One of the strangest things about being human is that people of lesser intelligence tend to overestimate how smart they are and people who are highly intelligent tend to underestimate how smart they are. This is called the Dunning-Kruger effect and it’s proven every time you log onto Facebook and see someone from high school who thinks they know more about vaccines than a doctor. The interesting thing is that even though people are poor judges of their own smarts, we’ve evolved to be pretty good at judging the intelligence of others. “Such findings imply that, in order to be adaptive, first ..read more

A quick-thinking 10-year-old boy escaped a woman trying to lure him by pretending that a local store clerk was his mother. ABC 6 reports that Sammy Green was walking home from school in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, on Friday, November 11, when a strange woman started following him. The woman "started walking with him and asking him where his family was, asking where his dad was," Sam Green, the boy's father, told ABC6. The boy didn’t know the woman but she insisted that she knew his family. She tried to lure him into going with her by promising she’d buy him “anything he wanted” at Wawa, a local ..read more

Stephanie Walsh isn't your average hip-hop dancer. At 75, "Ms. Stephanie" is still able to hold her own on the dance floor, popping and locking with people a third her age, and she loves it. When you see her dance—and her enviable muscle tone—you might think she'd been a trained dancer all her life. But she actually didn't take any formal dance lessons until she was almost 30. Walsh told Growing Bolder that she had wanted her daughter to dance when she was little, so she got her ballet lessons, which the daughter hated. Realizing that dancing was her dream and not her daughter's, Walsh to ..read more

There are many reasons why people are nervous about entering social situations where they have to make small talk, such as a work event, a party where they don’t know many people, or at school. Some people don’t enjoy small talk because they get frustrated talking about seemingly unimportant topics. At the same time, others are shy and afraid they’ll say the wrong thing or run out of topics of conversation. Psychologists suggest those who are uncomfortable knowing what to say should use the FORD method. It’s an acronym that’s an easy way to remember four different topics of conversation that ..read more

It's not easy living away from family, especially when you live in a completely different country. The distance can become increasingly more difficult to adjust to when tragedy strikes your family back home. It can be cost prohibitive to fly back home and depending on your employer's attendance policy, it may be nearly impossible. Jarom Ngakuru recently faced this very situation. The New Zealander of Māori descent is living in the United States while his family still resides in his home country. Unfortunately, when Ngakuru's grandmother died, he was unable to make the trip back to the island ..read more

If there's any dog breed that encapsulates "good doggo" energy, it's the Golden Retriever. Friendly, gentle, good-natured and oh-so-affectionate, Goldens have come by their reputation honestly. Even "I'm not a dog person" people tend to find themselves taken by Golden Retrievers, and a post on TikTok demonstrates why. The video shared by @hugoandursula is captioned "my dog getting cuddles from strangers on the train," and that's exactly what it shows in the most adorable montage ever. In clip after clip, the sweet pup snuggles into unsuspecting train passengers, winning hearts and evoking ..read more

There are some people that are just inherently intelligent while others have to work at it. As we age we run into more people that have varying degrees of intelligence whether it be from post graduate degrees or just life experiences. But there are sometimes instances where we may find ourselves questioning if someone is as smart as they are letting on. It can be due to something they said, did or just from observing their general behaviors. Is this always a fair assessment though or are we making snap judgements based on what we personally perceive as markers of a person's intelligence? Wel ..read more

Yup. These images were taken only two years apart. And what you're seeing was not an accident. When the economy crashed in 2008, it was because of shady financial practices like predatory lending and speculative investing, which is basically gambling, only the entire economy was at stake. When the recession hit, it literally hit home for millions of people. And Detroit was right in the middle of it. I spoke with Alex Alsup, who works with a Detroit-based tech company that's mapping the city's foreclosed homes to help city officials see the bigger picture and find solutions. He also runs ..read more

At 1:30 am on a Monday morning in February, an AMBER Alert went out in southern Louisiana about a missing 10-year-old girl from New Iberia. It was believed she had been kidnapped and driven away in a 2012 silver Nissan Altima. A few hours later at 7 am, Dion Merrick and Brandon Antoine, sanitation workers for Pelican Waste, were on their daily route when they noticed a vehicle that fit the description in the alert. The sanitation workers thought it was suspicious that a silver sedan was parked alone in a field in St. Martin Parish. "Something told me, like just look, I said what is that car ..read more

Cats have a reputation for being aloof and standoffish, like they're better than everyone and simply can't be bothered. Those of us who have cats know they're not always like that … but yes, they're sometimes like that. They can be sweet and affectionate, but they want affection on their terms, they want to eat and play and sleep on their own clock, and we puny, inferior humans have little say in the matter. There's a reason why we have obedience schools for dogs and not for cats. Maine coon or Bengal, Savannah or Siamese, ragdoll or sphynx, domestic cats of all breeds are largely untrainabl ..read more