Careful, sourced criticism of the self-improvement industry.
Repeating an affirmation left low-self-esteem participants in a worse mood than saying nothing. What the research says about the cost of being told to feel great.
Manifestation promises that picturing an outcome brings it closer. The experiments that measured it found vivid fantasy drains the energy to chase it.
Pavlok sells a wristband that shocks you out of bad habits, on the strength of 'proven' aversion-therapy science. Its own creator got called a con artist on live television for that exact claim.
The Landmark Forum walks every participant to the same scripted realisation on day three: life is empty and meaningless. What that technique actually is, and what happened when it went wrong.
Growth mindset became a billion-dollar idea in schools and workplaces. The largest studies ever run on it found an average effect so small it barely moves the needle.
Grounding claims that skin contact with the earth floods your body with healing electrons that cure inflammation and fix your sleep. Here's what the actual studies — small, unblinded and largely funded by the people selling the mats — really show.
Self-help's favourite parable says belief broke the four-minute mile. The real story — decades of records and training science — says otherwise.
A deadpan, satirical field guide to the lifestyle-design genre — the 4 a.m. alarm, the beach laptop, the manufactured origin story, and the course about selling courses.
Tony Robbins built a roughly $600m empire on state, belief and the firewalk. A fair, sourced look at what he actually teaches — and where the evidence for it runs thin.
In October 2009, three people died at James Arthur Ray's 'Spiritual Warrior' sweat lodge near Sedona. A sober, sourced account of the ceremony, the deaths, and the negligent-homicide conviction that followed.