# Norbo Explains

> Big questions. Simply explained. In crayon. A YouTube channel and blog by Norbo — a programmer, husband and dad explaining real life with real research: fatherhood, work, productivity, investing for his family, staying human around AI — plus big curious questions (ancient humans, psychology, the human body and brain). Every answer built on real, named, linked research. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@norboexplains

## Videos

- [I Became a Dad and Felt Lost. Here's Why.](https://norboexplains.com/videos/i-became-a-dad-and-felt-lost/): The day my son was born I dropped to my knees crying. Three weeks later I stood in my kitchen at 3am holding him and felt lost, empty — and I told no one. This is what actually happens to a new father's body and mind, and the science that finally explained it to me.
- [I Investigated All 5 Blue Zones. They're Not What You Think.](https://norboexplains.com/videos/blue-zones-what-i-actually-found/): The Blue Zones are five places on Earth where reaching 100 is not unusual. So I tried to move to one. By the end I had crossed off all five.
- [When He Finally Ordered Them, Every Single One Stopped](https://norboexplains.com/videos/the-milgram-experiment-would-you-shock-a-stranger/): The scientist in the grey lab coat had exactly four scripted lines. Only the fourth was a real order: you have no other choice, you must go on. And every single time he reached it, the person in the chair stopped. Not one kept going.
- [You Kept a Useless Shell. So Did a Neanderthal.](https://norboexplains.com/videos/the-neanderthal-who-collected-seashells/): You have kept something useless because it was beautiful. A shell, a pebble, a feather you will never use. Seventy thousand years ago a Neanderthal did exactly the same thing, and carried it home to a cave.
- [The Purest Diet in History Came With a Life Expectancy of 30](https://norboexplains.com/videos/your-ancestors-ate-100-percent-organic/): Every human who ever lived, for three hundred thousand years, ate one hundred percent organic. Wild, free-range, no pesticides, no preservatives. The purest diet in the history of our species. The life expectancy that came with it was about thirty.
- [Your Skin Does Something Nobody Could Explain for 150 Years](https://norboexplains.com/videos/why-do-you-get-goosebumps/): For a hundred and fifty years, science had an answer for goosebumps: a useless leftover from when we had fur. Darwin said it in 1872, the textbooks copied it, and nobody looked again. In 2020, a Harvard lab looked again.
- [Your Brain Recorded Being a Baby. Then It Hid the Tape.](https://norboexplains.com/videos/why-cant-you-remember-being-a-baby/): Why can't you remember being a baby? You learned to walk, to talk, to recognize the faces you loved most - and then the whole thing vanished. Most of us cannot recall a single real moment from before age three. For over a hundred years, science had a tidy answer: a baby's brain was simply too undeve
- [Universe 25 Didn't End the Way You Were Told](https://norboexplains.com/videos/universe-25-the-calhoun-experiment/): Universe 25 was a perfect world built for mice - unlimited food, no predators, no disease, endless cozy nests - and the colony still collapsed to zero. But almost everything the internet tells you about why is wrong.
- [You Were the Prey. Every Night. For 2 Million Years.](https://norboexplains.com/videos/how-ancient-humans-survived-the-night/): How did ancient humans survive the night? For more than two million years, sunset did not mean bedtime - it meant the world turned against you. No walls, no light switch, no safety. Just a slow, soft, half-blind ape in the dark, surrounded by things that could see it perfectly.
- [You're Not Losing Your Mind. It's the Door.](https://norboexplains.com/videos/the-doorway-effect/): You walk into a room and the thought is just gone. Why did you come in here? Relax: it is not your age, and your memory is not failing. It is called the doorway effect - and it is one of the best-studied glitches in psychology.
- [Cavemen Had Bigger Brains Than Us. Nobody Told Me.](https://norboexplains.com/videos/were-ancient-humans-smarter/): Were ancient humans smarter than us? I went in certain the answer was no. The grunting caveman dragging a club is one of the most famous pictures in the world - and it is almost completely made up.

