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I’m the oldest of six kids, which meant I was basically an unpaid assistant parent tasked with maintaining order in what can only be described as a feral child circus . My brother—just 11 months younger than me—was my nemesis in this mission. His job description? Professional chaos instigator. While I spent my childhood desperately trying to keep everyone alive and the house from burning down, he was starting food fights, teaching our younger siblings creative ways to avoid bedtime and playing so many bathroom pranks, I’m still afraid to pee without looking first. But somewhere around high school, we had an epiphany: Why fight each other when we could join forces? I became the master of misdirection, expertly redirecting our parents’ attention at crucial moments. He became our family’s MacGyver, capable of opening any locked cabinet and finding the “hidden” Christmas presents. We went from adversaries to accomplices to genuine best friends—a sibling relationship dream. Fast-forward ...

You go to chop an onion to toss in your marinara or guac … only to end up with tears streaming down your face. What gives?! Even when you know onions trigger waterworks, the tears are still somehow surprising. How can an ordinary vegetable make you all weepy? All you wanted was a little flavor, and now you’ve got mascara running down your face and concerned family members asking if everything’s OK. As you (carefully) wipe away your tears, you can’t help but wonder why this is happening and if there’s any way to avoid it. Well, you can guess where we’re going with this: Researchers at Cornell University recently discovered a new reason we cry from onions—and a way to prevent it. I reached out to one of the researchers, as well as a neuroscientist, to get the details. Keep reading to find out everything you need to know before you head back into the kitchen. Get  Reader’s Digest ’s  Read Up newsletter for more food, science, humor, cleaning, travel, tech and fun facts all we...

It may feel like we’re living in the Upside Down these days, but we’re about to be reminded just what that means, Stranger Things –style. Netflix’s buzziest sci-fi series is finally back after more than three years, with the first four episodes of the fifth and final season set to premiere on Nov. 26. Two more installments will follow on Christmas and New Year’s Eve, as Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and the gang battle Vecna. Eleven, of course, gained her supernatural powers through a secret government project and unwittingly created a portal to a parallel universe. The shady mind-control experiments conducted on her and other child subjects were led by a covert operation within the Department of Energy, with the military policing the operations. And while viewers might think the show is pure fiction, the U.S. government actually has a history of engaging in secret experiments that aren’t too far from those in Stranger Things . The government’s secret forays into extrasensory percepti...

Suzanne (who asked us to use only her first name) was just 23 years old in 2005 when she packed her belongings into a friend’s truck and left her parents’ house while they were at work, with the intention of never speaking to them again. Why did a legal adult feel like she had to sneak out of her home? And why did she leave without a single word, going “no contact” with parents ? Her story is equal parts shocking and heart-wrenching. After graduating from a conservative Christian college—the only type her parents would allow her to attend—Suzanne thought she’d finally earned some independence. She was wrong. Her fundamentalist Christian parents forbade her from moving out unless she was married, claiming that doing so would put her “in sin” and “in defiance of God’s command.” Suzanne describes her parents as “fundamentalist Christians with a heavy and cruel Calvinistic bent to their theology”—the kind who told their daughter from an early age that they needed to “break her spirit” to...

If you’re hosting Thanksgiving this year, congratulations! You’ve just signed up for what amounts to an Olympic-level event involving a finicky bird, approximately 17 side dishes that all need to be hot at the same time, and enough family dynamics to fuel a reality show. No pressure, right? One of the biggest decisions you’ll have to make is what time to serve Thanksgiving dinner. And if you think this is a simple question, you’ve clearly never gone toe-to-toe with your mother-in-law over whether 2 p.m. or 6 p.m. is the “correct” dinner time. (Found out the hard way that feelings run deep on this one.) MarthaStewart.com recently conducted a poll asking its Instagram followers when they prefer to eat their Thanksgiving feast, and more than 34,000 people had opinions. The winner? A solid majority voted for serving dinner between 2 and 3 p.m., with the 4 to 6 p.m. time slot coming in a close second. Eating at noon, like your grandma might have recommended, or after 6 p.m. were the least...