We toured the former prison known as Eastern State Penitentiary, it housed notorious gangster Al Capone and serial bank robber William Francis Sutton.

Follow BI Video: On Twitter

Join the conversation about this story »

Sibling entrepreneurs Alli Webb and Michael Landau say they owe much of their business' enormous success to the three-word motto they've embraced since day one: "We are family."

In 2009, the brother-sister duo cofounded Drybar, a chic chain of hair salons that offers blowouts ("no cuts, no color, just blowouts") for $40-$45 a pop.

Since its inception, they've opened 67 locations and hired over 3,000 employees — including Webb's husband, Cameron, who serves as the company's creative director, and Landau's wife, Sarah, Drybar's director of team member experience.

But Webb, Landau, and their spouses aren't the only family members in the business.

They consider each and every one of their 3,000 staffers family — and they strongly believe this mentality has helped them achieve so much of their success.

Webb and Landau say infusing the "we are family" motto into everything they do, and including it as an official company core value ("We are family. Drybar was started by family. You are part of our family."), has allowed the company to stand out from conventional salons where stylists clock in and clock out and "don't feel like they're part of something bigger."

"In most salons, stylists rent a chair, come in, do their work, and go home," Landau tells Business Insider. "At Drybar, we do things differently. And because we've created a 'family environment,' and everyone is reminded over and over again that 'we are all family,' our employees are excited to come in to work. They are passionate about the brand, the products, and what they're doing. And this helps them create a wonderful experience for our clients — which makes them want to come back again and again."

Webb and Landau say they recognized the importance and power of the "family environment" — and the "we are family" motto — early on.

When they first started hiring in 2009 they placed job ads on Craigslist and conducted interviews in Webb's Los Angeles home.

"During interviews, I would have stylists 'audition' in my living room," explains Webb, who recently authored "The Drybar Guide to Good Hair For All." "They would blow out my hair, and I would see how they did and whether they could hold a conversation."

But she quickly learned that the best stylists weren't the ones with the strongest technical skills. They were the ones who wanted to be part of the Drybar family; those who truly embrace that core value.

"Now we always make it clear in the interview process that working at Drybar is like joining a family. If the person isn't interested in being part of an environment like that, we know it won't work out," she says. "Many stylists don't come from that type of environment, so some try it, thinking they'll like it, and later decide they don't. Those stylists ultimately don't work out for us."

To figure out whether an individual would be a good fit for Drybar, Webb says the company's hiring managers typically ask questions that have nothing to do with skillsets. "Instead, we try to learn about who they are and what they value most. That helps us determine whether they'd thrive in a family-like environment."

And when the employees thrive, everyone wins.

"The 'we are family' motto really works for us, our employees, and our customers," Landau says. But as Drybar continues to grow, maintaining the "feel of a small, family company" may prove challenging.

"As we get more corporate, we don't want to feel more corporate," he says. "We always want to have that family atmosphere and vibe we all enjoy today."

Watch Drybar's video on their 10 core values and beliefs here:

SEE ALSO: An ex-Goldman Sachs employee who launched her own startup shares the most important trait a job candidate can have

Join the conversation about this story »

Having a long layover while waiting for your next flight at the airport is often an unpleasant experience, but some airports are adding a variety of entertainment features to make your wait as enjoyable as possible. 

These airports have everything from IMAX movie theaters to golf courses and rooftop pools. 

From an on-site brewery with live music at the Munich Airport to over 1,000 slot machines in Las Vegas' McCarran International Airport, here are 15 airports where you won't mind having a long layover.

Talia Avakian contributed reporting to a previous version of this article. 

SEE ALSO: Here's what it's like to fly first class on Emirates

Singapore’s Changi Airport has a two-story butterfly garden with a 27-foot waterfall, a garden with around 40 species of cacti, and orchid and sunflower gardens. It also hosts a rooftop pool, several in-terminal hotels, one of the world's tallest airport slides at 4 stories high, and a Fish Spa that offers treatments like hot stone massages, fish pedicures, and ear candling. There's a reason it's regularly ranked the No. 1 airport in the world.

