Humans are crude linguists from the moment of birth - and perhaps even in the womb - to the extent at least that we can hear spoken sounds and begin to recognize different combinations of language sounds.

My family went through divorces and remarriages and the later, blended home - and then watched that home explode, too.

Well, I think of the folks who are the climate deniers as the flat Earthers and the people who say the moon landings never happened.

There are a lot of ways to make people not like you, but one of the most powerful - if least fair - is to be really, really successful. Nobody resents the guy who just lost his job. But the guy whose Internet start-up made him a billionaire at 25? That's a whole different kettle of envy.

Indeed, the best way to think of willpower is not as some shapeless behavioral trait but as a sort of psychic muscle, one that can atrophy or grow stronger depending on how it's used.

Credit or debit cards, for starters, are nothing short of shoppers' Novocain. Even in the age of digital purchases and virtual money, we still attach a special value to dirty paper with pictures of presidents on it. Handing some of that to a cashier simply hurts more than handing over a little sliver of plastic.

All behavioral or mood disorders - including depression, OCD, ADHD and addiction - have some neurochemical components, but sufferers can still work to overcome them.