Planets & Transits
New Moon in Leo August 12, 2026
The New Moon arrives in Leo August 12 at 8:36 PM UTC, and with it comes a singular...
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- Written by: Patrick Ercolano, Johns Hopkins University
It’s often thought that we are hardwired by eons of natural selection to be attracted to particular physical traits; that preference is thought to guide a search for healthy mates to help us produce healthy offspring. But the study by Yang and Leonard Lee of the National University of Singapore challenges the notion that our inborn ideas of physical attractiveness are immutable.
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- Written by: Jennifer Kitchen, University of Warwick
Why does a four-year-old play when a 14-year-old creates? It’s often argued that play is central to the lives of young children. Yet the play of older children and adults is often seen as leisure, escapism or even deviance. But there should not be such a binary division between what is educational and what is frivolous.
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- Written by: Ryan Schacht, University of Utah
Relationships seem to be about partner matching. Therefore the apparent robustness of sex differences in preferences may largely be an artifact of the focus on sex at the expense of other more meaningful variables.
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- Written by: Gregg Levoy
We can probably all relate to the experience of feeling divided within ourselves, occasionally against ourselves, and love will certainly induce this as handily as any of life’s experiences. A little-known fact about Cupid may help explain this. He is said to have carried in his quiver two kinds of arrows, one struck you with love, the other with hate.
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- Written by: Joyce Vissell
Do you take the people you love for granted? Do you just assume they will always be there? Do you tell them often enough that you love and care about them, or do you feel there is no need as they probably already know?
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- Written by: Barbara Berger
If we want to make the world a better place, we need to work on having healthy boundaries! And by this I mean… we understand that I am me and you are you and that each of us has a right to be here and to choose and experience the consequences of all our thoughts, words and actions.
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- Written by: Jeff Sossamon, University of Missouri
In the social world, we are constantly gathering information through visual cues that we use to evaluate others’ behavior. Babies do the same thing. Babies as young as 13 months know how people should treat each other—and recognize when nasty replaces nice.
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- Written by: H. Brevy Cannon, University of Virginia
A new study finds quantitative evidence of love—something very few economic studies have ever claimed. The researchers asked married couples two penetrating questions about the quality of their marriage, and combined those responses with the couples’ divorce rates six years later.
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- Written by: Anne Fishel, Harvard Medical School
As a family therapist, I often have the impulse to tell families to go home and have dinner together rather than spending an hour with me. And 20 years of research in North America, Europe and Australia back up my enthusiasm for family dinners. It turns out that sitting down for a nightly meal is great for the brain, the body and the spirit.
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- Written by: Barry Vissell
We all carry some degree of self-blame, ways we accuse or condemn ourselves. Often these feelings come from our childhood, where we were blamed for mistakes we made. It’s sad how other people’s blame of us can turn into our blame of ourselves, which then often becomes our secret shame, and can keep us from the happiness we want...
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- Written by: Cynthia Lee, McGill University
A new study finds a link between a good night’s sleep for school-aged kids and better performance in math and languages specifically—subjects that are powerful predictors of later learning and academic success.
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- Written by: Anne Lazenbatt, Queen's University Belfast and John Devaney, Queen's University Belfast
Domestic violence is physically, emotionally, psychologically and socially devastating to women and can have similarly devastating effects on their infants and children. The Home Office highlights that while domestic violence can be directed at men by women and can happen in same-sex relationships, the unequivocal majority of domestic abuse (more than 77%) is committed by men against women.
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- Written by: Cassandra Eason
In pregnancy and in some cases even before, quite a high proportion of mothers believe they have been in contact with their unborn children. Some of the women studied found their bodies picking up their unborn babies' feelings. "Every once in a while, I have a feeling but I don't know where it comes from. And then I realize that I am not the one having the feeling."
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- Written by: Michelle Rios Rice Hennelly & R. Kevin Hennelly
There is a reason why some people choose to dress or groom themselves in ways that are not provocative. Certain ways of dressing, as well as certain uses of things such as makeup, scents, and jewelry, often elicit exchanges of sexual energy. If we go through the day projecting our sexual energy onto others...
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- Written by: Debra Hegerle
Indigos process their emotions differently than non Indigos because they have high self-esteem and strong integrity. They can read you like an open book and quickly notice and neutralize any hidden agendas or attempts to manipulate them, however subtly.
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- Written by: Vanita Sundaram, University of York
Teenagers' opinions about when violence is acceptable or not can be influenced by the way they perceive men and women and the relationships between them. Simply telling young people that violence is wrong won’t stop it happening.
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- Written by: Linda Carroll
Two points emerge from our troubles during this stage. The first is the incorrect belief that our happiness and the success of the relationship are determined by what our partner says and does. As I’ve emphasized before and will again, all relationship change begins within you...
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- Written by: James Devitt, NYU
New research suggests that focusing on the “silver linings” of our negative traits can lead to positive results. Researchers call the finding a “silver lining” theory.
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- Written by: Alejandro Jodorowsky
To examine a person’s difficulties is to enter into the psychological atmosphere of his or her family. We are marked by their characteristics, but also by their insane ideas, their negative feelings, their inhibited desires, and their destructive acts. All problems have their roots in the family tree.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Englander, Bridgewater State University
Stories of teens taking and sending a naked picture of themselves with their phones have been all over the news media in recent years. The outcome? Shocking, according to reports which have suggested that humiliation and sometimes even suicide can follow.
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- Written by: Linda Carroll
Whether or not we’re part of a couple, we come into the world alone, we leave alone, and we make many of our most important decisions after we’ve done our own private soul-searching. We and we alone are responsible for our behavior; we create our own lives.