Source: Fodor's Travel

The Amsterdam Schiphol Airport hosts a branch of the Riijkmuseum where you can discover Dutch music, literature, and art; a 6XD Theater, where you can sit on a five-minute film ride with special effects; and a Back to Life oxygen bar, where oxygen infused with lavender and eucalyptus helps you relax before your flight.

Source: Fodor's Travel,Forbes

Las Vegas' McCarran International Airport has around 1,300 slot machines located in terminals 1 and 2. At the Howard W. Cannon Aviation Museum (in terminal 1), you can see a collection of 30 display cases showcasing Southern Nevada's aviation history, and take your kids to the aviation-themed play area.

Source: McCarran International Airport

Warning: Spoilers ahead for "Black Mirror" season 3, episode one.

There's a reason the first episode of the new season of the hit new Netflix series "Black Mirror" is called "Nosedive."

It envisions a world in which we're completely dependent upon social media. Each of us chases after a desirable "rating" — an average score (out of 5 stars) that's affected by everything from that sideways glance you gave the woman walking past you on your morning commute to the lack of enthusiasm you displayed for the birthday gift your co-worker gave you.

It's not too far-fetched from the world we live in now. Just imagine if you combined your Uber rating with the amount of likes you got on Facebook and the number of replies you received on Twitter in the last month. Now imagine that that singular rating determined everything about your life, from where you worked to the home you were eligible to live in.

Voila! Welcome to "Nosedive."

This is precisely the reason "Black Mirror" is so compelling. It's not your typical science fiction, which envisions the world 100 or 1,000 years from now. It imagines next year. Next month.

A psychological principle called the "hedonic treadmill" is the real fuel that would, in theory, drive us toward this pathetic and debilitating future. In essence, because we're always on the hunt for that next thing that'll make us feel good, it's almost impossible for us to just be— and just being, research suggests, is one of the key ways to feel truly happy.

'A lifestyle community'

In one particularly evocative scene, the main character, Lacie Pound (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) discovers the only way she can afford the apartment she wants — in the prestigious Pelican Cove Lifestyle Community — is by raising her rating and becoming a "preferred" member. A higher score of a 4.5, the leasing agent tells her, would qualify her for a 20% discount. But she's several percentage points away at a meager 4.2. The remainder of the plot focuses on Lacie's initially promising — but ultimately devastating — attempt to raise her score by speaking at the wedding of a childhood friend with an envious 4.8 rating.

In the end, after brandishing a knife in the middle of a very public nervous breakdown, Lacie is arrested and jailed. The episode ends in the middle of a vicious but comical insult-throwing match between Lacie and the man in the cell across from her.

The hedonic treadmill

All of Lacie's pursuits fall into line perfectly with the hedonic treadmill principle, which some psychologists have used to explain why so many of us feel unsatisfied with our lives. If we get a job promotion, for example, we'll celebrate and feel good for a moment, but those joyful emotions are fleeting. Soon enough, we'll be back to where we started — on the hunt for the next feel-good thing and, therefore, unhappy. In the early 1990s, British psychologist Michael Eysenck likened this constant starvation for more and more to a treadmill— hence the name.

"You're running but you're on that treadmill and you're not getting anywhere in terms of happiness," science journalist Wendy Zukerman explained on a 2015 episode of her podcast series "Science Vs" about happiness.

Eventually that temporary boost in happiness you get from a job promotion or marriage proposal will abate, and you'll be back to the same baseline level of happiness you were before the exciting change.

And that's precisely what Lacie Pound experiences. Every time she gets a four or five-star rating, her bright blue eyes light up. She smiles and giggles with a high-pitched glee. But at the end of the day, Lacie is lonely and unsatisfied. She lives with her brother. We don't meet any of her close friends. She feels alienated by her co-workers. The wedding she's attending is for a friend who she has not been close with for ages and clearly doesn't trust.

In the part of the episode where Lacie views the apartment of her dreams, she's shown a virtual reality scene of herself making dinner in the kitchen with a lover — and it's this romantic vision that seems to goad her into pursuing the 4.5 rating. She wants companionship. She wants relationships. And she'll do anything — even if it goes against her instincts, even if it's all, ultimately, a big lie — to get there.

Social media doesn't make us happy

Unfortunately, Lacie continues to pursue what she thinks will make her happy, like a high social media rating, while completely disregarding the things that might actually make her happy, like friendships with her co-workers or a real relationship with her brother. In the real world, many of us make Lacie's mistake over and over again.

