Did you know the brain is the only organ in the body that named itself? This is something I find hard to wrap my head around, and sparks so many different questions and unanswerable ones when it comes to discussing the magnificence of the brain. Never before has the human brain been studied, measured, and modified so intensely. From productivity apps to sleep trackers to focus hacks, modern life is saturated with advice on how to optimise the mind. Attention, motivation, memory, and emotional regulation are treated as systems to upgrade – problems to solve rather than experiences to understand. But beneath this scientific enthusiasm lies a quieter cost: the risk of reducing human psychology to performance alone.

Why does everyone seem to mix up Alzheimer’s and dementia? Ask any pop quiz mastermind and they’ll probably just stare at you blankly, or worse, give you an answer that’s technically wrong – shocking.
But don’t worry, you won’t after you read this article *wink*.

If someone had told me five years ago that a cancer treatment could not only attack tumours but make them less painful at the same time, I would have raised an eyebrow so high it might’ve reached my hairline. 
Yet here we are – that’s exactly the exciting twist scientists are reporting in the latest bone cancer research. 

“It’s not just me that’s saying it, the fact is that Sykes-Picot has failed, it’s over,” declared Massoud Barzani in a 2016 BBC interview. As president of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region and a leader of the world’s largest stateless nation, Barzani’s condemnation reflects more than Kurdish grievance. Signed in 1916 by Britain and France, the Sykes-Picot Agreement symbolises the imperial imposition of borders that divided previously fluid populations and produced states with weak national identity and legitimacy. While only one of several wartime agreements, it has come to represent a broader dissatisfaction with externally imposed statehood in the Middle East and the enduring instability those borders helped create.

It always happens at the worst possible moment. A silent exam hall. A quiet bedroom at night. A library so still it feels like noise would be illegal. And then – out of nowhere – a high-pitched ringing appears, as if the brain has decided to test a fire alarm that no one installed. The question is simple, slightly annoying, and surprisingly fascinating: why do our ears ring when everything is quiet?