The post-sex cuddling thing is not always about romance or being “more emotional.” A lot of the time, it is neuroendocrinology doing its job. After sex, the body does not just stop. It runs a chemical shutdown sequence.

First up is oxytocin. During arousal and especially after orgasm, oxytocin rises, and in many women it can feel more pronounced. What does it do? Bonding, trust, and stress reduction. Translation: when the body pumps that much oxytocin, it nudges you toward contact.

Then comes prolactin. After orgasm, prolactin can stay elevated longer, pushing the body toward calm, softness, and a desire for closeness. Not poetry. Biology.

After that, the parasympathetic nervous system takes over. Vagal tone increases, heart rate drops, muscles loosen, and the body shifts into recovery. In that state, touch does not just feel nice, it can amplify the relaxation response. That is why cuddling can act like a physiological “completion step.”

So no, it is not “just emotional.” It is the combined effect of oxytocin, prolactin, and vagal activation showing up as a practical outcome: physical closeness. In many men, testosterone and post-orgasm dynamics can make that same urge feel less intense or shorter-lived.

If she wants to cuddle, she does not need to justify it with romance. Sometimes her nervous system is simply saying this is the system requirement.

The man you see in that split-second jump is Hans Conrad Schumann—an East German border policeman born on March 28, 1942, in Zschochau, Saxony, during the chaos of World War II.

By the time he was 19, he was already wearing the uniform of the Volkspolizei-Bereitschaften (a paramilitary police unit) and had been sent to one of the most explosive assignments imaginable: Berlin, right as the city was being cut in half.

The Third Day Of The Wall

On August 15, 1961—the third day after the Berlin Wall’s construction began—there was no concrete barrier yet. What existed in many places was still a low barbed-wire fence, tense crowds, and armed young men trying to look unshakable while history rearranged itself around them.

Schumann was posted at the corner of Ruppiner Straße and Bernauer Straße, guarding the fresh border line as it hardened by the hour.

Hans Conrad Schumann

The Moment He Chose A Side

Witnesses on the West side noticed something different about him: he wasn’t just standing guard—he looked nervous, pacing, smoking, and watching the crowd like someone trapped inside his own uniform.

A young man approached him, and after barking “Get back!”, Schumann quietly revealed what he was about to do: “I’m going to jump.” West Berlin police were alerted and pulled up with a vehicle positioned to receive him.

Then, at roughly 4:00 PM, Schumann waited for the right instant, dropped his PPSh-41, and leapt over the barbed wire—sprinting across the open strip toward the West Berlin police van.

“Leap Into Freedom”

West German photographer Peter Leibing captured that exact airborne instant—the image that would become known as “Leap Into Freedom.”

Peter Leibing

It wasn’t just a dramatic action shot. It became a symbol: a single human body literally crossing ideology, fear, and consequence in one irreversible movement.

The Aftermath Was Not A Fairytale

Schumann did build a life in West Germany. But the weight of becoming a symbol never fully disappeared. He struggled for years, and on June 20, 1998, suffering from severe depression, he took his own life.

Leibing, the photographer who froze the moment, died on November 2, 2008.

And the photo itself entered the world’s permanent memory: on May 25, 2011, UNESCO inscribed the broader collection “Construction And Fall Of The Berlin Wall And The Two-Plus-Four Treaty Of 1990” into the Memory Of The World Register—a recognition of how documents and images like this became part of humanity’s shared record.

In the end, that’s the cruel elegance of the picture: it looks like pure liberation, but it also contains the truth people forget—sometimes the jump is only six seconds, and the consequences last a lifetime.

Between 1916 and the 1930s, a mysterious illness called encephalitis lethargica spread across the globe. It affected more than a million people and is believed to have caused roughly half a million deaths. For many of those who survived, the body remained alive while the mind was sealed inside a kind of prison.

It often began with harmless symptoms: a sore throat, fever, headache, fatigue… Then the eyes would drift strangely, eyelids would droop, and an irresistible sleep would take over. Some people lost consciousness mid-meal, a half-chewed bite still in their mouths. They sank into a deep sleep that lasted for weeks—sometimes months.

Some never woke up. Some woke up, but they were never the same.

Years later, a portion of survivors developed severe neurological damage resembling Parkinson’s disease. Faces turned blank. Muscles stiffened. Bodies became statues—motionless, locked in place. Yet the mind could remain painfully intact. They could think. They could feel. They simply couldn’t reach the world. Doctors called them “living statues,” and Oliver Sacks described them as “extinct volcanoes.”

