Every so often in practice, a client will look you dead in the eye and say: “This isn’t my first life.”

For most clinicians trained in the U.S., the reflex is to either change the subject or quietly consider an appropriate DSM code.

But a new Brazilian study in The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion suggests we should pause before pathologizing.

Adults who report past-life memories show higher rates of anxiety, depression, and PTSD than the general population.

At the same time, they often report stronger spirituality and—crucially—higher happiness when forgiveness and spiritual coping come into play.

In other words, whether you think reincarnation is real or not, these memories are clinically meaningful.

“Intentional living” has become one of those phrases you can’t escape.

Coffee, dating, skincare, even the way you spend a Tuesday evening — all of it is now expected to be done with intention.

Wellness culture, social media, and therapy-speak have braided the word into almost every corner of daily life.

On TikTok, one person may show a carefully curated “slowmaxxing”

Sunday: vinyl records, watering plants, lighting soft lamps.

Another shares a sped-up reel of cooking, cleaning, and helping kids with homework — all branded as “intentional.”

Two completely different rhythms, both described the same way.

What is the overall appeal of Intentional Living?

Something odd is happening in America’s job market.

The old order — men at the top, women scrambling to get in — has flipped.

For the first time in living memory, young men with college degrees are having a harder time than women with the same credentials. Women are advancing; men are stalling.

According to Pew Research, women now outnumber men in the college-educated labor force.

Fortune reports that unemployment among college-educated men hovers around 7%, compared to about 4% for women.

The Center for American Progress confirms the pattern:

Gen Z men are less likely than women to be employed, even with the same education. This isn’t a cycle. It looks more like a structural decline.

Drive along the Mohawk Trail in the northern Berkshires and you’ll pass through Florida, Massachusetts — a town so small you might miss it.

Today it’s little more than a library, a scattering of houses, and a wind farm on the ridges.

But Florida once carried the weight of Boston’s ambition.

Beneath its hills lies the Hoosac Tunnel, a five-mile bore blasted through rock in the 19th century, known in its day as both The Great Bore and The Bloody Pit.

Florida raised the tunnel like a difficult child — fed it lives and money, endured its tantrums — and then watched Boston take the credit and move on.

The story still lingers in the hills, and it reads like a parable of marriage, children, and family.

Let’s be honest—most people think dating apps exist for two things: desperate love and casual hookups. Swipe for marriage if you’re lucky, swipe for sex if you’re not.

But humans are not algorithms, and the science shows our reasons for logging on are far more complicated.

A new meta-synthesis published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships (McPherson, Luu, Nguyen, Garcia, & Robnett, 2025) analyzed 21 qualitative studies on dating app use worldwide.

When researchers actually listened to people instead of forcing them into multiple-choice boxes, they found motives that range from profound (companionship) to ridiculous (boredom scrolling between laundry loads).

Some researchers claim that having sex has sorta been the engine of human history since forever.

Empires rose and fell, religions flourished, fortunes were made and lost — all circling around who’s having it, who isn’t, and who’s lying about it.

Psychologists politely call sex “central to wellbeing” (Laumann et al., 1994). Translation: without it, most people are restless, irritable, and not fun at parties.

But what about the people who never ever have sex?

A massive new study of nearly half a million adults in the UK and Australia suggests that lifelong sexual inactivity isn’t just about being unlucky on Tinder.

It’s tied to genes, geography, inequality, and — here comes the punchline — higher intelligence (Wesseldijk et al., 2025).

It’s the kind of headline that makes you choke on your lingonberry jam: Swedish teenage girls recruited as assassins, carrying napalm firebombs in gang wars.

Once upon a time, Sweden’s exports were Volvos and ABBA.

Now it’s teenage girls ferrying Molotov cocktails across Stockholm suburbs.

The question we can’t dodge — the one policymakers and parents alike should be asking — is: what’s happening in these girls’ families?

In July of 1789, while Paris still buzzed from the storming of the Bastille, a different kind of insurrection swept rural France.

Villages across the countryside heard whispers of brigands on the march — marauders allegedly hired by nobles to destroy crops, punish rebellious peasants, and starve whole regions into submission.

The rumors spread like wildfire.

Farmers dropped their tools, armed themselves with scythes and muskets, stormed manors, and torched feudal records.

The aristocracy’s centuries-old paperwork — the ledgers of obligation, the lists of dues and rents — went up in flames. The brigands themselves never materialized.

This episode, remembered as the Great Fear of 1789, has long been dismissed as irrational peasant hysteria. But new research published in Nature suggests the panic wasn’t so simple.

These French Revolution rumors spread in ways that look strikingly similar to how viral misinformation moves today.

Cummington, Massachusetts, is one of those towns people like to call “tucked away.”

Tucked away from what, exactly, is never clear. Presumably, civilization.

But being tucked away does not protect you from the things that really matter—namely, water, snow, and the sky itself deciding to crush you.

For a town of only 800 people, Cummington has three very promising ways to be destroyed: flood, blizzard, or microburst.

Each has already auditioned in nearby towns, which means it’s really only a matter of scheduling before Cummington gets its turn.

Couples therapy is never just two people in conversation.

With Iranian couples, you quickly discover the chairs are already full: qeyrat (masculine honor), namus (family honor tied to women’s bodies), centuries of law, and the voice of a mother-in-law who somehow materializes even across time zones.

They don’t speak directly, but they dictate the script.

“They don’t speak, but they dictate the script.”

What Namus Really Means

For centuries, marriage has been cast as the cornerstone of happiness, the cultural apex of adulthood.

But new research tells us the real psychological boost comes much earlier—and with far less ceremony.

A longitudinal study across Germany and the U.K. shows that life satisfaction rises when people enter a relationship, peaks when they move in together, and stays elevated long after (El-Awad et al., 2025).

Marriage, by comparison, barely shifts the graph.

This isn’t to say marriage has lost its meaning.

Cohabitation may provide the measurable boost, but marriage is one of humanity’s oldest rituals. It is gravitas, continuity, and a public vow. If partnership is the daily bread of happiness, marriage is the ritual feast.

Marriage retreats aren’t cheap, but studies suggest they may deliver faster, longer-lasting results than months of weekly sessions — if you’re brave enough to show up.

So you’re wondering if intensive couples therapy is worth the money. Fair question.

Spending thousands of dollars on a marriage retreat can feel like betting your relationship on a long weekend with a stranger in a cardigan.

Yet the truth is, weekly therapy often feels like driving with the parking brake on — steady progress, sure, but painfully slow.

Intensives, by contrast, promise a fast track: a weekend or week where you and your partner are locked in a room long enough to either rediscover your love… or your lawyer’s number.

And yes, the research suggests that these compressed sessions can work — sometimes spectacularly so.