Free to read · updated often
From the Nagi desk.
Plain-English writing on mood, habits, privacy and the research worth trusting — read slowly, claims checked, caveats kept in. By the team behind Nagi.
Being alone and feeling alone are not the same thing
A nine-year study of older adults suggests the two can come apart, and that how connection changes over time may matter as much as how much of it we have.
Read the article →When a headline runs ahead of the science
A small blueberry study got a very cheerful headline. The details are quieter, and more useful.
Read the article →Two ways of sitting quietly, and what a small trial noticed
A new four-week study compared two styles of meditation. The results are modest, early, and interesting for a quieter reason than you might expect.
Read the article →Could your phone notice a stressful day before you do?
Researchers in South Korea tested whether everyday phone habits could point to a stressful day. The early results are interesting, modest, and well worth reading with a little care.
Read the article →What our dreams might be telling us about a stressful week
A survey of 389 adults looked at how dream experiences sit alongside worry and stress. Here’s what the researchers reported, and what it can’t tell us.
Read the article →Nine weeks, a few trowels, and a lot of birdsong
A randomised trial in Barcelona tested a gentle, social way into nature for people who feel lonely. Here’s what the researchers reported, and what it doesn’t tell us.
Read the article →Low mood isn’t one thing. Why “your own pattern” matters
A Finnish brain-imaging study suggests that people living with low mood may fall into several distinct groups, not one. Here’s what that does and doesn’t tell us.
Read the article →Could the start of your day shape how flexible you feel later?
A survey of about 400 college students linked regular breakfasts, enough sleep and a bit of movement with greater resilience. Here’s what that does and doesn’t tell us.
Read the article →Every step counts, even the unremarkable ones
A large study followed more than 5,500 young people for a year. The ones who moved more on an ordinary day reported fewer emotional and behavioural difficulties later. Here’s what it does…
Read the article →Care that stays close to home
The World Health Organization has published new guidance on moving mental health support out of long-term institutions and into people’s own communities. The quieter message underneath…
Read the article →The 1.6 km run that kept being measured
More than a thousand Australians were timed running as children, then followed for 34 years. A new report asks what that single snapshot of fitness can, and can’t, tell us.
Read the article →Does it matter whether the colouring happens on paper or on a screen?
Nearly 300 university students coloured for at least six sessions over two weeks, half with pencils and half on a device. The interesting part isn’t who “won”.
Read the article →The heart slowed. The skin didn’t.
Forty-eight people lay face down on a table for fifteen minutes after a deliberately exhausting task. Half of them were massaged. Two sensors watched the same quarter of an hour and came…
Read the article →What the walk actually moved
Nearly a million hours of recorded movement, matched against 321,345 moments of people saying how they felt right now. The clearest finding was about energy.
Read the article →The more accurate instrument found less
A Finnish team followed 260 children for eight years, measuring their movement two ways: a chest monitor that recorded every heartbeat, and a questionnaire that asked them what they’d been…
Read the article →Most of us are living with a guess
A study of nearly two thousand people found that being in step with a partner about affection went along with a happier relationship.
Read the article →The thirteen-year-old still fills in part of the form
A Swedish study followed people from the age of ten to the age of sixty-seven. What predicted how they’d rate their own memory in later life wasn’t their childhood test scores, or their…
Read the article →Nobody asked the padel players if they were happy
A review published this week gathered up everything science knows about two nearly identical racket sports. It came back with two completely different bodies of research.
Read the article →A study about apps like ours
A paper published this week asked whether emotionally intelligent chatbots help people or isolate them. The answer was both.
Read the article →Stress knows who it’s talking to
A lab in Freiburg put 121 people through a deliberately uncomfortable half hour, then watched how they treated two different people afterwards.
Read the article →Possible is not the same as good for you
A twelve-month randomised trial in Marseille tested a very low-intensity movement programme for people living with fibromyalgia. The headline result is interesting.
Read the article →It was never all happening in sentences
Most of us assume complex thought is an inner monologue. A study published this week — brain scans plus two remarkable case studies — suggests the machinery of reasoning sits somewhere else…
Read the article →The question isn’t whether you compare. It’s what you’re comparing for.
“Comparison is the thief of joy” is one of the most repeated lines in wellbeing. A new study of partnered adults suggests it’s at least half wrong — and the interesting half is which half.
Read the article →You don’t have to settle the argument
Philosophers have been fighting about free will for a couple of thousand years. A new set of studies quietly stepped around the fight and asked a smaller question instead: what does it do…
Read the article →A dot on a map that nobody’s watching
A new survey asked 203 people who can see their location, and why. The most common answer was safety — but it’s a kind of safety that only works if somebody chooses to look.
Read the article →It mattered more when someone was standing next to you
Two new studies asked hundreds of people in relationships about the moments that stopped them in their tracks. The ones they’d shared were the ones that showed up in the relationship.
Read the article →You can’t feel the thing it promises to fix
A medical scientist took apart the viral “cortisol cocktail” this week. The chemistry is interesting. What the trend says about how we handle stress is more interesting still.
Read the article →Nineteen answers to a question nobody had agreed on
A new consensus study asked 122 experts across 26 countries what “well” actually means. The list they came back with is quietly useful.
Read the article →Nobody posts about feeling fine
A new analysis of close to 30,000 people looked at two different kinds of feeling good. The quieter one turned out to travel much more closely with how satisfied people were with their lives.
