Like billions of people, I use caffeine. But there is a glaring double standard in the drugs we stigmatise or celebrate ...

Many think the answer is obvious: we ought to cut immoral people out of our lives. But that isn’t necessarily the best option ...

Ever feel like a word or person you just learned about has been showing up repeatedly? There’s a term for that ...

Moved by mystical visions and the French Revolution, William Blake crafted a radical blueprint for living with purpose ...

A child squirms in her chair as she faces a single marshmallow. She’s been told that if she can hold out for a little while – resist the temptation to take the treat – she’ll be rewarded with two ...

Have you ever experienced a space that made you feel uneasy or stressed? Perhaps it was a noisy and crowded shopping mall, with its neon signs, patterned tilework and boldly painted walls in franchise ...

Aphantasia veils the past and the future from the mind’s eye. That can be a gift to philosophers like Derek Parfit and me There’s an early memory from my childhood, representative of its peak ...

What if you couldn’t picture anything in your mind – no sunset, no loved one’s face, not even an apple? This inability to ‘see’ mental images is known as aphantasia, and although it affects roughly 3 ...

Honesty has fallen out of fashion, yet it is essential to self-improvement. How can we cultivate this neglected virtue? There is little controversy that honesty is a virtue. It is an excellence of ...

A few years ago, Jessica Pan – a young journalist living in London and with the world at her feet – found herself at a low point. Life had become predictable and samey. ‘I realised that I was using ...

Like all other animals, our species evolved by gradual processes of natural selection that equipped us to survive and reproduce within a certain environmental niche. Unlike other animals, however, our ...