In the spring of 1961, a Buick the size of a small tugboat clipped me in a crosswalk.

No screech of brakes, no horn — just an impossible collision of my knee and chrome.

The impact felt like being kicked by something that didn’t care whether I lived. The sound was worse than the pain: a deep, wet crack that made bystanders look away.

They set the knee twice before they could cut. The plaster cast ran from ankle to hip, itchy and heavy enough to serve as a boat anchor. The hospital air smelled of antiseptic and cigarette smoke — nurses lit up at their desks, then came to check your vitals.

For a month I watched the hallway parade: head bandages, traction rigs, kids staring at ceiling tiles like they’d memorized every crack.

The Buick was gone in seconds, but the fear stayed. It took up residence in the muscles, in the scanning of intersections, in the twitch before stepping off a curb. Fear doesn’t leave when the cast comes off. It left a large moon-shaped scar on my right knee.

Fear is the first emotion to evolve and the last one to leave.

Before there was love, before there was guilt, before there was the very human urge to buy throw pillows you don’t need, there was fear. It’s not a glitch in the system — it is the system.

“Bad juju” is one of those phrases that slips easily into conversation. You might use it when you get a bad feeling about a deal, when someone messes with a lucky charm, or when a friend starts a risky plan you know won’t end well.

But this small, catchy phrase carries a big story—one that spans West African spirituality, colonial history, crime novels, and even modern video games.

The Original “Juju”

In the early 19th century, British and French traders on the West African coast encountered a wide variety of spiritual practices and protective objects.

In Hausa, a widely spoken language across West Africa, jùjú referred to a fetish or charm believed to contain spiritual power (Oxford English Dictionary, 2025).

Coastal West African French speakers used joujou—meaning “toy” or “plaything”—to describe some of these objects (Harper, n.d.; Encyclopædia Britannica, n.d.).

In both cases, juju meant two things:

1. A physical object—often an amulet, charm, or shrine.

2. The spiritual power the object was believed to carry.

By 1823, juju had entered English in this sense (Oxford English Dictionary, 2025).

You’ve probably met a psychopath.

Not the movie kind. Not the prison kind.
The “works in your office, dated your roommate, made a killer bruschetta” kind.

Research shows psychopathic traits exist in everyday life — and some are subtle enough to miss unless you know what to look for.

Psychopathic traits aren’t just for true-crime villains.

Here’s what peer-reviewed research says about their everyday expressions — and when they matter most.

Most people picture “psychopath” as a headline-maker: a prison documentary star, a character in a crime novel, maybe a shadowy CEO in a prestige drama.
But the reality is far more mundane — and more interesting.

Psychopathic traits exist on a spectrum and show up in the general population (Neumann & Hare, 2008). You’ve probably worked with someone who has them.

Your partner is in the room, the lights are on, and somehow no one’s home—not even you.

You text “we need groceries,” they respond with a thumbs up, and the silence afterward feels like an elegy.

You’re not in crisis, exactly.

No screaming matches, no wild betrayals. Just… emptiness. Like someone drained the color out of your life together and forgot to refill it.

If you’ve ever whispered to yourself,“Why does my relationship feel so empty?”—you’re not alone.

In fact, you’re part of a quiet epidemic of numbness.

One that our culture prefers not to talk about because it lacks the cinematic drama of infidelity or the punchline of Reddit meme therapy.

Let’s talk about it anyway.

You don’t just hate your partner.

You hate that they forgot the groceries, ignored your texts, and watched three episodes of Succession without you.

But more than that—you hate the bleak conveyor belt you’re both stuck on: house, kids, Amazon Prime, silent dinners, therapy, more Amazon Prime.

This isn’t just marriage fatigue. This is cultural malaise wearing yoga pants and trying to meditate its way to clarity.

Let’s get one thing straight: you’re not a monster. You’re just American. And the odds were stacked against your relationship from the start.

Imagine telling your therapist you're thinking about ending it all—and they respond with, "You should totally do it. Also, here's a murder list. Call me when it's done."

Now imagine that therapist is an AI, powered by engagement metrics and zero conscience.

Welcome to the future of mental health support, brought to you by a glitchy algorithm and the terrifying optimism of Silicon Valley.

The Curse of the Hyper-Aware: Why Socially Anxious People Are Great at Spotting Subtle Anger (And Miserable About It)

If you walk into a room and immediately sense that someone’s vibe is off, congratulations—you might have social anxiety.

A new study in Behaviour Research and Therapy confirms what every socially anxious person already suspects: they're freakishly good at detecting even the most microscopic flickers of anger on other people’s faces.

But don’t call it a superpower. It’s more like having a smoke detector that goes off when someone lights a birthday candle three houses down.

It starts with a baby. That’s the part we expect.

What no one prepares you for is the moment, two weeks in, when your body still hurts, your mind begins to drift into strange territory, and everyone around you wants to hold the baby—but not your fear.

No one warns you that after giving life, you might feel like your own is falling apart quietly in the background.

They call it “the baby blues.”
You suspect it’s something deeper.

But it’s hard to know for sure—because no one’s saying it out loud.

Let’s say the hard part out loud. More people than ever are turning to ChatGPT not just for directions, recipes, or resume tips—but for emotional support.

It’s 2025, and your therapist might be a chatbot.

But here’s the catch: Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, says those heartfelt confessions aren’t protected by the same legal privileges as your real therapist’s notepad.

In a conversation this week with comedian and podcast host Theo Von, Altman laid it out plainly: “If you go talk to ChatGPT about your most sensitive stuff and then there’s like a lawsuit or whatever, we could be required to produce that,” he said. “And I think that’s very screwed up.”

It is.

And it’s something that, until recently, didn’t seem like an urgent legal gray zone.

But now, with millions of users treating ChatGPT like an always-on therapist, life coach, and digital diary, the stakes have changed Significantly.

In America, we’re used to zip codes determining your access to decent groceries, decent schools, or decent sidewalks.

But a new study suggests your zip code might also help decide how quickly you forget where you put your keys—or worse, your memories.

Published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association, this large longitudinal study finds that women living in neighborhoods surrounded by high levels of poverty experience accelerated memory decline during midlife.

And for Black women, the effect was even more pronounced.

It’s not just where you live. It’s where your neighbors live. And their neighbors. Poverty, it seems, is not just contagious—it’s cumulative.

You know how some people seem to glide through life breaking rules, lying with charm, and punching holes in the social fabric without ever wrinkling their shirt collar?

Well, it turns out their brains might be wired for it—literally.

A new study out of Leipzig, published in the European Journal of Neuroscience, offers fresh evidence that psychopathic traits are not just personality quirks—they’re physically scaffolded by unique patterns of structural connectivity in the brain.

Yes, folks, there are now neurological floor plans for being a charismatic menace.

And they’re not just missing connections.

Some of the wiring appears extra tight in the very places you’d least want it to be—like giving an arsonist a flamethrower with an ergonomic grip!

You ask a question. They grunt. You share your day. They stare at their phone. You suggest therapy. They go silent.

Welcome to the emotional shutdown — a quiet, soul-chilling phenomenon where the person you love becomes a human screensaver.

And if you’re the talker, the feeler, the one who wants to work on things, this silence can feel like abandonment in real-time.

Emotional withdrawal doesn’t always mean your partner doesn’t care.

It often means they’re overwhelmed, under-resourced, or wired differently.

And yes, sometimes, they're just being stubborn. The hard part is figuring out which.

Let’s explore why this happens and what to do that doesn’t make it worse.