Talking out loud to oneself is a technology for thinking that allows us to clarify and sharpen our approach to a problem This week, a woman was strolling in my street, walking in circles and speaking ...

What if, alongside scheduling appointments, meetings, and social events in your calendar, you started to allocate specific times just to be by yourself – to enjoy solitude? I propose this thought ...

‘A lot of people think they know how to sharpen pencils, but… they don’t really.’ Such is the view of David Rees, a self-styled ‘artisanal pencil-sharpener’ who, at the time of this short film’s ...

When Megan Davies was around 11 years old, family dinners became acutely torturous. It was the sounds her parents and six siblings were making: the chewing, slurping, smacking noises that accompany an ...

I’d always been interested in the stories my parents and grandparents told about their lives in Iraq, which seemed so impossibly distant from my childhood in 1970s London. It was only when I became a ...

To some, the idea of leaving a religion can seem as innocuous as cancelling a gym membership. However, for many who have left a faith tradition, the reality is much more complicated. As a psychologist ...

In 392 CE, the Roman emperor Theodosius I outlawed one of the oldest and most well-established mystery cults in the Greek-speaking world, the Eleusinian Mysteries, which had taken place for more than ...

A magazine to help you understand your self and live well ...

Reading a chapter a day of War and Peace shows how a manageable, regular habit can build into a much bigger accomplishment As a high achiever, your problem-solving skills can backfire at night. You ...

Caught between Czech culture and Vietnamese heritage, an animator reflects on growing up as a stranger in her own home ...

I brought my newborn to visit a hospice patient. It took me far from what I’d thought medicine was ...

When overwhelmed I schedule in a cooking day: playful, daring and full of memories. Beats any other stress-reliever for me ...