"We are really quite awful to our 'future selves,' according to a report [some psychologist who studies procrastination] and a colleague just published in the journal Social and Personality Psychology Compass. Our weird minds create a disconnect between our 'current self' and our 'future self' — it's like we imagine the latter to be a separate person, unrelated to our actual, current self. [The guy whose actual job is studying why we're like, 'Oh man, I do not want to do that now, I'm gonna put it off until I absolutely have to do it, and even them I'm gonna hem and haw about it'] says we could [...]

How does one cope with the fact that, at some point or other, one is going to die? Some of us tap our feet with impatience, muttering "Come on, already," but for those to whom the concept of mortality is less welcome, coping strategies are available. The two suggestions here are that you live life moment to moment, not focusing on the inevitable end, or that you live life in constant awareness that death's tapered digits are never far away from proffering that final touch on your shoulder. I suppose that both of these philosophies have aspects to recommend them, but they do seem like an awful lot [...]

"Scientists have discovered a gene variation that affects the human body clock so profoundly that it even predicts the time of day when an individual is most likely to die." What time of the day would you want to die? I am not very picky about these things, but ideally it would happen after the cocktail hour, although if I am honest I should probably note that somehow my cocktail hour, over the last few years, has swept back the hands of the clock so subtly yet persistently that I find myself ready to have a drink these days not too long after lunch, which I don't really [...]

"Yes, we are all going to die…" —David Quammen, author of the forthcoming Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, tells you what we've been saying all along.