Mandy Oaklander | September 10, 2026

Fascinating psychology lurks behind all of our human impulses, especially the strange ones. This week, my colleague Veronique Greenwood asked psychologists why so many of us love reading the confessions of anonymous people online—the type where a stranger dishes about the honest state of their relationship, secret self-doubts, or unspoken anxieties.

We shouldn’t really care. After all, we don’t even know these people. But one popular community on Reddit, where women post their unfiltered thoughts paired with snapshots of meals they’ve eaten, piqued Veronique’s interest. The experts she talked to agreed. “It's super relatable,” one told her. “Showing things that are unvarnished is kind of paradoxically attractive.”

TODAY’S TOPICS

Put your to-dos to bed
No cancer center spared
Got a question for us?
The cleaning hack that fizzled

ONE SMALL CHANGE

Want to fall asleep faster? Write a to-do list before bed

Tomorrow’s to-do list always tends to leap to mind just as your head hits the pillow. Head it off by spending five to 10 minutes writing down three priorities for the next day—and be specific. (“Prep for meeting” might leave you scratching your head; “pull Q3 numbers and email the deck” won’t.)

Getting your to-do list out of your brain and onto paper may even help you drift off. In one small study, people who wrote one fell asleep an average of nine minutes faster than people who didn’t.

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BIG NUMBER

100%

That’s how many cancer centers in the U.S. are now reporting shortages of at least one cancer drug, according to new data from the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. More than 20% are reporting shortages of five or more drugs.

Shortages of these essential drugs are increasing, and in some cases, that’s because health care facilities are paying so little for the drugs that few manufacturers decide it’s worthwhile to make them. —Veronique Greenwood, Staff Writer

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PLEASE ADVISE

Ask the health team

Have a burning health or wellness question? Wondering how to handle a tricky social situation? Please write to healthmatters@time.com, and we’ll weigh in weekly in the newsletter.

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WHAT WE’RE READING

Trying a healthier way to clean your house? Mixing baking soda and vinegar into a homemade cleaning paste makes no sense chemically—the two react, and you’re left with essentially salty water, writes Caroline Mullen for Wirecutter.
GLP-1 medications can change more than your body. Madeleine Aggeler at the Guardian hears from readers about how the drugs have reshaped their relationships, too.
The American Heart Association’s tool for predicting heart disease risk, PREVENT, is now included in a majority of electronic health records, allowing doctors to predict heart, kidney, and metabolic risk events over 10 and 30 years.