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Science has bad news about punching pillows
Five body-language shifts, 100 years written on a face, and the quiet trick that actually cools anger.
Greg Sullivan
October 06, 2026 • Est. Reading Time: 4 minutes
“I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”
― Mary Shelley
A tenth of a second. That’s roughly how long it can take someone to start forming an impression of you, which feels frankly unreasonable. Adam Albright Hanna has five little ways to make that first impression work more in your favor. Then we’re looking at a century of faces, what actually calms anger, the gloriously ridiculous opening night of the Moulin Rouge, and an otter who would like everyone to stop whatever they’re doing immediately.
Culture
Your face is doing more talking than you think.
Before you’ve had a chance to say something charming, funny, or devastatingly insightful, the person across from you is already forming an impression. Research suggests we can start judging someone’s trustworthiness in as little as a tenth of a second. No pressure!
In this story by Adam Albright Hanna, five small body-language adjustments can help you come across as more confident, open, and genuinely engaged. And most of them are things you’re already doing, just perhaps not quite deliberately.
There’s a surprisingly specific rule for eye contact, a way to tell a genuine smile from the polite one you deploy when someone corners you at a party, and a social trick that works beautifully right up until you overdo it and become a mime. The goal isn’t to perform likability. It’s to make sure your body isn’t accidentally contradicting you.
GOOD reader Dan Ferrarese says the John Denver lyric “There’s a storm across the valley, clouds are rolling in” felt just right for this stunning shot. Even better, this marks Dan’s 10th contribution to The Daily GOOD, a new record! Thanks, Dan.
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Silver Has Beaten Gold Before. It's Doing It Again.
From 1974 to 1987, silver more than doubled gold's returns. After 2008, it beat gold five-fold in three years. Since March 2020, silver is up 402% against gold's 186%. Our research team's free playbook explains why, and how the team would position.
Which legendary venue would you most want to visit on opening night?You get a front-row seat and period-appropriate clothing. |
Yesterday's Results
In yesterday's issue, we celebrated 57 years since Monty Python's Flying Circus first aired on the BBC.
And we asked: Which common internet term got its name from a Monty Python sketch? 71.3% of you knew it was Spam. British comedy quietly helped name one of the internet's most persistent annoyances.
Meme (6.6%)
Spam (71.3%) 🏆
Troll (19.1%)
Cookie (2.9%)
I think, of many similar comments, GOOD reader Deb Nettle said it best. "SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, etc."
Generations | Courtesy of Upworthy
 | ||
12 unforgettable side-by-side photos of people over 100-years-old with their younger selves | ||
A truly beautiful reminder of how delightful aging can be. | ||
By Upworthy Staff | ||
Czech photographer Jan Langer‘s portrait series “Faces of Century” shows them in a different light: as human beings aged by years of experience, but at their deepest level, unchanged by the passing of time. In the series, Langer juxtaposes his portraits with another portrait of the subject from decades earlier. He recreates the original pose and lighting as closely as he can. He wants us to see them not just as they are now, but how they have and haven’t changed over time. That is the key to the series. | ||
These are the rare faces of people who have lived through two world wars, a cavalcade of regimes, and the rush of advancements in modern life. These photos, and the stories of the lives lived by the people in them, show not only the beauty of aging, but how even as we age, we still remain essentially ourselves. | ||
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Health
154 studies. 10,189 people. One very inconvenient verdict on how we handle a bad mood.
You know the scene. Someone gets so furious they start hurling plates, punching walls, and chucking a television out the window, then, suddenly, they feel better. Anger has a way of taking over a whole room, and it is such a tidy fantasy that entire businesses, those pay-by-the-hour rage rooms, exist to sell you relief by the smash*. The logic feels airtight: let the pressure out, and the anger goes with it.
A sweeping new analysis says that logic is exactly backward. Researchers combed through 154 studies covering 10,189 people of every age, culture, and temperament, and found that venting does almost nothing to cool you down, while some versions of it leave you angrier than when you started. As one author put it, there is not a shred of scientific evidence to support catharsis theory.
So if breaking things and sprinting it out are both a bust, what actually works? The answer is almost annoyingly quiet, and it looks nothing like the movies. In Ryan Reed's rundown of the research, the real fix has less to do with unleashing the storm and more to do with lowering the thermostat on it.
* - I can attest to how fun these rooms are, though! If you find one, try it. I had a blast!
On October 6, 1889, the Moulin Rouge opened its doors at the foot of Montmartre in Paris. Founders Joseph Oller and Charles Zidler were so determined to open that night that they welcomed the public even though construction wasn’t completely finished. What they had built was gloriously ridiculous: a gigantic dance floor, walls of mirrors, a garden containing an enormous elephant and, for reasons apparently obvious to 1889 Parisians, donkey rides.
The crowds came immediately. Soon the Moulin Rouge became synonymous with the French cancan, while regular customer Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec helped make its dancers and famous red windmill immortal through his art. More than a century later, it remains one of the most recognizable nightclubs on Earth.
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💬 From the group text…
It is far beyond my powers to resist posting this video of Oscar the irritated otter.
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Until tomorrow, check in on your face. Make sure it’s telling the story you want it to when you’re around other people.