Being a bit nervous giving a speech is a good thing We tend to think of stress as bad. And it can be, as too much stress is associated with various health problems. But stress has an upside: up to a certain point it is associated with higher performance. The figure...

A few nights ago I had a bad dream (I won't bore you with the details) and woke feeling fearful and disoriented. It was a crappy start to my day and I felt a bit off for the next few hours. We've all been there. But maybe bad dreams have a beneficial purpose. Research...

How many ways can you combine six LEGO bricks of the same size and color? Before knowing the answer I guessed a few thousand and thought I was probably overshooting. It turns out that I massively underestimated the answer. In 1974, for whatever reason, LEGO computed...

Heavy Metal is a sub-genre of rock music known for its “distorted guitar ‘power chords’, heavy riffs, wailing vocals and virtuosic solos by guitarists and drummers” (Oxford Music Dictionary). The origins of Heavy Metal trace to the late 1960s and early 1970s....

We're all aware of the placebo effect -- a beneficial effect that occurs even though the drug or procedure is a fake. It turns out that there is a lesser-known opposite to the placebo effect called the "nocebo effect" which can happen when a patient has negative...

As the president of a successful multi-family office, I get tons of e-mails and voicemails every day from salespeople wanting to sell their products and services to our firm or our clients: investment managers, IT consultants, recruiters, HR consultants, private jet...

Looking for a good book to read? I read 51 books in 2021. Here's a link to that list: Books Read in 2021 Here were my favorite six of the year -- four fiction and two nonfiction (the numbers are the order in which I read them during the year): 5. Agent to the Stars,...

ANSWERS:1. Run aground. 2. A run in her stocking. 3. Take the money and run. 4. Run it up the flagpole. 5. Also-ran. 6. Run a fever. 7. Running on empty. 8. Runs in the family. 9. Home run. BONUS: "Along the riverrun" from "Finnegans Wake" by James Joyce. Source The...

We're in week 16 of the NFL season and playoffs are close on the horizon. We're also in college bowl game season. With that in mind, let's consider a key decision that faces coaches multiple times a game: should they go for it when faced with fourth down? On fourth...

What is Unclaimed Property? There is a huge amount of unclaimed property in the U.S. -- an estimated $49.5 billion of it is held by the states, waiting to be claimed. "Unclaimed Property" is money or other property (like an insurance policy) that belongs to you but...

Last week I was at a St. Louis Blues hockey game (we won) and the guy sitting behind me asked his granddaughter a question I overheard: "How thick do you think that ice is down there?" Stop and think of your own answer. The granddaughter replied, "well, the way you're...