News Sidequest

It’s Friday the 13th, and a famous 1960 science paper says the world ends today. We explain the math, why it was wrong, and what happened to population growth. Then we look at “floodlighting,” the dating habit of sharing too much, too soon. And astronomers say they’ve figured out the source of a radio signal that pulses every eight minutes, and it wasn’t aliens. Plus a drop in home sales to a 16-year low, children’s fingerprints on 13,000-year-old clay figurines, a pair of Pacific atolls that may be some of the last wild ocean ecosystems, and the raccoon that got drunk and raised $290,000.

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A new TikTok trend called “brain stacking” swaps doomscrolling for books, puzzles, and other screen-free hobbies, and we look at what it can and can’t do. A study of more than 148,000 people finds gratitude goes with better health, and the reason may be feeling supported. And we explain sleep paralysis, why it happens, and what helps. Plus the young Americans driving the prenup boom, a new look at a 3-million-year-old child’s fossil, why mosquitoes pick favorites, and what coffee may do to your gut bacteria.

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New research ties dreading the workday to worrying about work at bedtime, and what may break the cycle. Archaeologists argue that early humans may have saved pebbles and old tools as souvenirs hundreds of thousands of years ago. And a study finds that kindness earns far less credit when people expect it. Plus a lost O’Keeffe found behind fur coats in a Manhattan closet, the first “disappearing planet,” a physicist’s argument that time is real, and science’s finding that your cat meows to get you to fix things.

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A Texas antiques dealer spots a marble head on the floor of an Austin Goodwill, pays $34.99, and learns it’s about 2,000 years old and missing from a German palace. A new survey finds 59% of Americans are keeping a financial secret from someone close to them, from bad credit to hidden gambling. And we look at what the research says about small acts of revenge. Plus a cruise ship pianist who spent about nine hours in the Pacific before fishermen found him, a vanity plate that came with $40,000 in tickets, a cannabis discovery in a 2,800-year-old tomb, and a cow that wouldn’t be caught.

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NASA just opened applications for a new astronaut class that will help build a permanent Moon Base, and we look at who can apply and the odds. New research on “chasing happiness” suggests that constantly checking your mood can leave you less happy, and more alone. And a New Yorker profile argues reports of reading’s death are greatly exaggerated. Plus the highest U.S. measles count since 1991, a chef who says he was fired over pineapple on pizza, more than 3,000 tarantulas found in travelers’ socks, and a 100th birthday party in the aisles of a Lowe’s.

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A new set of experiments finds that bosses trust workers a lot less when they learn AI helped with a task, even without seeing the work, and what shrank the gap. A Swedish study of 3,034 fifteen-year-olds finds that who teens message may matter as much as how long. And this year’s ozone hole is the biggest in a decade, but scientists say the recovery is still on track. Plus the Old Farmer’s Almanac’s white Christmas forecast, a theory that the brainstem holds the switch for awareness, a very large study on tight underwear, and a 97-year-old’s last dance at his own birthday party.

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Neanderthals may have organized their rock-shelter homes into sleeping areas, living areas, and a spot to deal with the mess, according to two new studies from a site near Barcelona. Hackers have been heating up commercial refrigeration across Europe, and this week the attack reached French blood banks, where alarms caught it in time. And a 76-year-old Texas custodian who worked 39 years for one school district found out a new elementary school will carry her name. Plus a search for alien signals that found only Earthly noise, a performer who found 35 half-siblings and wrote a musical about it, a Costco breakfast order that cracked an alleged school embezzlement case, and why Harley-Davidson keeps selling.

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A lot of people in their 40s are quietly fighting the fact that they can’t see up close anymore, and we explain the “old eye” condition behind it. AI “resurrections” are becoming big business, and a new study asks who really benefits from bringing back the dead. And scientists found chemical traces of blood, and tiny cell-like structures, inside a 115-million-year-old dinosaur bone. Plus a NASA telescope’s final fall to Earth, a thief who mailed back a $290,000 watch with an apology, a cruise ship detained in Miami, and a study on believing you’ll be remembered.

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Four “analog astronauts” walked out of NASA’s simulated Mars habitat after 378 days, and we look at what they did in there and why NASA is doing this. A new pair of surveys finds more than a quarter of Americans admit exaggerating or making up symptoms to get antibiotics, and what that means for superbugs. And a growing number of states are ordering repeat speeders to drive cars that physically can’t speed. Plus a man who watched 1,207 movies in theaters in a year, a 26-year-old who just caught a million-dollar fish, a hawk that was “too darn fat to fly,” and the real reason a restaurant fired its Halloween candy taker.

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A new survey of 7,200 European pilots finds about three in four had a “microsleep” in the cockpit in the past month, and we look at what that does and doesn’t mean, the morning after we turned the clocks back. A dietitian argues parents should let kids eat as much Halloween candy as they want, and we dig into what the research says. And Voyager 1, launched in 1977, is about to become the first human-made object one full light-day from Earth. Plus a study that says comets probably didn’t seed life on Earth, a survey on trusting chatbots over doctors, a retired professor arrested for blocking a delivery robot, and the one-woman town of Monowi, Nebraska.

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