In a sense, humour isn't trivial. It's a quiet measure of how secure we are in ourselves.
A joke at our expense tests something deeper, it tests the ego. If you can't stand being made fun of by a comedian, the joke isn't the issue.
NEW: Michael Shellenberger asks Joe Rogan point-blank if he is a Christian after Rogan said he has been going to church for the last few years.
Rogan: "I'm fascinated by the story of Jesus Christ... I can't find a flaw in the way [Jesus] tells you to live..."
Shellenberger: "Are you Christian?"
Rogan: "Well, I go to church... I've been doing it for the last three or four years."
Shellenberger: "But that's not really an answer to the question."
Rogan: "Well, 'cause I don't know... I think it's very interesting, and I do believe that if you follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, you will live a better life. I really do believe that."
The actual research is wild. Every time you push down a feeling, your brain has to choose between suppressing that emotion and recording what’s happening around you. It picks the suppression. The memory doesn’t get saved.
A 2000 Stanford study confirmed this: people told to hide their emotions while watching a film remembered far fewer details than people who just reacted naturally. Suppressing emotions uses up mental energy, and that leaves less brain power for saving new memories.
Brain scans show why. A 2012 study found that suppression quiets the hippocampus (your brain’s memory-recording center) right when it should be saving information. The two brain regions that normally team up to lock in memories stop talking to each other.
Over time it gets worse. Suppression keeps cortisol (the stress hormone) elevated, and cortisol shrinks the hippocampus. Chronically stressed people can lose 10 to 15% of its volume. Just three weeks of high cortisol can shrink the tiny connection points between brain cells by about 20%. The good news: studies show this shrinkage can partially reverse once stress levels drop. Not necessarily permanent.
A Finnish study of 1,137 older adults tracked over roughly a decade found that habitual emotion suppressors had nearly 5x the risk of developing dementia, even after controlling for genetics, smoking, obesity, and education.
There’s a better way to handle emotions that doesn’t cost you your memory. It’s called cognitive reappraisal: instead of bottling the feeling, you reframe what’s causing it. (“This meeting isn’t a threat, it’s practice.”) A 2003 Stanford/UC Berkeley study found reappraisers had more positive emotion, better relationships, and higher wellbeing. Suppressors got the opposite on every measure. And reappraisal carries zero memory cost.
The difference comes down to timing. Suppression kicks in after the emotion has already fired, so your brain is fighting its own response while simultaneously trying to record the moment. Reappraisal changes how you interpret the situation before the emotion fully activates. Same event, same person, but your hippocampus stays free to do its actual job: recording your life.
SNEAKO X Professor Jiang 2
"The End of the World"
Professor Jiang returns after predicting Iran War and Trump bombing desalination plants. For the first hour he outlines the key players involved in this war worldwide then goes into philosophy and eschatology.
Is this WW3?
Gutenberg invented the most important technology of the millennium and immediately went bankrupt — and so did the bank that foreclosed on him, and so did his apprentices.
Gutenberg could make a batch of 300 books for the cost of one, but there weren't enough buyers in his small, landlocked village in Germany.
It it took the better part of a century of further innovations, social changes, and setting up of distribution networks before you could have a pamphlet like Luther's 95 thesis get from Wittenberg to London in 17 days.
To the greatest man I have ever known, my father. 🕊️
Last week, my dad, Professor John Ade Ajayi, passed away after months of fighting cancer.
My father was the First Professor Of Metallurgical & Mineral Engineering in Nigeria. Achieved so much, yet you would never know it from the humility with which he carried himself.
Writing this still feels unreal, but gratitude sits right beside the pain.
Years ago, people often asked how I kept achieving so much at a young age. The answer was simple then, and even clearer now. It was the drive of my father.
He was larger than life, yet deeply humble.
Brilliant, yet simple.
Firm, yet loving.
Wherever I travelled, whenever people realised I was his son, his first born, they told me stories. Stories of how he taught them, encouraged them, opened doors for them, believed in them. Thousands upon thousands of lives were impacted by him.
He was a teacher of leaders and a servant of God. He was generous and selfless in ways that can’t be fully captured in words. Even in his final days, his concern was still about others.
He believed deeply in excellence. His philosophy was simple and firm: “It’s either the best or nothing.”
He gave me my special name, IseunifeOluwa, which means “the loving kindness of the Lord.” I now understand that name was first a reflection of who he was.
One of his quotes that keeps returning to me is this: “The longest way to success is shortcuts.” Silence in the face of wrong never aligned with his convictions. He would always say, “There is no substitute for integrity.”
He lived what he believed. His life was structured around his values, and he carried them with clarity and conviction. Many people move through life, my dad lived with purpose.
You have fought the good fight,
You have finished the race,
You have kept the faith.
Your life is a legacy that time cannot erase!