Curiosity starts early. Children throw cups from highchairs over and over, testing gravity and their parents. They repeat the same noises and ask the same questions, exploring sound and language. When everything is new, there are countless experiments to run. The answers are awe-inspiring: sunsets, gravity, hula hoops, and bugs. As more and more questions […]
About Erin Wildermuth
The Science of Intuition
Your Brain's Attention-to-Detail Is Like a Superpower
Your intuition is a lot like Shawn Spencer. If you’re not familiar with the hit TV show Psych, Spencer is a private detective with a twist: he has everyone convinced he is psychic. In fact, his supernatural, detecting power is nothing more than exceptional attention-to-detail. How is this like intuition? Though people are apt to […]
The Science of Words
How Repetition Can Be a Game Changer
The idea of self-talk elicits images of less-than-sane people muttering to themselves as they stumble about less-than-safe streets. I try not to look like that when I talk to myself. In theory, this means ensuring my internal monologue is actually internal when other people are about. In practice, people are always sneaking around corners and […]
The Science of Naps
Snooze Now, Conquer Later
My two-year-old is asleep for the third time today. I thought I had developed a clever disciplinary method when I started telling him that cranky kids need naps, and sending him to bed multiple times. Turns out I was being more clever than I knew. Instead of being better behaved, he just keeps going to […]
The Science of Putting Pen to Paper
Studies Show: It Forces You to Focus
One of my earliest memories involves a handwriting struggle. My class had been tasked with writing stories. I love stories. My masterpiece, about accidentally catching a great white shark and putting him into my bedroom aquarium, was the longest in the class. It was pages and pages long. It had chapters. I was in child-heaven […]
The Science of Meditation
Taking Mind and Body to the Next Level
Three years ago I boarded a crowded, somewhat dirty bus and set off for Wat Suan Mokkh, a Thai forest monastery. The grounds featured giant monitor lizards and bats that would fly low at dusk, almost touching you with their wings. Though the bat-filled evenings were a highlight of my trip, they were not my […]