What's on your Thanksgiving menu? With the big feast just a few days away, the Nice News team is finalizing the recipes we're making for our own celebrations — and thought we'd share a few with you. Managing Editor Natalie Stone is starting cocktail hour off strong with this smoky apple cider margarita, sure to warm everyone right up. Staff Writer Stephanie Friedman will carry the torch from her grandma by preparing a creamy carrot soup with bacon. Assistant Editor Rebekah Brandes' go-to vegetarian lasagna is a hit every year, even with the meat eaters. And Associate Editor Ally Mauch's meal will conclude with a pumpkin caramel pie that she calls "a labor of love, emphasis on the labor, but worth it for the compliments." Happy cooking! — the Nice News team
Featured Story
How a Diverse Range of Emotions May Help Us Make Better Decisions
picture/ iStock via Getty Images Plus
When it comes to emotional states, we'd all love to vacillate between being just plain happy and having the time of our lives. But research into an idea called emodiversity suggests that experiencing many different emotions — even negative ones — is a good thing. "What we found in our research is that people who experience a diverse range of emotions, both in terms of balance but also in terms of pure richness, tend to be healthier, mentally and physically," Jordi Quoidbach, a professor of behavioral science who studies happiness and decision-making, tells Nice News. But it's not just well-being that emodiversity may improve. Quoidbach and his colleagues also found that it plays a role in good decision-making. Click below to learn how to diversify your emotional experience — and when you're done reading, consider contributing to Quoidbach's research by taking the Emodiversity Challenge on his website.
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This Week's Top Stories
Humanity
What's "Bird Theory"? The Science Behind the Viral Relationship Test
stanley45/ iStock
Social media has given rise to numerous challenges purported to reveal the truth about romantic relationships — like orange peel theory, the idea that if your partner peels your orange without being asked, they truly care for you. Certain of these are more dubious than others, but one test that's recently gone viral has some solid science behind it: the "bird theory" experiment. An October TikTok post by user Rini Frey illustrates what the test entails. In the video, Frey stands in the kitchen with her phone camera facing her. "I saw a bird today," she says to her husband, who's offscreen. Without missing a beat, he responds, "You saw a bird?," then asks, "What kind of bird?" And hurrah, he's passed the test! He responded with curiosity to an ordinary, even mundane, observation. Bird theory is based on a concept called "bids for connection" that was conceived decades ago by relationship researcher John Gottman, who founded the Gottman Institute with his wife, Julie. Per the Institute, a bid is "any attempt from one partner to another for attention, affirmation, affection, or any other positive connection." Learn more and get three relationship tips for lovebirds.
Environment
See the 2025 Nature Photographer of the Year Winning Images
Åsmund Keilen/ Nature Photographer of the Year 2025
This ethereal image could be mistaken for a painting — but it's actually the overall winner of the 2025 Nature Photographer of the Year contest, titled "Sundance." Now in its 10th year, the international competition is held by Netherlands-based organization Nature Talks, which reviewed 24,781 images captured by photographers from over 96 countries to make its final selection, per PetaPixel. Norwegian photographer Åsmund Keilen said "Sundance" was taken spontaneously from his driveway on a warm summer day in Oslo. "Small orange birch seeds had fallen overnight on the blue roof of the car, and the summer sun reflected in them, alongside swifts dancing in the sky," he said. "Freedom seemed to take form in chaos." Part of the photo's magic is how it "appears to depict leaves adrift in a cosmic sky," added committee chairman Tin Man Lee, "but on closer look, each shape reveals itself as a bird in graceful flight." Keilen was awarded around $3,480 at the Nature Talks Photo Festival on Nov. 15, where the category winners were also recognized. Along with "Sundance," the featured shots include a mesmerizing photo of icy layers beneath a frozen surface, a detailed look at an underwater world, and a black-and-white silhouette of a moose in the snow — see all the winning images.
Culture
Long-Lost Bach Pieces, Examples of Composer's Young "Genius," Come to Life
Sebastian Willnow/picture alliance via Getty Images
Two new-to-the-public pieces by none other than Johann Sebastian Bach were recently performedfor the first time in over three centuries. Despite Bach being one of the most prolific composers of the 1700s, many of his works have been lost, misplaced, or tucked away in archives — but last week, two previously unidentified manuscripts, Chaconne and Fugue in D minor and the Chaconne in G minor, were added to his oeuvre. The identification had been a long time coming: Researcher Peter Wollny found the scripts at Brussels' Royal Library of Belgium in 1992, and after decades of investigation, he recently said he's "99.99% sure" they're among Bach's early works, written when he was around 20, per the BBC. "Stylistically, the works also exhibit characteristics that are found in Bach's works of this period, but not in those of any other composer," Wollny explained in a statement. The handwriting is believed to belong to one of the composer's students, Salomon Günther John. Dutch organist Ton Koopman played the pieces in a Monday concert at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, Germany, where Bach is buried. "When one thinks of the young Bach or Mozart, it is often assumed that their genius came later — but that is not the case," Koopman said. "These two works are of a very high quality that is hardly to be expected from such a young person." Listen to one of the pieces.
Sunday Selections
Deep Dives
An immunologist offers food preparation tips and other helpful info to prevent you from feeling queasy this Thanksgiving
With the revival of a beloved tradition, kids are getting to experience a real-life Night at theMuseum
Surfing in Idaho? The landlocked state is proving you don't need a coast to catch some gnarly waves
Unless you went to Catholic school, advice from nuns may not come up much in your day-to-day life. But two academics, Ana Garriga and Carmen Urbita, are making the case that guidance from the religious figures — specifically those who lived during the Renaissance — can and should help you navigate modern dilemmas. The tongue-in-cheek Convent Wisdom blends research with pop culture to apply "surprising lessons" from the "resourceful, rebellious, and refreshingly relatable" cloistered women that went before us.
Daniel Craig is back as Detective Benoit Blanc in writer-director Rian Johnson's latest installment of the rollicking Knives Out film series. Hitting theaters Wednesday (and Netflix Dec. 12), the comedic whodunit centers on a small church in upstate New York, where the Southern-accented Blanc encounters his "most personal case to date." The star-studded cast of potential suspects joining Craig onscreen includes Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Kerry Washington, and Andrew Scott. Check out the trailer at the link above, and listen to the U2 song the film shares its name with here.
This Week in History
Early Human Ancestor "Lucy" Fossils Discovered
November 24, 1974
MICHAL CIZEK/AFP via Getty Images
At the Hadar paleontological site in northeastern Ethiopia 51 years ago, Donald Johanson and research assistant Tom Gray made a landmark discovery: fossilized bones that comprised 40% of an early hominin skeleton. The remains were history-making — the previously unknown species, eventually called Australopithecus afarensis, indicated humans were walking upright over 3 million years ago. According to History, Gray and Johanson celebrated their discovery by drinking, dancing, and playing the Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" on repeat, which is how the skeleton got its nickname, Lucy. Last month, the female specimen was in the news again, after a rare museum exhibition in Prague brought visitors face to face with our early ancestor, on temporary loan from Ethiopia. Learn about the world-first event and see what the living Lucy might have looked like.
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