This unexpected writer made you what are. Oh, and…
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Your brain on stories. (Or, molecular effects of Star Wars.) Read books, live longer… …but only Toni Morrison or Salman Rushdie will make you live better. Mapping the human condition on…
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Phillip K. Dick’s holy spirits—or hallucinations? Lovecraftian scientific horror in Stranger Things. Shakespeare + math = … Narcissists doth make psychiatrists of us all. As women of color win science…