Study after study has found that when we engage with social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, we may feel a temporary boost from likes or favorites, but there's absolutely no link between social media use and long-term happiness. Some research suggests the opposite, in fact: that social media use is linked with an increase in negative feelings. A January study of 1,787 young US adults sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health, for example, found a “strong and significant association between social media use and depression." Participants' depression levels, the researchers found, increased alongside the total amount of time spent using social media and the number of weekly visits to social media platforms.

Nevertheless, driven by the hedonic treadmill, we keep using it. We "check" Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as if there's something real there for us to find there. But all we ever get is a "like" or a "fave." And a swipe or a scroll is all it takes to wipe them away.

A limit to our dependence upon ratings

Fortunately, some research suggests there's a limit to how far this hedonic principle will ultimately drive us. That research helps explain why we don't merely spend all of our time doing pleasurable activities, and why we still somehow manage to do things like work and chores. Sure, we do sometimes gravitate towards things that make us feel good in the short-term. But we also manage to do things that aren't inherently pleasant — like the laundry or the dishes — because we know those activities will help us feel satisfied in the long-run.

This could be good news for those of us concerned with turning into Lacie Pound. So long as we're aware that social media doesn't turn into long-term happiness, we'll always withdraw from it — at least temporarily — to do things that will give us those long-term rewards.

A study published in August in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which looked at the type of activities people engage in when they're either feeling happy or feeling sad, for example, found that we tend to gravitate towards boring activities like chores when we're in a good mood. On the other hand, we do things like going on a hike or getting drinks with friends when we're feeling low. This suggests that our happiness is something of a reserve, the study authors told Business Insider.

"Our positive emotion, perhaps, can be seen as a resource," Dr. Jordi Quoidbach, one of the study's lead authors and a psychology professor at Barcelona's University Pompeu Fabra, told us in August. "When we don't have enough, we need to replenish it, but as soon as we have enough, we can potentially use that to get things done."

Of all the logged activities the researchers studied, spending time with other people had the strongest link to positive emotions, while using social media had either a neutral or slightly negative link.

In other words, since social media doesn't do anything for our longterm happiness, it's tough to imagine a functioning society that's 100% dependent upon it. If we ever tried to create one, most of us would probably end up like Lacie Pound does at the end of the episode — screaming at a stranger from inside a prison cell.

SEE ALSO: Here are 25 habits that psychologists have linked with happiness

DON'T MISS: Psychologists say this is the simplest way to get — and stay — happy

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: The simplest way to get — and stay — happy, according to psychologists

When Elona Karafin was a child, she was diagnosed with bone cancer. She spent two years in treatments and today, at age 23, she's happy to report that she's healthy. 

But being a cancer survivor is forever baked into her psyche.

"I had cancer when I was 10, " she says. "Now I realize, people around me, people my age or people older, everyone is dealing with something that stops them from doing what they want to do."

She says the experience taught her, "I don’t want to waste away my youth and I don't want others to waste away their youth and I don't want them to do it because people think they don't have enough money or enough time."

And so, every few weeks, Karafin, who lives in New York, travels to a far-away destination like Bali or Poland or Paris or Portugal on a long weekend, maybe three days, spending less than $1,000 on the total trip including airfare, hotel, entertainment — everything. 

If she's not traveling internationally, she'll zip around the US. For domestic trips, its a straight weekend jaunt, Friday night to Sunday, she says.

She keeps details of her trips. what she saw, how she spent her time and documents it all on her blog, "Elona The Explorer."

She's out to prove to everyone who wants to travel the world (or achieve any of their dreams): "You have time. You can make time. Even the busiest people in the world, they have time," she says. "That's why I focus so much on weekend trips."

And, she's not independently wealthy. She works as a financial analyst at a large e-commerce and postage supply company. "I work a full-time job and I'm fresh out of college, so I'm not exactly making the big bucks," she laughs. 

Some of her best trips:

• A three-day jaunt to Bali. "It was a 26-hour flight, I was in Bali for 3 nights. not even a full four days," she says.
• She's done Dubai in 4 days.
• And once, she went to Poland for 8 hours. "I surprised my best friend for her birthday, I flew out on a Saturday."
• She also nailed Amsterdam in 2 days. "There's a whole list of things you can get done in two days."

