Bananas used to be a lot more difficult to eat than they are now. The seeds were huge and plentiful, and ran throughout the flesh of the fruit, which itself was starchier, stringier, and less sweet. Other foods were similarly obtuse. Watermelons, for example — instead of having contiguous pink flesh throughout, the good part was hiding in small, seed-riddled […]

Just as your eyeballs are, your mind is always pointed at something, and it matters what it is. If you spent most of your day preoccupied with thoughts about a past failed relationship, for example, that makes for a different kind of day than one in which you’re preoccupied with solving a computer programming problem. Your mood, your actions, and […]

Sometimes doing a small thing can be extremely satisfying, out of all proportion to how easy it is: placing a jigsaw puzzle piece into the right slot, wiping your phone screen spotless, returning a tool to its designated hook, or making a nice diagonal cut across a lovingly-made sandwich. This simple kind of satisfaction seems to come haphazardly. Much of […]

Say you’re walking through Death Valley, trying to find your way back to the highway. Luckily you’ve got a good paper map. As you walk, you scan the territory around you for landmarks. You see some large-scale details: hills, rock formations, and gullies. Also some minute ones: pebbles, gangly plants, trails through the dust where snakes have been. These smaller […]