🔦 Men are more afraid of the dark than women

Our writer steps off the music beat to see what that noise outside was.

By Ryan Reed

My wife is currently in her late 30s, and for the entire 17 years I’ve known her, she’s been leery of the dark. Let’s say we’re winding down for bed and she mutters, "I left my medicine in the car," there’s a 100-percent chance I’ll be the one stumbling out to the driveway, shirtless and bleary-eyed, to grab it. (Apologies to my neighbors.) But I don’t blame her—in the right setting, I also find these post-midnight trips kinda creepy, despite the centering mantras my brain keeps repeating.

So how many people are just like her? Do most adults grow out of fearing the dark, or do many of us continue to glimpse our insecurities in the void? Turns out we have some interesting data to illuminate those points. When Talker Research surveyed 2,000 Americans in September, 29% of respondents admitted they "still harbor this childhood fear well into adulthood." Also notable is that men (33%) had slightly higher rates than women (26%).

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🧠 Your brain might be getting better with age (no, really)

Your 20s aren’t your peak, they’re your pregame.

There are entire industries built around the pursuit of youthfulness. Everyone wants that energy, those reflexes, that skin. We’re told, constantly, that twenty-something is the thing to be.

It’s mostly (and you might want to sit down for this) marketing.

Real science says something pretty different about which age is actually best. Psychologists Gilles Gignac and Marcin Zajenkowski tracked how our minds evolve across a lifetime, and what they found flips the whole idea of “prime years” upside down.

As Erik Barnes reports, your brain’s peak might arrive just as your candles start to crowd the cake. So, when is your mind at its peak? Read the story to find out.

And what did we learn?

Yesterday, we revealed the scientific answer to the coffee or tea debate. The answer? Both! 

• I grab a quick sweet-treat from the coffee shop for $8/day (10.8%)

• I hand-craft an elaborate cup with expensive gear at home (33.8%)

• Mine comes from the old pod-machine in the break-room (24.6%)

• I drink tea like the sophisticated soul I am (30.8%)

Shout out to those who enjoy tea. The comments were steeped (ha) in love for green tea specifically. I’ll have to give it another go.

🐙 Alien brains, secret signs, and a little interspecies mind-meld

Inside a moment of eerie, almost telepathic understanding on the Great Barrier Reef.

Dr. Alex Schnell has spent her career studying some of the ocean’s most mysterious minds. But while filming Secrets of the Octopus for National Geographic, she stumbled into something even she couldn’t explain, an unspoken conversation between species.

She was watching Scarlett* the octopus hunt when a coral trout suddenly did a strange “headstand” over the reef. It wasn’t random. The fish was signaling to the octopus that prey was hiding nearby. Curious, Schnell decided to join the conversation.

For a moment, a human and an octopus shared a common language: gesture, curiosity, and trust. Schnell calls it “magical,” but it might also be the clearest glimpse yet into how these blue-blooded shape-shifters think.

In this story from the GOOD vault, we explore what happens when the line between “us” and “them” starts to blur.

* - Since I was a kid, I’ve wondered who gets to pick the names for the animals in these documentary shows. I want to do that! What a fun job.

If you could somehow watch the game that was played at College Field on the College Avenue campus at Rutgers on November 6, 1869, and you squinted really hard, you might recognize the game that would become American football.

Rutgers vs. Princeton. No concept of downs, no line of scrimmage, and no carrying the ball. Twenty-five students on each side chased a round ball under rules closer to those of 1860s English soccer: each goal ended a “game,” and the first to ten games won the day.

Rutgers tied scarlet scarves around their heads to stand out, an improvised uniform that helped fix the school’s color in lore, then kicked and dribbled their way to a 6–4 victory before a crowd of about a hundred. Princeton answered a week later, winning the rematch under their rules, and the planned tie-breaker match was canceled by faculty who feared sport might distract from study. (Can you imagine trying to float this idea to today’s NCAA?)

Yet from that scrappy, kick-heavy stalemate grew an American original: within a decade, colleges formalized associations; by 1880, innovations like the line of scrimmage, snaps, and downs, transformed mobs into formations and set strategy at the sport’s heart.

The rivalry continued for 111 years. As of the last game, played in 1980, Princeton led 53–17–1… but Rutgers took the last game 44 to 13.

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💬 From the group text…

My wife has a similar contract with my son, but it’s about where she’ll live when she’s old. I’ve been told not to be offended that I was not part of the negotiation.

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