Writer at Science Blog

Nato Lagidze

Contributor

Nato Lagidze is a writer and researcher with an academic background in psychology. She investigates self-compassion, emotional intelligence, decision-making, and psychological well-being. Her work draws on academic research and applies it to the everyday.

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Psychology

Tidying a room is often described as a small war against the second law of thermodynamics, but a house is not an isolated system and the physics says something narrower and stranger: local order is always available, and always has to be paid for somewhere else

Every act of tidying creates invisible disorder elsewhere, a cost that physics insists we pay whether we notice it or not.

Sep 16, 2026

Research News

European regulators added a sentence to the labels of ten antidepressants in 2019 saying there have been reports of sexual dysfunction continuing after the drug is stopped, and seven years on nobody can say how often that happens, because the study that would answer it cannot ethically be run

A warning on psychiatric drugs hints at persistent sexual side effects, but seven years later the medical community still cannot say whether this is rare or routine.

Sep 16, 2026

Health

The World Health Organization’s definition of burnout applies only to paid work and states outright that it should not be used for any other part of life, which leaves the parents, the carers and the postgraduate students experiencing the same thing without a name for it

Millions experience burnout's defining symptoms outside the workplace, yet the official diagnosis forbids naming what they endure.

Sep 9, 2026

Psychology

Three years ago the question at health psychology conferences was how to keep AI out of research, and at the European Health Psychology Society’s 40th meeting in Pafos this September the programme was built around how to put it in, under a theme naming technology and AI outright

The field went from trying to keep AI out of health research to building entire conferences around putting it in—and almost nobody noticed the shift.

Sep 9, 2026

Social Sciences

The wave of nostalgia that hits right after an awkward conversation isn’t you dwelling on the past — across six studies, it’s your mind rehearsing how to be around people again, and it measurably works better the second time

Your brain isn't escaping an awkward moment—it's running a dress rehearsal for the next one, and the evidence suggests it actually improves your social performance.

Aug 28, 2026

Social Sciences

In 1990, a third of Americans said they had ten or more close friends. By 2021, that was one in eight — and nobody scheduled the disappearance, it happened one skipped hangout at a time

The friendship recession crept up so gradually that most people never noticed they were becoming lonelier—until looking back revealed a chasm.

Aug 28, 2026

Psychology

Cultures that still protect an afternoon rest period aren’t fighting biology, they’re working with it — chronobiology research suggests the urge to sleep after midday runs on a near-universal internal clock, siesta or no siesta

The afternoon slump isn't laziness or poor planning—it's your body following an ancient biological rhythm that even modern skeptics can't override.

Aug 19, 2026

Psychology

When psychologist Daniel Goleman asked an AI system whether it experiences emotion, it told him it has ‘no racing heart, no tightening chest, no gut drop’ — the physical cues that give humans their first sense something matters — which Goleman says is exactly why AI needs emotional intelligence more than ever.

Machines can't feel their own heartbeat—and that's precisely why they need to understand ours.

Aug 12, 2026

Psychology

Psychologists have a term for the discomfort of knowing exactly who you used to be and struggling to describe who you are now: a measurable drop in something called self concept clarity — and it isn’t a crisis

The fuzzy feeling of not quite knowing who you are anymore has a name—and research suggests it might be a sign of growth, not confusion.

Aug 7, 2026

Psychology

Walking lowers cortisol, lifting raises testosterone, dancing regulates your nervous system, and stretching can help you feel calmer in the moment — the science behind each claim is real, though some are better supported than others

Not all fitness mantras are created equal—here's which ones actually have the science to back them up.

Aug 6, 2026

Climate Change

Copernicus satellite data puts Spain’s 2026 burned area at over 200,000 hectares, the largest of any EU nation, and the evacuation orders that followed did not check passports before deciding who needed to leave

Spain's worst fire season on record forced thousands to flee, regardless of citizenship or documentation status.

Aug 5, 2026

Psychology

Eat the fartons, skip the small talk: the same rule that keeps you from wasting a dessert can keep you from wasting a friendship

The principle that saves your favorite desserts from regret might be exactly what your relationships need.

Aug 4, 2026

Social Sciences

I’m WEIRD, it turns out, and so is almost everyone psychology has ever studied — a narrow twelve percent of humanity whose responses somehow came to stand in for everything we think we know about the human mind

I found out this year that I am WEIRD — a term psychologists use for the narrow slice of humanity, roughly twelve percent of the world's population, whose responses have quietly stood in for the entire species.

Jul 17, 2026