On top of working and traveling, she also runs her own charity called Checkmatecancer.org that uses social media and crowdfunding to raise money for underprivileged kids who have cancer.

So she probably falls into the "busiest people in the world" bucket. She's really proud of the charity, by the way. "So far, in three years I raised over $115,000 in donations for individual families in the United States and abroad," she tells us.

As a traveler, it does help that she lives in New York, because flying to European destinations takes less time, but she says anyone can do exotic travel on the weekends, no matter where they live.

Here are her top tips:

SEE ALSO: Meet the first guy Steve Jobs ever fired at Apple ... and he wasn't even an employee

Turn off the "cookies" in your browser before using travel sites (or clear them before you return). Many travel sites use cookies to remember you and show you the same fares, even if they were high. "They assume that's what you're willing to pay," Karafin says.

Here's how you clear cookies in Chrome.

This is what to do in Internet Explorer.

And here's how you clear cookies in Firefox.

Be flexible on where you'll go. "I use websites that allow me to put 'everywhere' as a destination, and New York as my origin," she says. She goes where ever the bargains take her.

One of her favorite sites for finding deals on flights is Jetradar.com. "It has some of the best deals I’ve ever seen."

Read more of Karafin's favorite apps for traveling on the cheap.

Of all the trendy fitness programs I hear about, one stands out in particular: barre. It seems like only women participate in this unique workout regime, which incorporates technique and conditioning used by ballet dancers. 

It's easy to understand that men might shy away from a workout with such a description. That being said, everything I'd heard about barre suggested that it offers a full-body approach from which both sexes can benefit. 

I got the chance to see what barre is all about in a private lesson studio owner and instructor Katie Muehlenkamp at the Bar Method location in Brooklyn, NY.

Follow BI Video:On Twitter

Join the conversation about this story »

Forget about those hokey attractions at amusement parks. There are real haunted houses spread across America.

We're talking about the true-blue, creepy-as-can-be haunted houses. The houses where local residents claim they hear voices and where serial killers dumped their victims. The places that carry legends of entire families vanishing into thin air and that serve as a backdrop for murders and suicides. Or, the places that just look like something horrifying happened there.

Photographer Seph Lawless braved these collapsing buildings for his new photo book, "Autopsy of America: The Death of a Nation." Captioned with the photos are the urban legends and tales Lawless heard about the houses  he photographed, coupled with information from some corroborating news reports.

SEE ALSO: The 16 most cliché Halloween costumes of 2016

DON'T FORGET: Follow Business Insider's lifestyle page on Facebook!

Working under a pseudonym, photographer Seph Lawless is known for his dark and foreboding pictures of abandoned buildings.

The images he captures have an eerie, surreal quality.

In support of his new photo book, "Autopsy of America," Lawless has provided us with photos of real haunted houses across America.

Here are 23 more.

Produced by Arielle Berger. Original reporting by Steven Tweedie.

Follow BI Video: On Twitter 

Join the conversation about this story »

"Appetites" author Anthony Bourdain says beef tenderloin, the cut filet mignon comes from, isn't worth cooking. For a good steak, he uses cuts that don't have such a high price tag.

 Follow Tech Insider: On Facebook

Join the conversation about this story »

Dying isn't always an Earth-friendly business.

Decomposing bodies in coffins buried in the ground can emit large amounts of methane, a harmful greenhouse gas.

That, along with the formaldehyde that's used to get the body preserved for burial makes for not-so-sustainable burial practices.

And while the vast majority of people opt for either traditional burial or cremation, there are other ways to be memorialized that do less damage to the planet.

1. Turn your body into a tree

Developed by Italian designers, this sustainable burial practice will turn your remains into tree food. Anna Citelli and Raoul Bretzel, the creators of Capsula Mundi (pictured here) want to change the way Italy buries its loved ones with their pod-like design using eco-friendly materials.

You're buried inside a biodegradable egg-shaped pod while in the fetal position. When you're buried, a tree gets planted on top. Then the idea is that as the pod begins to decompose, the body can turn into minerals that feed the tree. Bretzel and Mundi hope to change the traditional cemetery into a "sacred forest."

