The nearly $13 billion in wagers placed from North Carolina in 2024 and 2025 not only has generated more than $262 million in new tax revenue for state coffers. It has also exacerbated a swelling public health threat characterized by more people in need of help for gambling problems in a counseling and treatment infrastructure that’s ill-equipped to handle the flood. Calls to the problem gambling hotline are up more than 300 percent since 2021, according to state data.

More than $3 billion will be wagered on March Madness this year. Around $30 billion was bet on the last NFL season. All evidence of an explosion in sports gambling across this country.

Your inner monologue may be less constant than you think—more like a fridge light that turns on when you look.

While popular culture may lead you to believe that love and sex addictions are not only accepted conditions but also quite prevalent — think Frank in season 3 of White Lotus; Elizabeth Gilbert’s latest memoir All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation; and pretty much any cultural analysis of the actions of Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw around Mr. Big — the scientific understanding of problematic behaviors related to love and sex is far more nuanced.

The American Gaming Association estimates Americans will legally wager $3.3 billion on the NCAA Division I basketball tournaments this year -- a 54% increase over the past three years, according to a news release Friday from the association.

Could nicotine — the highly addictive chemical compound in tobacco plants — find a new identity as a health shortcut? Wellness influencers and biohackers are touting the benefits of nicotine in a multitude of forms, including patches, pouches, gum, and drinks.

The first time a child refuses to go to school, it can feel confusing — maybe even a little annoying. But when this pattern goes on for days, weeks or months, it can disrupt entire family systems and impact the mental health of the whole family unit. Advice such as “just be firmer,” or “maybe they just need more time,” is often well-intentioned, but it rarely addresses the heart of the issue.

When neuroscientists began studying consciousness in the early 1990s, they sought to explain how and why three pounds of spongy grey matter could generate a subjective point of view—assuming that the brain is the source of our felt reality. Pollan takes us to the cutting edge of the field, where scientists are entertaining more radical (and less materialist) theories of consciousness. He introduces us to “plant neurobiologists” searching for the first flicker of consciousness in plants; scientists striving to engineer feelings into AI, and psychologists and novelists seeking to capture the felt experience of our slippery stream of consciousness.

Discover how this feedback can manifest as traits in adulthood.

"Consciousness is under siege," says author Michael Pollan. His new book, A World Appears, explores consciousness on both a personal and technological level.

A new survey shows why girls play sports, and here's a hint—it's not all about winning.

Scientists and philosophers studying the mind have discovered how little we know about our inner experiences