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Thoreau and the True Cost of Things
Read more →: Thoreau and the True Cost of ThingsIn 1845 a man builds a small cabin on the shore of Walden Pond in Massachusetts and lives there for more than two years. His name is Henry David Thoreau, he is just over twenty-seven, and he is not running away from the world: he is running an experiment. He wants to find out what…
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A Healthier Plate: What the WHO Actually Says
Read more →: A Healthier Plate: What the WHO Actually SaysEvery week a new miracle diet appears, and we end up more confused than before. Yet the World Health Organization describes healthy eating in a surprisingly simple way, without banning anything “good”. Let’s look at the guidance in the WHO’s healthy diet fact sheet, updated in January 2026. The first number to remember is 400:…
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Kip Keino: Perseverance Is Not the Same as Stubbornness
Read more →: Kip Keino: Perseverance Is Not the Same as StubbornnessMexico City, 1968. In the 10,000 metres, Kenya’s Kip Keino is struck by severe abdominal pain, later attributed to gallbladder problems, and with two laps to go he collapses on the infield. For many people, that would be the end of the story. Days later, Keino lines up for the 1500 metres against American Jim…
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Three Ways of Being Friends: The Lesson of Aristotle
Read more →: Three Ways of Being Friends: The Lesson of AristotleThink about your friends. The colleague you help out and who helps you, the group you go out with on Saturday nights, the person you would call at three in the morning. They are all friendships, yet we feel they are not the same. More than two thousand years ago Aristotle tried to explain why,…
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The Right to Disconnect: the Law Exists, but the Culture Is Built Inside Companies
Read more →: The Right to Disconnect: the Law Exists, but the Culture Is Built Inside CompaniesIt’s 9:30 p.m. and an “urgent” email lands. Reply now or wait until morning? Laws, Eurofound data and good practice on the right to disconnect.
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Sharenting: Before We Post, Let’s Ask Our Children
Read more →: Sharenting: Before We Post, Let’s Ask Our ChildrenThe first day of school, the birthday cake, the Christmas play, a funny face at the dinner table. Sharing our children’s happy moments online is an affectionate, natural gesture: we want friends and relatives to share our joy. But have we ever asked what they think about it? This phenomenon has a name, sharenting, from…
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The Courage to Show Up: The Lesson of Eddie the Eagle
Read more →: The Courage to Show Up: The Lesson of Eddie the EagleHow many times have we given up on something just because we thought we weren’t good enough? A course, a job interview, a race, a karaoke song. We tell ourselves it’s better to wait until we’re ready, and meanwhile time goes by. The story of Michael Edwards, known to everyone as Eddie the Eagle, tells…
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Flo’s Week (21-26 September): Six Lessons to Take With You
Read more →: Flo’s Week (21-26 September): Six Lessons to Take With YouSunday is the right day to pause for a moment and look back at the road we have travelled. This week on the blog we talked about sport, children, words, sleep and philosophy. They may seem far apart, but read together they share a common thread: the results that matter come from small, repeated steps,…
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The School Where People Talked: The Lesson of Hypatia of Alexandria
Read more →: The School Where People Talked: The Lesson of Hypatia of AlexandriaIn fourth-century Alexandria, a city torn by mounting religious tension, there was a school where pagans and Christians sat in the same room to hear the same lesson. Leading it was a woman: Hypatia, a mathematician, astronomer and philosopher, who headed the city’s Neoplatonist school from around 400 CE. Hypatia taught Euclidean geometry, number theory,…
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A Steady Bedtime Beats a Few Extra Hours
Read more →: A Steady Bedtime Beats a Few Extra HoursEvery parent knows the dilemma: tonight it’s late, the child is tired, maybe it’s best to move bedtime half an hour earlier; but tomorrow there’s a football match and everyone will be late again anyway. One night one time, the next night another. It sounds like a minor detail, but a new study from Pennsylvania…
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The Track That Wasn’t There: Pietro Mennea’s Quiet Lesson