2. Use dry ice 

Traditionally, families burying their loved ones will have them embalmed, so that the decomposing process doesn't start right away. Usually, this is done with formaldehyde, a known human carcinogen (which, of course doesn't affect those being embalmed, but rather those doing the embalming).

Instead, some people are turning to dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) as a way to keep bodies preserved until they are interred. This keeps the body from decomposing without needing embalming, though you do have to change out the ice every day. Though carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, the amount released from the dry ice used in body preservation is a pretty small percentage of overall CO2 emissions.

3. Furnish your home with a shelf that doubles as a coffin

Instead of using your wooden coffin only as your final resting place, William Warren had the idea of making a set of shelves that can be converted to a coffin when the time is right. This upcycled version makes the wood useful for longer, and as Warren remarks on his website, "the wood will colour, the surfaces will mark and stain and over the years and the furniture will become a part of you." Warren designed the shelves and debuted them at the 2005 London Design Festival, though you can ask him for directions on how to may your own set of shelves-turned-coffin.

Plus, you get the added fun of telling all your guests about it while giving them a tour of your house and seeing their bewildered expressions.

SEE ALSO: RANKED: These are the most and least healthy Halloween candies

SEE ALSO: Here’s why people believe in ghosts

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: These are your chances of dying if you participate in these extreme sports

Stop putting your milk in your refrigerator door and stop putting your bread on top of the fridge. It turns out that seemingly harmless mistakes such as these can make a big difference in the freshness and safety of your groceries. Watch and learn the right way to organize your refrigerator.

Follow BI Video: On Twitter

Join the conversation about this story »

.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 'He never said that': New Clinton ad shows Trump contradicting Pence's VP debate denials

Over the course of 15 years and four travel shows, Anthony Bourdain has toured 80 countries, delving into their histories and eating as much of their food as possible.

If you ask him, as Business Insider did earlier this year, what his favorite destination is, he will immediately tell you it's Japan.

"Japan is endlessly, endlessly interesting to me," he said. And even after going on nine filming trips there, "I don't think I've even scratched the surface and I don't think I ever will."

He's especially in love with Tokyo.

"If I had to eat only in one city for the rest of my life, Tokyo would be it," Bourdain wrote for CNN in 2013 on his "Parts Unknown" blog. "Most chefs I know would agree with me. For those with restless, curious minds, fascinated by layer upon layer of things, flavors, tastes and customs which we will never fully be able to understand, Tokyo is deliciously unknowable."

"It's that densely packed, impenetrable layer cake of the strange, wonderful and awful that thrills. It's mesmerizing. Intimidating. Disorienting. Upsetting. Poignant. And yes, beautiful."

We asked him for his go-to Japanese dishes. "Oh, God. It's hard to pick," he said. "Give me some good uni [sea urchin], a really good soba [buckwheat noodles] with duck dipping sauce — duck dipping dressing is really amazing — and I adore good yakitori [skewered and grilled chicken pieces]."

Japan's "uniquely kooky national schizophrenia," as he calls it in his 2010 essay collection "Medium Raw," gels perfectly with the way he approaches traveling.

"I've found that you're not going to have the really great travel experiences if you're not willing to experience the bad ones," Bourdain told us. "The great travel epiphanies seem to sneak up on you because you kind of f---ed up, you took a wrong turn, and you ended up in a place where you permitted events to unfold."

On Tokyo in particular, he wrote for CNN, "I'm sure I could spend the rest of my life there, learn the language, and still die happily ignorant."

SEE ALSO: Anthony Bourdain discusses 'Parts Unknown,' his favorite restaurants, and how he went from outsider chef to the top of the food world

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: How to choose the best cut of steak — according to Anthony Bourdain

The first few minutes of your workday are critical to your productivity for the next eight hours.

If you show up late to the office or get sucked into an overflowing inbox, you could easily get thrown off and have a hard time focusing for the rest of the day.

We did some research and rounded up nine common traps that can ensnare you within the first 10 minutes of your workday. Read on to find out how to avoid those pitfalls and set yourself up for success.

1. Getting in late

You could be sabotaging your workday before it even begins.