For some children, the aftermath was even darker. Those who had the illness at a young age sometimes underwent profound personality changes over time—uncontrollable impulses, sudden violence, self-harm. Even when they regretted what they did, they couldn’t stop themselves. This wasn’t evil. It was an invisible storm tearing through the deepest parts of the brain.

The outbreak appeared around the same time as the Spanish flu, so for years many suspected a connection. But no definitive proof was ever found. Some researchers blamed an autoimmune reaction; others suspected a bacterial or viral trigger. Tens of thousands of investigations followed, and thousands of papers were written… yet the answer never arrived.

And then, as mysteriously as it appeared, the disease vanished.

By the mid-1920s, cases began to decline. By 1930, the epidemic had almost completely burned out. Since then, only a handful of isolated cases have been reported worldwide. No one knows why it came—and no one knows why it left.

In 1990, the film Awakenings brought this story back into the public eye. The Parkinson’s medication L-DOPA briefly returned some long-frozen patients to life. They spoke. They laughed. They moved… but the miracle didn’t last. Side effects surged, and the door closed again.

More than a century has passed. Science advanced, the brain was mapped, genes were decoded. Yet encephalitis lethargica remains one of medicine’s greatest mysteries.

Once, the world was filled with people who couldn’t wake up. And perhaps the most frightening part was this: they weren’t asleep. They simply couldn’t reach the world.

One of the greatest masterpieces in cinema history, The Godfather Part II doesn’t just tell the story of a criminal empire’s rise—it also traces two radically different inner journeys, father and son, moving in opposite directions. And the key to that journey is hidden right in the opening minutes: inside a folk song that slips out of a child’s mouth.

Ellis Island: More Than a Name

In the opening scenes, young Vito is quarantined on Ellis Island, wearing ID badge number 7 and lying in bed number 52. —sings a traditional Sicilian folk song: “Lu Sciccareddu” (“Little Donkey”).

Francis Ford Coppola doesn’t choose this song by accident. The song is about the death of a loyal, obedient donkey that helps its owner with everything. Symbolically, it points to the death of the “gentle village boy” identity Vito left behind in Sicily—and to the loss of that pure innocence he must sacrifice just to survive inside America’s hard machinery. 

In a system where immigrants are tracked by numbers instead of names, Vito is no longer treated as a person with an identity—he becomes a registration object, a record in a bureaucracy. And yet, even while his identity is being stripped away, he keeps holding onto his roots through the very song he sings.

An Empire Born From a System Error

Vito Andolini is severed from his past because of a simple clerical mistake: the Ellis Island officer assumes the name of his village—Corleone—is his surname, and records him that way. His new identity is literally built on a system’s error.

But Vito turns that error into something enormous. His arc is the transformation of a “number” into a “human being,” and then into a leader of a community. He has nothing—and he builds a world.

Michael Corleone: Getting Lost While Having Everything

With Michael, the process runs in reverse. In the first film, we meet him as a war hero, a college graduate, a respectable American citizen. Over time, he becomes rigid—hardened.

Michael’s arc is the transformation of a “human being” into an “office/title.” He consumes his identity while already having everything. His name is clean and legitimate, but the identity of “Don” gradually moves in front of his name, tearing him away from human context.

The Architecture of Power: The Hidden Message Inside the Offices

This massive difference between father and son isn’t only written into dialogue and plot—it’s built into space itself, into the design of their rooms:

Vito Corleone's Office: It exists in an order that doesn’t need to perform power. Even when it’s dark, it carries warm, golden tones; there’s natural light leaking through shutters. Vito’s power is accepted with respect—he feels reachable.

Michael’s Office: It becomes a distant symbol of power, positioned like a throne—centered in the room, parallel to the wall, formal and imposing. And even though it’s wrapped in massive glass, it’s cold—blue and gray. Michael is “ice-cold” and alone even in brightness.

Conclusion: Freedom, or a Golden Cage?

Because Vito truly lived the oppression of being reduced to 7 and 52, he uses power quietly—almost wisely. Michael’s tragedy begins where Vito’s survival story ends: Michael’s power is not simply recognized; it becomes something he must impose.

The famous Statue of Liberty Vito looks at through the Ellis Island window will never bring Michael real freedom. On the contrary: the immense power Michael builds will trap him—forever—inside the golden cage he created with his own hands.