Read more →: The Track That Wasn’t There: Pietro Mennea’s Quiet LessonOnce there was a boy from Barletta who didn’t even have a running track to train on. He ran uphill through the streets of his town, along the seafront, on an old concrete velodrome. The first time his coach, Carlo Vittori, saw him, he simply thought the boy needed to eat more. That boy’s name…
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Ya’aburnee: The Word That Says “I Can’t Live Without You”
Read more →: Ya’aburnee: The Word That Says “I Can’t Live Without You”There’s an Arabic word that has no real translation in English, and perhaps that’s exactly why it says something our languages struggle to say as simply. It’s called ya’aburnee, and it literally means “may you bury me.” Said like that, it sounds almost dark. But whoever uses it isn’t talking about death: they’re making an…
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Kids Do Well If They Can: The Lesson of Ross Greene
Read more →: Kids Do Well If They Can: The Lesson of Ross GreeneHow many times have we looked at a child who is refusing to cooperate, or bursting into tears over what looks like a whim, and thought: “he’s doing it on purpose, he just wants to test me”? American psychologist Ross Greene offers an idea that turns this reading upside down: kids do well if they…
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Roger Bannister and the four-minute mile: big goals are reached in measurable steps
Read more →: Roger Bannister and the four-minute mile: big goals are reached in measurable stepsOn 6 May 1954, on the Iffley Road track in Oxford, Roger Bannister ran the mile in 3:59.4, the first human being under four minutes. He was not a full-time athlete: he was a medical student who trained in whatever time he could find, often during his lunch break. His feat was no improvisation. Bannister…
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The Slow Sunday: Why Weekend Rituals Are Good for Children
Read more →: The Slow Sunday: Why Weekend Rituals Are Good for ChildrenSaturday morning breakfast at the same time, with the same mugs. The Sunday walk, rain or shine. The board game after dinner, no television, no phones. These are small gestures repeated week after week, often without anyone truly planning them — and yet, according to psychological research, it’s precisely these rituals that build in children…
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You Don’t Have to Finish Alone: The Lesson of Derek Redmond
Read more →: You Don’t Have to Finish Alone: The Lesson of Derek RedmondBarcelona, 4 August 1992. Olympic 400m semifinal. Derek Redmond, a medal favourite, gets off to a strong start. Halfway through the race he feels a searing pain in his thigh: his hamstring has just torn. He falls, gets back up, and decides something no one expects: he wants to finish the race, even limping, even…
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Sonder: The Word for the Most Obvious (and Most Forgotten) Realization
Read more →: Sonder: The Word for the Most Obvious (and Most Forgotten) RealizationYou’re walking down the street, or sitting on a bus, and for a moment you look at the people around you: a stranger on the phone, a woman waiting for the light to change, a boy with headphones on. For most of the day, these people stay in the background of your life — extras,…
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Naming Emotions to Calm Them
Read more →: Naming Emotions to Calm ThemPsychiatrist and neuroscientist Daniel Siegel, a professor at UCLA and one of the pioneers of ‘interpersonal neurobiology,’ popularized a phrase that has become a cornerstone of mindful parenting: ‘name it to tame it.’ The idea is as simple as it is backed by neuroimaging evidence: when a child — though this applies to adults too…
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Types of Workplace Conflict: How to Recognize and Manage Them Without Splitting the Team
Read more →: Types of Workplace Conflict: How to Recognize and Manage Them Without Splitting the TeamJealousy, envy, perceived unfairness in workload distribution, colleagues acting like “prima donnas”: anyone leading a team knows that relational conflict rarely stays confined to two people. The most insidious risk for someone in a management role isn’t the initial spark itself, but its spread: uninvolved colleagues starting to “take sides,” subgroups polarizing, a climate that…
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One True Friend Is Worth More Than a Hundred Acquaintances
Read more →: One True Friend Is Worth More Than a Hundred AcquaintancesIn recent years, chronic loneliness has been described by several international health reports, including one from the World Health Organization, as a public health risk comparable to other well-known factors like smoking or a sedentary lifestyle. It isn’t about being physically alone, but about perceiving a lack of genuine connection — a condition that, according…