A recent study, cited by The Huffington Post, found that bosses tend to see employees who come in later as less conscientious and give them lower performance ratings — even if those employees leave later, too.

It's not fair, but it's the current reality. So try to get to the office as early as possible.

2. Not greeting your coworkers

You can set a pleasant tone for yourself and others around you by taking a few minutes to catch up with your colleagues.

If you're a leader and you don't say "hi" to your team, your seeming lack of people skills could undercut your technical competence, according to Lynn Taylor, a national workplace expert and the author of "Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant: How to Manage Childish Boss Behavior and Thrive in Your Job."

Even if you aren't a manager, making a silent beeline for your desk could make you appear less approachable to colleagues.

3. Drinking coffee

If you're not the kind of person who downs a cup right when you wake up, you probably grab it as soon as you get into the office.

But research suggests that the best time to drink coffee is after 9:30 a.m. That's because the stress hormone cortisol, which regulates energy, generally peaks between 8 and 9 a.m. When you drink coffee during that time, the body starts producing less cortisol and depends more on caffeine.

Once your cortisol levels start declining after 9:30 a.m., you might really need that caffeine boost.

Most of us know (and love) M&M's — those tiny, colorful chocolates that "melt in your mouth, not in your hand."

But very few of us are familiar with the process of how they're made.

Lucky for you, Business Insider visited the Mars Chocolate North America campus in Hackettstown, New Jersey, where 50% of all M&M's sold in the US are made.

Mars Chocolate — a segment of the $33 billion Mars candy, pet care, and beverage company — is the producer of M&M's, along with 10 other billion-dollar brands including Snickers, Dove, Milky Way, and Twix.

The Mars Chocolate North America campus, which opened in 1958 and employs 1,200 people, is home to a corporate office as well as the M&M's factory.

While touring the campus, we learned that the M&M's brand was founded by Forrest E. Mars, Sr. in 1941, and that it was the first candy in space in 1982.

Leighanne Eide, the Mars Chocolate North America site director, walked us through the factory and explained each step of the process. We were restricted from taking photos of certain top-secret areas — but below you'll get a better idea of how the M&M's-making process works:

SEE ALSO: Take a tour of the Mars Chocolate office, where life-size M&M's greet you at the door with free candy

The smell of sweet chocolate hit us as we approached the factory, which is a few hundred yards from the Mars Chocolate office in Hackettstown, New Jersey.

Upon entering the factory, we were asked to remove all jewelry. Next, Eide examined our fingernails to see if we were wearing nail polish. (They don't want chipped nail polish getting mixed in with the product.) Mine were polished, so I was asked to wear gloves. We were also required to wear a Mars-branded lab coat, like all factory associates.

Next we were given hard hats, safety glasses, ear plugs, and hair nets.

You've probably heard that cranberry juice can help prevent or cure a common, nasty infection called a urinary tract infection, or UTI. The belief is that it somehow flushes out bacteria or changes the conditions in your body so that bacteria cannot thrive there.

These ideas are slowly being debunked by science, and it now looks like chugging down cranberry juice might not be any better at curing an infection than a glass of water.

A new study, lead by Dr Manisha Juthani-Mehta from the Yale School of Medicine, investigated the effects of high-dose cranberry capsules on 185 women in a nursing home. The pills contained the equivalent of 20 ounces of juice, and the women were given the pills once a day.

The participants were divided into two groups; half were given cranberry capsules and the other a placebo. A year later, there was no difference in the presence of the common UTI bacterium known as bacteriuria plus pyuria between the two groups.

In an editorial accompanying the paper, Lindsay E. Nicolle, a professor of internal medicine and medical microbiology at the University of Manitoba, wrote that clinicians should no longer promote cranberry use or claim that there is any benefit to drinking it for infections.

"It is time to move on from cranberries," she wrote.

Nicolle's conclusion is backed up by several other studies, including a small one done in 2003 and another larger study from 2012. In 2003, researchers from Wayne State University Medical School compared concentrated cranberry juice with a placebo and found no conclusive evidence that it effectively treated UTIs.

In 2012, a Cochrane review of 24 studies with a total of 4,473 participants concluded that there was little evidence of positive effects of cranberry juice on UTI incidence, and it "cannot be recommended for the prevention of UTIs." 

