At TCC we specialise in social research and behaviour change. This is your guide to what we’ve been reading.

Hello and welcome to the TCC Weekly. As children across the country flock back to classrooms, we bring you this Back to School edition.
 
This week we find out the psychology of boredom, read about the students wearing the wrong shoes, and absorb the Guardian’s take on the political outsider with the bad dress sense who’s energising young people and shaking up the political consensus. We’re talking, of course, about Mr Kanye West.
 
And if the autumn blues are getting you down then head on up to Charlie’s Attic, where the summer holidays never end.
 
David Evans
Director

• Behaviour Change ~ Stuck in the classroom? Being bored can apparently be useful
• Polls, Policies and Politics ~ The “College Dropout” taking politics by storm
• Health Hub ~ Teen goths plus the British sperm bank
• Values Lab ~ The importance of being near to a state school
• Charlie’s Attic ~ The students who got off on the wrong foot this term plus the country putting axe-throwing on the curriculum

• First this week, find out how being bored can be useful – and stimulating. And could a little neurosis be a good thing? A new study suggests that moody neurotics are more likely to be creative geniuses. But if your mood swings are getting you into arguments with colleagues, here are three ways to make sure you win.
• Could bad town planning be making us stressed out and ill? Apparently so. Meanwhile this article looks at how nudge was used to increase sales of Big Issue, and assesses the benefits – and drawbacks – of nudge technology.
• Also this week:
  • What happened when psychologists tried to replicate 100 previously published findings?
  • In this new project, care home residents get to tell their stories.
  • Find out how having a brain scan led these children to change their minds about how they think about…their minds.
• And finally, here, with the leaves turning brown and a new school year about to commence Guardian journalists reflect on how their lives were shaped by their favourite lessons at school.

• This week millions of children go back to school – not in Wales, however, where home education has increased dramatically.
• That’s news for self-styled “College Drop Out” Kanye West, who this week announced he’d be running as 2020 US President. Would he really be the best in US history? Mr Trump thinks so. And here are five jobs he could do if it doesn’t work out.
• Economist Richard Murphy, the man behind Corbynomics, writes about the “new, ethical economics of the left”. And if Corbyn does win, then what of the road ahead? Here’s what Owen Jones makes of the challenges facing a Corbyn-led Labour party. And here are four things that Corbyn’s opponents need to do before the next leadership election. YouGov, meanwhile, say Corbyn’s got a party of dreamers.
• In a new report, Dan Jarvis warns that Labour “must tackle Ukip head on” if it wants to win in 2020 – something that Corbyn is confident he’ll do through his “people’s politics” (a bit like the Ukip “people’s army”, perhaps). Perhaps the real problem is that we’ve all become Thatcherites.
• Also this week:
  • “Social cleansing” pushes tens of thousands out of London.
  • Nick Pearce, director of IPPR, on political inequality and the power of the grey vote.
  • A volunteer law project wins 95 per cent of its “fit for work” appeal cases, and an “Airbnb for refugees” campaign attracts a huge response.

• New research this week has suggested that teen goths are at higher risk of suicide. And while the housing crisis has many victims, old people are the most vulnerable.
• After a slow start, Britain’s national sperm bank is to use “superman” campaign to attract more donors. And on the topic of public health behaviour change campaigns, here are five innovative ways that councils are using to get people on their bikes.
• Writing for the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell asks why it is so difficult to develop drugs for cancer.
• Meanwhile the government’s latest research on e-cigarettes finds that they’re 95 per cent safer than ordinary cigarettes.
  • But could we all be addicts? One therapist thinks so.
• And finally, worrying new evidence suggests that some doctors are using antipsychotic drugs to subdue “challenging behaviour” in those who are not mentally ill.

• Spare a thought for the 56 pupils who got off on the wrong foot this term when they were sent home for wearing the wrong shoes. And for this boy who was sent home for sporting a Sergio Aguero haircut.
• Marvel at Norway’s Viking school, where lessons include axe-throwing and sword forging.
• Lament the decline of the student band as you read about how tuition fees killed the radio star.
• Understand capitalism with the help of cow metaphors.
• Regret that you missed out on a bargain – Jeremy Corbyn’s used coffee cup sells at auction.
• Smiley face at these children who use emojis to express how they feel about starting secondary school.
• Check out this computer algorithm which recreates a Van Gogh painting in an hour.
• Show your sentimental side as you watch this video of a colour-blind man seeing his first sunset in colour.
• And finally, ask yourself whether £480 a month for a bed, in a shed, in a living room is good value for money.
• Create posters and waste A4 paper in your office at the same time with this ingenious App.