## Blog

- [Does Testosterone Really Drop When You Become a Father?](https://norboexplains.com/blog/does-testosterone-drop-when-you-become-a-father/): Yes — and in the biggest study, evening levels fell by about a third. Here's the real data on what fatherhood does to a man's hormones, and why evolution built it that way.
- [How Long Does It Take for a Dad to Bond With His Baby?](https://norboexplains.com/blog/how-long-does-it-take-for-a-dad-to-bond-with-baby/): Weeks to months for many fathers — and the trigger isn't the birth, it's contact. What the research says about the father-baby bond, and how to speed it up.
- [How to Actually Support Your Partner After the Baby (From a Dad Who Learned on the Job)](https://norboexplains.com/blog/how-to-actually-support-your-partner-after-the-baby/): What I learned taking care of my wife in the newborn months — and the research on why a father's support measurably changes a mother's recovery.
- [10 Things Nobody Tells New Dads (I Learned Them the Hard Way)](https://norboexplains.com/blog/things-nobody-tells-new-dads/): The bond isn't instant, your hormones change, and one in ten of us struggle in silence. The honest new-dad list I wish someone had handed me.
- [When Does Depression Hit New Dads? The Months Nobody Is Watching](https://norboexplains.com/blog/when-does-depression-hit-new-dads/): One major analysis found paternal depression peaking between months 3 and 6 — right when the visitors stop coming. The timeline, the debate, and the warning signs.
- [Feeling Useless: The Third-Wheel Weeks Every New Dad Knows](https://norboexplains.com/blog/feeling-useless-the-third-wheel-weeks/): The baby wants only your partner, and you're standing there holding a burp cloth. What research says about sidelined fathers — and the job that's actually yours.
- [Mourning Your Old Life Doesn't Make You a Bad Dad](https://norboexplains.com/blog/mourning-your-old-life-doesnt-make-you-a-bad-dad/): Grieving your freedom, your identity, even your old marriage after a baby arrives is documented, normal, and survivable. On demolition and rebuilding.
- [Roughly One in Ten New Dads Struggle — Here Are the Numbers Nobody Mentions](https://norboexplains.com/blog/one-in-ten-new-dads-the-numbers-nobody-mentions/): Paternal perinatal depression is real, measurable, and mostly invisible. What the meta-analyses actually say, including the parts that are still debated.
- [The Dad Brain Is Real: Fatherhood Physically Reshapes Your Head](https://norboexplains.com/blog/the-dad-brain-is-real/): Brain scans of first-time fathers on two continents show measurable changes after the baby arrives. What shrinks, what grows, and what it might mean.
- [The Day I Became a Father, the Bond Wasn't There Yet — and That's Normal](https://norboexplains.com/blog/the-day-i-became-a-father-the-bond-came-later/): I cried at the first photo of my son, then felt the floor open. The science says a father's bond is built by contact, not issued at birth.
- [The Loud Little Stranger: What No One Tells You About the First Weeks](https://norboexplains.com/blog/the-loud-stranger-when-the-bond-takes-months/): You expect instant magic. Sometimes you get a screaming lodger you've never met. Why the father-baby bond takes months, and why that's not a defect.
- [The Pressure to Be the Rock — and What It Quietly Costs New Dads](https://norboexplains.com/blog/the-pressure-to-be-the-rock/): Be strong, provide, don't complain: the unwritten job description of a new father. What the research says the 'rock' strategy gives — and takes.
- [What Actually Helps New Dads — Ranked by the Evidence](https://norboexplains.com/blog/what-actually-helps-new-dads-according-to-research/): Paternity leave, skin-to-skin, owning one baby task, one outside connection: what research really supports for struggling new fathers, and what's just plausible advice.
- [What Broken Sleep Actually Does to a New Dad](https://norboexplains.com/blog/what-broken-sleep-does-to-a-new-dad/): Parents' sleep doesn't recover for up to six years — and by objective measures, new dads are sleepier than anyone admits. The science of running on fumes.
