The World's Best Book Summaries
Why does time speed up as we age? Does the time really pass faster as we get older or does the mind play a trick? The reason you find time speeding up as you get older has to do with how your brain processes novel information. Your brain responds more actively to novelty than it does to routine, which is why it feels like time is speeding up as you get older. Here’s why time seems to speed up as we get older.
What is a hymen? Is the hymen a marker of a woman’s virginity? There is a common misconception that the hymen—a membrane found at the opening of the vaginal canal—is an indication of virginity. Because of its location and potential to change over the course of a woman’s life, there’s a common but incorrect belief that the hymen is a barrier that’s permanently “broken” the first time that a penis penetrates the vagina. Let’s debunk the myth of hymen or the “virginity membrane.”
Who is Michael Burry? What was his involvement in the housing market crash? Michael Burry is the founder of the hedge fund Scion Capital. In 2007, Burry saw a rare opportunity in the subprime housing bond market. He was skeptical (to say the least) about the confidence with which Wall Street sold mortgage-backed securities. He realized that these securities were extraordinarily overvalued because they were backed by questionable loans to uncreditworthy Americans. So, Burry decided to short the housing market. Here goes the story of Michael Burry’s “Big Short.”
What is cashflow? What are the different types of cashflow channels? Cashflow is the total amount of money you earn and spend, and is the total of your income, expenses, liabilities, and assets. According to Robert Kiyosaki, cashflow is the central difference between generating income in the E (employee) and S (small business owner) quadrants and the B (big business owner) and I (investing) quadrants. Here is how cashflow looks like in the E and S quadrants vs. the B and I quadrants.
How do you get through negative pits in life? Do you try to distract yourself from the negativity or do you look for ways to turn the negative into positive? Most people deal with difficult times by trying to lessen the impact of negative emotions. But hard moments in life have the potential to become positive and beautiful experiences that you’ll look back on fondly. In their book The Power of Moments, Chip and Dan Heath suggest two ways of turning negative pits into positive peaks. Here is how to turn the negative into positive.
How does modern culture repress female sexuality? What are the effects of sexual shame on women’s psychological well-being? Sex and sexuality are often associated with shame, especially for women. Women have always been taught to feel ashamed of their sexuality, which negatively affects their mental health. Here is how sexual shame affects women’s sexual well-being.
Is Donald Trump a threat to democracy? How does Trump contribute to the erosion of democratic norms in the United States? According to Ziblatt and Levitsky, the authors of How Democracies Die, Donald Trump exhibits clear authoritarian tendencies that threaten American democracy. His impingement on democratic norms was evident from the first year of his presidency. In this article, we’ll consider a couple of examples of Trump’s violation of democratic norms.
Does thinking of and handling money make you nervous? Why do people fear money, fear spending it, or fear not having enough? The fear of money haunts many people. After all, money is core to survival, impacts virtually every part of our lives, and is the difference between freedom and freefall. So, the fear of money makes sense. But if you want to change your financial situation, you need to overcome your fear of money and develop a healthy relationship with it. Here is how the fear of money impairs your financial progress.
What causes constitutional hardball? What happens when one side of a political system breaks the unwritten democratic norms to secure a partisan advantage over its opponent side? In their book How Democracies Die, authors Levitsky and Ziblatt argue that when one party secures a short-term partisan advantage by breaking unwritten democratic norms, the other party is likely to retaliate. These tit-for-tat dynamics create a so-called constitutional hardball that erodes democratic values of mutual toleration and institutional forbearance. Here is how breaking the unwritten democratic norms to secure a partisan advantage jeopardizes democracy.
Why do we remember certain things but forget others? What makes an experience memorable? According to Chip and Dan Heath, the authors of The Power of Moments, there are two psychological factors that make an experience memorable: 1) the peak-end rule and 2) novelty and unexpectedness. Once you understand the psychology behind memorable moments, you can engineer small, everyday moments to stand out in your memory just as much as special moments. In this article, we’ll explore what makes a moment memorable, and how you can engineer memorable moments on demand.