Where did the idea that cranberry juice is good for infections come from?

People didn't start believing that cranberry juice had special qualities for no reason. Initially, it was given a good name because of the fact that cranberries contain A-type proanthocyanidins (PACs), which were shown to help block the adhesion of bacteria to the wall of the bladder. In reality though, this active ingredient is long gone before it gets that far.

Plus, a few studies have suggested that drinking cranberry juice or taking cranberry pills may prevent — but not treat — UTIs, especially for women who are at risk of getting these infections. For example, a 2016 study from the University of Delhi showed that cranberry extract was superior to a placebo for reducing the amount of UTI bacteria in two groups of people. However, the authors admitted further controlled trials are needed. 

Another 2016 study funded by cranberry juice manufacturer Ocean Spray suggested that drinking the juice lowered the number of clinical UTI episodes in women with a recent history of having one after 24 weeks.

So although the theories might be based in fact, the evidence that cranberry juice is an effective treatment for UTIs is shaky at best. Instead, it's advised to get the proper medical treatment, which is a short course of antibiotics. Plus, drinking too much juice in general can have some unpleasant effects on your body, like acid reflux and an upset stomach.

SEE ALSO: The author of 'Eat Fat, Get Thin' says there are 3 foods you should avoid

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: These popular drinks are loaded with sugar — here's how much

Election Day is just over a week away, so it's time to plan where to cast your vote. 

Location-intelligence company Foursquare teamed up with the Voting Information Project and Mapbox to create a tool that aims to be helpful in two ways: once you input your address, it will point to your nearest polling place and a few places where you can grab a coffee or snack nearby. 

As several states have not yet finalized their polling locations, the map will be continually updated in real time. In some cases, the map shows places where you can cast your vote early.

In most states, the deadline to register to vote has already passed. In some states, like Colorado, Iowa, and Wisconsin, you can register on Election Day at a polling place. For state-by-state voter registration deadlines, click here. 

You can give it a try here.

SEE ALSO: Inside the $200 million, presidential-themed hotel Donald Trump just opened a mile away from the White House

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Meet the Facebook star who’s turning the 2016 election into hilarious musical parodies

Your epitaph — the text written on a headstone — is the last thing you can say to the world.

Sometimes it's a matter of getting your own account of your life out there. Richard Nixon, disgraced by Watergate, wanted to be remembered as a peacemaker.

Others, like F. Scott Fitzgerald or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., highlight a favorite line from their major works.

Or you might just want your bones to be left alone, like William Shakespeare, who was buried with a curse.

Keep scrolling for the best in headstones.

Drake Baer contributed to an earlier version of this story.

The buyer of San Francisco's most expensive home was Kyle Vogt, cofounder of Twitch and Cruise Automation, according to OpenHouse.

Vogt bought the house for $21.8 million, according to Redfin, which makes it the biggest sale in the city so far this year. The home was originally listed for $28 million in November 2015, but the price was chopped by $3 million in June. It was San Francisco's most expensive listed home at the time of the sale.

Vogt is a serial entrepreneur who sold his car automation startup, Cruise Automation, to General Motors for a reported $1 billion in March; he remains its CEO. He's also a cofounder of the video streaming startup Twitch, which Amazon purchased for $970 million in 2014.

Vogt is known to some as the "Robot Guru" for his interest in robotics. He studied computer science and electrical engineering at MIT.

His new home was built in 1901 and has been turned into a contemporary-style mansion with 9,095 square feet of space. It has seven bedrooms and seven bathrooms spread out over three floors, and is situated on one of San Francisco's highest streets.

It was most recently owned by Tara and Bryan Meehan, who made a fortune on investments in Blue Bottle Coffee. The couple gutted and restored the home, but apparently never moved in.

Vogt did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

SEE ALSO: Nobody wants to buy the world's largest log cabin — and now the price has been slashed by $20 million

DON'T FORGET: Follow Business Insider's lifestyle page on Facebook!

Welcome to the most expensive home sold in the city of San Francisco in 2016.

It was built in 1901 for the wealthy fish-packing mogul James Madison — no, not the president. Its facade was restored to its original beaux-arts beauty.

The top-to-bottom restoration of the property took two years to complete.

