I rarely carry water and my bodily systems seem to run just fine

The pleasure of thinking about prehistoric people was never that of laying claim to land or heritage but of familiarity and strangeness

The bestselling author turns his attention to the mysteries of awareness and perception

The word ‘reason’, like ‘natural’ and ‘common sense’, often alerts us to a hidden agenda

In most situations, data promotes safety only when someone knows what to do about it

Choosing from a menu of deficits for your hair, skin and body is not freedom

The adults in my life had cause to doubt my word, because I did a lot of imagining and I wasn’t always sure what I’d made up

You’ll see very few helmets on cyclists in the Netherlands, Denmark and Belgium, certainly no laws mandating their use

When the technology of 19th-century prisons is sold to us as healthful, it’s worth asking some questions

Is it possible to care a little less about what other people think without a lessening of attention to how other people feel?

A friend in her 30s tells me her contemporaries are living in fear of perimenopause, which wasn’t even a word until recently

However awful the state of the world, more people are living longer, healthier and probably happier lives now than ever

I have deep faith in incompatible truths, in complexity and an instinctive resistance to childish tales of good and evil

The works of the 18th century author are about so much more than love, exploring female friendship, power struggles and survival in a patriarchal society

People tend to behave worse at home, among family, than with friends and colleagues