Provoked Newsletter

A new framework for thinking about your multifaceted self You send an email to an ex about the time they kissed a boy in the bar you were in, knowing you were there, with nary a concern. Then returned to you as if nothing had happened. It still bugs you when you hear the song that was playing over the speakers: “Bastards of Young” by the Replacements. Fortunately, neuroscience has provided a suspect: your lizard brain.

Last weekend I drove two hours to spend the afternoon with two friends from college. The main draw was Dan, who took his obsession with beer and built a business around it: Small Batch, a mobile brewery (LINK). He was supplying the beer for fans at a Richmond Kickers match.

Thoughts about a controversy in well-being science I just flew home from San Diego where I spent a few days at The Health and Well-Being Coaching Conference 2026 giving a keynote on The Science of Purpose and a workshop on How To Make Groups Smarter and Wiser. Unlike many conferences, this is one where the culture is so nourishing, the food is so spectacular, and the views in San Diego are so tranquil, that I might have made friends for life.

This is part of a series where I respond to questions by Provoked readers. You can read prior issues here: • The GREATEST data on the importance of selecting the right college • Is Autism Rising? Is it Being Misdiagnosed? Are We Just More Aware? Below are my answers to questions from six students at a boarding school in Denmark. They are conducting a class project on curiosity and empathy and needed to contact a curiosity expert. I am not going to print the names of minors just know they impressed me.

Sooner or later you will run into someone who will want to physically fight you in a parking lot, even though you are an adult who thought these instances ended in middle school. That person might be extremely low in agreeableness, high in neuroticism, and indifferent to whether anyone likes them. An asshole, in the technical sense.

This article is free because the topic matters too much to put behind a paywall. Please send it to people who might need it. If you value work like this, consider becoming a premium member (with loads of benefits). “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide,” Albert Camus wrote in 1942 (Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus). Camus was asking whether life is worth living without a solid reason.

I am an extrovert, and there is no memory of anyone labeling me otherwise. This is supposedly the ultimate historical moment for people like me. Open offices. A push toward real-world experiences such as haunted trails and pop-up bars in the back of gelato shops (just hit one in Toronto). Airplanes where another human is strapped 11.2 inches away from my shoulder for five hours.

In my abnormal psychology and Science of Well-Being classes at George Mason University, I asked students to put alcohol, marijuana, and smartphones in front of an imaginary product safety board. The board had access to the existing body of scientific evidence available today. Would you approve them? Alcohol comes with a file of cancer studies. Marijuana needs to specify how much THC it plans to deliver.

NOTE: this is part of a series on the science of curiosity including how this strength changes over the lifespan (click here for Part I and Part II), benefits memory and creativity (here), alters social interactions (here), persuades people (here), andcan be boosted (here), In my first year as a clinical psychology Ph.D. student, we were each asked to invent a measure on any construct.

You might have missed these recent articles: Who published the most important well-being papers in a 10-year span? What Odysseus’s son did that beloved CEO’s valorized in best-selling books suck at If those articles don’t entice you, how about a recent podcast episode focusing on how to better manage uncertainty and adversity: If that failed to satisfy your cerebral cravings, we just had our monthly Provoked Community Call for premium subscribers. We typically cover a lot of ground in these calls.