Jake Heimark never really smoked pot.

Even now, as Heimark launches the second product from his marijuana edibles company, Plus, he indulges only when testing his own product— a kind of medicated gum.

Despite his lack of firsthand experience, he is well prepared to enter the budding marijuana marketplace. A two-year stint on Facebook's risk management team taught Heimark how to build a great product and how to cultivate a company culture that values "moving fast" (though maybe not "breaking things," as the social giant's mantra goes).

By now you're probably thinking, marijuana-infusedgum? Sounds gross.

Heimark insists this is no ordinary marijuana-infused gum (yes, there's at least one other on the market). Plus Gum, which tastes like spearmint and a "hint of cannabis," according to the website, gets users high faster than most edibles because it's absorbed through the lining of the mouth. It has less than five calories, making it one of the most diet-friendly edibles available.

Two years ago, Heimark, a Bay Area native, was working as a project manager at payments startup Gumroad, which has nothing to do with actual gum. But he wanted to run a company.

A friend sent him a link to a "60 Minutes" episode about how the marijuana industry was growing up and attracting big dollars in Colorado, where recreational marijuana has been legal since 2012.

Heimark considered his experience maximizing profits and minimizing payment fraud at Facebook (and his role at Gumroad) and packed his bags for Denver. He rented an Airbnb and joined a marijuana startup accelerator called Green Labs for $450 a month.

One day, some projections about the edibles market crossed his desk. He crunched more numbers. He sent the data to his dad, the former chief information officer at Swiss bank UBS.

"I called my father ... and I said, 'Can you read these numbers and tell me if you see what I'm seeing," Heimark says. "He said, 'You need to be an edibles company.' And I said, 'I think so.'"

Edibles and other infused products are taking a bigger bite out of the $5.4 billion legal marijuana industry with every passing year. It's often the consumption method of choice for people using marijuana for medicinal purposes and those who just don't want to smoke.

Weed-laced treats offer a discreet way to get high in public, and a single dose can power users through the worst bouts of illness-induced nausea or a marathon Netflix binge.

But they offer a completely different experience than a joint or a bong hit. When eaten, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive ingredient in weed, undergoes a transformation in the liver that turns it into a different substance that's twice as strong and lasts twice as long as when it's inhaled. A user's high might not peak until one to three hours after eating.

Because it takes so long to process, people often overdo it. While there are no recorded cases of people fatally overdosing on marijuana, it can make patients incredibly uncomfortable.

But gum isn't digested. You chew it.

Heimark hypothesized that a marijuana-infused gum would be absorbed through the cheeks and gums faster than the digestive tract. It's the same reason why doctors administer medicine under the tongue. If medical marijuana patients got high more quickly, they might find relief from their ailments and say no to second helpings too soon after their first dose.

Heimark and his cofounders, Roy McFarland and Justin "Crunchy" Crunchington, pored over recipe books from the Denver library and spent every night trying new recipes in the kitchen.

Turns out, making gum is hard to do. Harder still, the guys had to find a way to make the chemical compounds in marijuana stick to the gum and not rub off on user's teeth. Ideally, the finished product wouldn't taste like an ashtray. It was a tall order.

Today, Plus Gum delivers psychoactive effects within 15 minutes of chewing, Heimark says. He credits a "secret sauce" contained in their pending patent for improving taste.

Each Chicklet-like piece of gum provides 25 milligrams of THC, though Heimark claims its potency doesn't feel like a dose that large, because the drug never gets digested. He compares the high to drinking two beers. Plus Gum is available in 65 dispensaries across California.

Recently, Plus launched its second product, a tin of marijuana-infused gummies. They co-opt some science developed for the gum to make the gummies fast-acting, though not as swift.

As the company gears up for the possible legalization of recreational marijuana in California this November (and an expansion to Colorado in 2017), Heimark expects an infusion of new customers. He says these times remind him of being at Facebook.

"What I love about this industry is that it is brand-new and growing. It's so exciting and changing every day," Heimark says. "I was part of tech, and I've seen what that felt like. I can tell you this feels the same, if not even faster growing."

SEE ALSO: 'Microdosing' is the future of marijuana

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: We went inside a Colorado 'Bud & Breakfast' where you can legally smoke marijuana