- [Why a Struggling New Dad Looks Angry, Not Sad](https://norboexplains.com/blog/why-mens-struggle-looks-like-anger-not-tears/): Male depression often wears a disguise — irritability, overwork, withdrawal — and the standard screening tools were built for mothers. The science of the missed men.
- [Your Body Knows You're a Dad Before You Do](https://norboexplains.com/blog/your-body-knows-you-are-a-dad-before-you-do/): New fathers' testosterone drops by up to a third, and the more hands-on the dad, the bigger the drop. The strange biology of becoming a father.
- [Welcome to Norbo Explains — the crayon channel gets a home](https://norboexplains.com/blog/welcome-to-norbo-explains/): What this website is, why the channel draws everything badly on purpose, and what you'll find here every week.
- [The Blue Zones Are Real. The Blue Zones Diet Isn't.](https://norboexplains.com/blog/blue-zones-what-i-actually-found/): I tried to pick one of the five Blue Zones to move to. The ages held up, the famous diet didn't, and the real secret turned out to be a hill.
- [The Milgram Experiment Never Proved Blind Obedience](https://norboexplains.com/blog/the-milgram-experiment-would-you-shock-a-stranger/): The famous 65% came from one version out of more than twenty, and the only direct order made people stop. What the shock experiment really showed.
- [Why a Neanderthal Pocketed a Shell He Could Never Use](https://norboexplains.com/blog/the-neanderthal-who-collected-seashells/): A Neanderthal kept a small shell for no practical reason. Ages later, a human in the same cave did the same thing. Here's why that tiny habit matters.
- [Why 300,000 Years of Organic Eating Didn't Buy a Longer Life](https://norboexplains.com/blog/your-ancestors-ate-100-percent-organic/): Our ancestors ate the most natural diet possible for 300,000 years and still lived far shorter lives than us. The reason we don't is not the food.
- [Why Do You Get Goosebumps? A 150-Year-Old Skin Mystery](https://norboexplains.com/blog/why-do-you-get-goosebumps/): Cold, fear, and a good song all set off the same tiny bumps. What goosebumps are really for — and the 2020 finding that rewrote the story.
- [Why Can't You Remember Being a Baby? The Answer Just Changed](https://norboexplains.com/blog/why-cant-you-remember-being-a-baby/): A 2025 Yale scan showed babies do form memories. So where do your first years go? The strange science of infantile amnesia, in plain words.
- [Universe 25: The Mouse Utopia Story Everyone Tells Wrong](https://norboexplains.com/blog/universe-25-the-calhoun-experiment/): The famous mouse paradise didn't collapse from overcrowding. Here's what really ran out, and what John Calhoun actually believed about humans.
- [How Did Ancient Humans Survive Two Million Years of Night?](https://norboexplains.com/blog/how-ancient-humans-survived-the-night/): Fire, fear, and sleep that never fully switched off — the quiet tricks that carried our ancestors through two million years of darkness.
- [The Doorway Effect: Why You Forget What You Came For](https://norboexplains.com/blog/the-doorway-effect/): You march into the kitchen on a mission and the mission vanishes. Here's the real science of the doorway effect, and why your memory is fine.
- [Are You Really Smarter Than Someone From 20,000 Years Ago?](https://norboexplains.com/blog/were-ancient-humans-smarter/): Same brain, different tools. What stone blades, ocean crossings, and 10,000-year-old memories say about the minds we came from.

## Optional

- [Full content dump](https://norboexplains.com/llms-full.txt): every page's full text in one file, including per-video FAQs and sources
- [About](https://norboexplains.com/about/): what the channel is and who makes it
- [FAQ](https://norboexplains.com/faq/): who makes this, fact-checking policy, available languages (Blue Zones is dubbed in Spanish, German and Hindi), contact

## Contact

- Email: hello@norboexplains.com