Kristen French

  • Explore
    Article Lead Image

    Pop Music Is Getting Darker

    The tunes that top the charts have been getting more negative for half a century

  • Explore
    Article Lead Image

    What Laziness Has to do with Beauty

    The aesthetic benefits of low mental effort

  • Explore
    Article Lead Image

    This Common Personality Trait May Fuel Serial Killers

    A form of narcissism may underlie the psychology of sexually motivated murder

  • Explore
    Article Lead Image

    What Robots Can Learn from Classical Indian Dance

    A “superhuman” alphabet for the hands

  • Explore
    Article Lead Image

    How the Breath Guides Memory

    Remembering is timed to the rhythms of our lungs

  • Explore
    Article Lead Image

    When a Chimp Screams, What Do You Hear?

    The calls of our closest living evolutionary cousins still hit an ancient target in the human brain

  • Explore
    Article Lead Image

    What Makes a Word Beautiful?

    It’s not what we thought

  • Explore
    Article Lead Image

    ChatGPT’s Biggest Foe: Poetry

    How the machines miss threats smuggled inside lines of verse

  • Explore
    Article Lead Image

    Tiny Volcano-Dwelling Creature Breaks Heat Record

    The fire amoeba challenges assumptions about what complex life needs to survive on Earth

  • Explore
    A set of three trees shaped like brains, fading from green to yellow to red, losing leaves along the way.

    The Five Eras of the Human Brain

    Our neural command centers evolve through predictable major turning points from birth to death