Read the article →Your dreams may be running the same day you did
A new survey of 213 women found that the aches people carried in the daytime showed up, again and again, in the emotional weather of their nights.
Read the article →It worked best on the people who needed it least
A psychologist walks through the evidence on positive affirmations. The overall effect was small. The pattern underneath it is the interesting part.
Read the article →The wrong question to ask an uncomfortable feeling
A new study on envy suggests the useful question isn’t “how do I stop feeling this?” — it’s “where is this feeling taking me?”
Read the article →It clocked in with you
A nine-week study followed 308 people through their evenings and into their working days. The thing that carried over most reliably wasn’t the thing anyone expected.
Read the article →The part that held up best wasn’t the app
A new review of 57 studies and more than 40,000 participants asked when digital wellbeing tools actually stick. The clearest answer is one an app company would rather not lead with.
Read the article →You didn’t even have to be a proper fan
A new study wired up sixty people at a college basketball game and found something happening between them that nobody in the room was trying to do.
Read the article →It didn’t make them any sharper
A small new study gave people five minutes of slow breathing before a nerve-wracking speech. What changed is interesting. What didn’t change is more interesting.
Read the article →The smoke detector in your head
What a new study about anxiety suggests about the difference between having a feeling and fighting it.
Read the article →The same thought weighs differently in Tokyo
A new study followed students in the US and Japan through a week of ordinary days — and found that replaying what went wrong doesn’t cost everyone the same.
Read the article →The quiet work sleep was doing all along
A new study expected screen time to be the story. Sleep stole it.
Read the article →The hours weren’t the point
A new study of retired pickleball players found that time on the court didn’t build a new sense of self. Something quieter did.
Read the article →They heard it perfectly. They just didn’t believe it.
A small new study asked lonely people to count their own heartbeats. The surprise wasn’t in what they could feel — it was in what they made of it.
Read the article →The one nobody writes down
A new study looked at three flat feelings and found the one we take least seriously was doing the most work.
Read the article →The table was in on it
Researchers quietly rearranged the furniture and watched what happened to people's moods. Nobody noticed a thing — which is exactly the point.
Read the article →Lonely is not the same as alone
You can have a full calendar and still feel unseen. A major new study used three methods to ask whether loneliness itself wears health down — and found the felt kind matters most.
Read the article →The cinema trip that showed up in the bloodwork
Nearly 2,000 people, ten physical markers, one quiet finding: regular trips to museums, films and concerts tracked with bodies about three years younger. The why is the good part.
Read the article →Your mood was already in your footsteps
A tiny, careful study measured how people walked, then asked how they felt. The findings are modest — the idea underneath is one worth carrying around.
Read the article →Woebot has shut down. What now?
One of the most-researched mental health chatbots closed its app last summer — and not because it didn't work. What happened, and an honest map of what's next.
Read the article →Anonymous mental health apps: an honest guide
"Anonymous" is doing a different job in every app that claims it. Five questions that tell you which kind you're holding — and how today's apps answer them.
Read the article →Why mental health apps ask for your email (and why we don't)
The email box looks like the most harmless field on a sign-up screen. In an app like this, it's the most consequential one.
Read the article →How Nagi keeps your words unconnected to your name
Most apps promise not to look. We built Nagi so there's nothing to look up. Here's how that actually works — plainly, including the one honest asterisk.
Read the article →What your weekly score actually tells you
It's not a grade, a diagnosis, or a verdict. It's a dot on a chart — and the chart is the point.
Read the article →Winter and the low-mood loop
Shorter days change more than the light. Here's how the loop works — and why noticing it is most of the way out.
Read the article →Talking to your GP about mood
Ten minutes, one hard sentence, and why arriving with your own record changes the whole conversation.
Read the article →The fear of getting it wrong has been quietly rising for 35 years
A landmark study followed perfectionism across three and a half decades. The part that stayed with us wasn't the striving — it was the fear.
Read the article →The headline said coffee. The study said "it's complicated."
A new paper looked at whether your daily cup does anything for your mood — and the honest answer is quietly more useful than the tidy one.
Read the article →You don't forget. You remember differently.
A small new brain study on forgiveness has a quiet lesson about how the past actually lives inside us — and why revisiting a feeling isn't the same as being stuck in it.
Read the article →Noticing is a skill — and it's quietly the whole point
The research on mood tracking has a subtle punchline: the log itself isn't what helps. What helps is the awareness it builds. That's a better reason to check in than any number could be.
Read the article →Why the hard thing started to feel expensive
A new framework in Nature Human Behaviour has a gentle, surprising explanation for why focus feels harder than it used to — and it isn't the one you'd expect.
Read the article →The best idea comes an hour after the walk
A new real-world study on movement and creativity has a quietly useful lesson about not gripping so hard.
Read the article →Your brain isn't finished
A new study followed nearly 4,000 people for three years and found something quietly hopeful: brain health can keep improving — at almost any age. The how is the part we can't stop thinking about.
Read the article →When the line on the graph is a generation
A new UK study tracks young people's wellbeing back three decades — and quietly points at something we can all do something about.
Read the article →450 ways to measure a feeling
What a new WHO study about mental health data says about the quiet art of noticing how you're doing.
Read the article →
Get Nagi
Whenever you’re ready, Nagi is there.
Start talking · 15 messages freeNo card to start · Web, iPhone and Android