Caring for a newborn is like having to carry a brim-full bowl of water the whole time.

You are forbidden to spill it or put it down, it can only be passed from one person to another. It’s hard work. It’s highly inconvenient.

Convenience is shaping the world around us…

The French have a saying, “If working hard makes you rich, donkeys would be covered in gold.”

French laziness was a recurring punchline in Emily in Paris, a pristine fish-out-of-water story that’s as airbrushed as a Vogue cover shot. It was a “wind-down” watch for many people at the height…

By one estimate, more than half of adults in the UK cannot touch their toes.

Babies and children can. A young child can fold at its hips and double over as flat as a pancake. Why are adults so inflexible?

Inflexibility is not some intrinsic biological process that overcomes us…

The Style and Substance of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations

There seem to be as many genres of ancient philosophy as there are works. …

Feminism

The word “incel” barely registered in public consciousness until 23 May 2014. That’s when Eliot Rodger, a twenty-two-year-old dropout, stabbed and shot to death six people and wounded more than a dozen others.

Halfway through his killing spree, Rodger uploaded a video on YouTube “Eliot Rodger’s Retribution” and emailed his…

The enduring question about philosophy came up in a discussion between the first century Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus and his students. What’s the most effective way to become a better person, a student asked, to learn philosophical theory or to practice a philosophical doctrine?

Musonius answered with an analogy. If…

Consider the number five. What’s the essence of that number? What lies behind it? What’s its substance? What does it consist of?

We can ask such questions of most things in the world — people, trees, spider webs, photographs and cardboard boxes — but numbers are pure quantity. Five is…

You see children suffering in a war zone on television. It’s terrible. What’s your first thought? Punish the people doing it to those kids? Drop bombs on them? Or do you wonder, how can we change the world so that such a war could never happen in the first place?

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