I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about a lonely old age. Closing in on my 61st birthday, eight years into a very happy marriage, I’ve got a wife, two teenage stepkids, an older daughter by an ex, a...

It was about three years ago, as I recall, that a fellow called into my radio/TV program to suggest that a great way to slow aging and normalize weight was an intermittent fasting program called the 5:2 diet. It involved...

  Our experience of time is changing. For the philosopher Byung-Chul Han, the early 21st century has left us ‘whizzing without a direction’. Our world is shaped by the restless, disorienting rhythms of near-term deliverables, social media impression counts, technological obsolescence, shallow...

  While navigating the treacherous world of dating, the concept of “attachment theory” often crops up. You can identify your own attachment style by taking online quizzes like those used to identify the Enneagram or the Myers-Briggs personality types. Unlike those quizzes, however, the...

  The renowned Polish piano duo Marek and Wacek didn’t use sheet music when playing live concerts. And yet onstage the pair appeared perfectly in sync. On adjacent pianos, they playfully picked up various musical themes, blended classical music with...

  We tend to position work against a series of opposites. Some of these are lauded, or at least tolerated: leisure, play, meditation, contemplation, rest. But one of the antonyms of work is, in most accounts, something of more dubious...

    Many of us watch the swirling colors of rustling autumn leaves without thinking much about listening to its pink noise; gaze at the majestic roll of ocean waves or the cascading beauty of a waterfall without considering a...

  I remember the German toilets. For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why they manufactured them the way they did. From the toilets in the trains to the toilets in the older houses to the toilets in many...

  When Amrita Chavan boarded her plane in Mumbai, India, grief was the last thing on her mind. This was a new beginning. She was 19, bound for Canada, the first of her family to go abroad to pursue higher...

  Two ideas feature at the core of all quest stories: these are the Abyss and the World Journey. The Abyss is one of humanity’s oldest and most tenacious ideas that has been used for millennia to describe a place...

  If you’re like most people, you enjoy opening your dryer door and removing clothes, sheets and kitchen towels that have a fresh, clean scent. And on days you forgot to take out the garbage, you’d probably prefer to never...

  Anya Hindmarch launched her first company as a teenager. At 53, she is an award-winning fashion designer with five children, a successful business and a CBE. One of those types. Which is why it is cheering that the secret...

A global mental health crisis is on the horizon — dementia. It is a condition that can be caused by a number of diseases that gradually destroy nerve cells and damage the brain, resulting in a decline in cognitive functions...

    For years, I allowed my environment to dictate the terms of my life, and I didn’t believe I could produce any meaningful change. This is so often the case when we experience trauma: the pain and shock of...

    In a recent article in the Financial Times, Markham Heid shares with us a peculiar life crisis. At 41, he has built what many would regard as the good life: he has a family; he is healthy, productive...

  Dr. Morgaine Gaye sweeps a hand over her blonde faux-hawk and smiles at me through oversize purple-tinted glasses. If she doesn’t look the part of a self-proclaimed “food futurologist,” I don’t know who does. The future, she tells me...

  What’s cooking with us all right now during this amazing period of solar flares and quantum leaps into new levels of ourselves? 1. We are becoming less fixed as human beings and more creatable as embodied greater beings. Our...

  Recently, I had a reunion with some old university friends. After dinner and a bottle (or two) of wine, we slumped down together in front of the television. A few minutes later our host slid open his laptop and...