Posts by Trisha Leigh Zeigenhorn

There are deer (and related animal, like elk) in 24 states that have tested positive for chronic wasting disease – sometimes referred to as the “zombie deer” disease, and scientists are worried that humans might not be immune to catching it, should we eat tainted meat. The disease causes infected animals to stumble through the...

One of the most interesting things about being a parent is getting to watch kid’s television and children’s movies again as an adult. There are so many details that make no sense – and so many more that you finally realize are definitely not included for the kids in the audience. To that end, these...

People are mighty sensitive about their fandoms, and that seems to go double (or triple) for Star Wars. It could be because the franchise has been around since the 70s, because it’s tied to so many of our childhoods, or because more than one generation has now claimed it as their own, but folks have...

This definitely isn’t a superlative any animal would hope for – and it’s a headline I’m sure we all wish would have been delayed at least a little bit later into the new decade – but scientists have now declared the giant Chinese paddlefish to officially be extinct. The freshwater fish, one of the world’s largest,...

Twins are funny little quirks of nature. They seems to sense each other’s thoughts and feelings, they don’t feel right if they’re not close enough to touch, and every year, there are cute stories about kiddos born a minute or two apart, but in different years. This year, though, these Indiana twins will have quite...

Kaylen Ward, a 20-year-old influencer and online sex worker from Los Angeles, California, says she’s raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Australian bushfire relief…all by trading cash for dirty pictures. She’s calling herself a Naked Philanthropist now, and even if her methods offend some – including Instagram, apparently – I doubt the animals and...

There are many amazing things about growing up in the world today. It’s easier to stay connected to friends and family far away, easier to network from the comfort of your home, easier for introverts to stay “social,” and easier to find your tribe – online if not in real life. As someone who grew...

Whether you’re an avid reader of comic strips or are only familiar with the Peanuts gang because you get nostalgic and watch the holiday specials, you’ve likely noticed one thing: you never see any adults on the page or screen. You do, of course, occasionally hear their indistinct mumblings or shouted direction, but that’s not...

Every day, people seem to get more and more interested – and concerned – about what, exactly, we’re putting in our bodies. And for its part, science seems to have ever-changing opinions on the topic. Milk does a body good! Wait, no, it doesn’t; drinking another animal’s milk is unnatural! Eggs will kill you and...

Crows and other birds in the corvid family have long been both used and feared by the human race. We call a flock of the a “murder,” after all, and they’re just so big. Sure, Hitchcock didn’t help matters, but the more you learn about crows, the more you realize there’s actually more than a...

As a writer, there have been several times while plotting books when I discarded an idea because it sounded too outlandish…even though, in some cases, it was historically true. In that vein, Redditors thought it would be fun to share facts that are truly hard to believe, and I bet at least a few of...

If you need proof that humans are born manipulators, look no farther than your average toddler. No one teaches them how to manipulate their parents (or try to, anyway) in order to get what they want. They somehow just know how to make it happen. And as they grow, their attempts become inevitably more sophisticated...

My dad’s favorite cartoon, by far, is The Far Side. For every Christmas since I can remember, my mom got him a new desk calendar for his desk at work, and since he retired, one for his desk at home. And every Christmas since 1995, I’ve listened to him lament that the calendar wrapped under...

There will always be people who eat weird stuff, but it can be jarring to find out that people en masse – or at least, Americans en masse – used to eat very differently from today. Some of these recipes-past sound interesting, and not necessarily in a bad way. And some of them sound downright...

If you’re a person of a certain age, then you remember what life was like before you could watch a television show any ol’ time you felt like it – and for a lot of us, Thursday was the best night of the week to settle in front of the tube. Chandler, Monica, Joey, Ross,...