4 items
A Life Kit episode featuring author Lindsay Owens, who shares tips from her book Gouged on avoiding surveillance pricing — where two shoppers can pay different prices for the same item based on who they are, where they are, and their purchase history.
An NPR Life Kit episode with cognitive neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf on why deep reading isn't innate to the brain, how screen-driven skimming disrupts it, and practical ways to rebuild the skill — reading print for material that demands attention, practicing in short daily increments, letting pace be set by the reader and the book, and taking notes to aid retention.
An NPR Life Kit episode on the science of finding lost objects, featuring a cognitive psychologist, a metal-detecting enthusiast, and a private investigator — techniques include relaxing to widen your attentional "spotlight," identifying an object's distinctive features, recreating how it was likely lost, scanning unexpected places and angles the way search-and-rescue teams do, and running a systematic grid search as a last resort.
An NPR Life Kit piece with biomechanist Katy Bowman and clinical psychologist Diana Hill on using psychological flexibility (from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) to swap phone-scrolling urges for movement — techniques include urge surfing, stretching or dancing through cravings, savoring the good feelings of exercise, and adding novelty to workouts.