Breathe deep: An interview on vaping with Professor Renee Bittoun
Our brain develops, unfortunately, a quirky response to nicotine. It shouldn’t really be there. It shouldn’t be in your breath, let alone you reacting to it, let alone you smoking anything or vaping anything. We shouldn’t even be near it.
COVID-19: The pandemic that transforms us into different people
In Europe, one in twenty people suffer from depression, and one in four will experience depression during their lifetime. In the United States, major depressive disorder affects about five percent of the population.
Shopping and the perfect world
“Hi, I’m Rebecca, and I’m a shopaholic!” This line, along with the character, though from a comedy released in 2009, is cut from the fabric of everyday reality. Shopping has become an indispensable appendage of modern life. However, when it ceases to be just an accessory to a much more complex existence and moves to the centre of an individual’s focus, the leap...
An impossible inventory of the most widespread fake news about COVID-19
The epidemic of false information in this worldwide pandemic is even more infectious than the virus itself. Fortunately, there is a vaccine for this epidemic of fake news: quality information and information filters. However, not everyone has been vaccinated. Here is an immunization effort.
Silence of the Lamb
Slapped, spat in the face, insulted, falsely accused, lashed, ridiculed with a crown of thorns, passed from judge to judge and booed by the crowd, the Son of God chose the most unusual form of defence. Silence.
The fight against Alzheimer’s: a fight for the moment
"It isn't the man I married. It isn't the man I knew." This is how Sabina Shalom, whose husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, begins her confession. The woman, who has reached a respectable age, says that it all started with some serious quarrels between her and her husband: "Papers were lost, bills were not getting paid."
Tears, war, and tulips: a day among the Ukrainian refugees at the Siret Customs Point
The wind is blowing and it is snowing at the Siret Customs Point. Refugee groups stream by, women with children clinging to them, and the words of a little girl from another war, concluded almost eight decades ago, keep running through my mind: “And this was imprinted in my mind, that when my father is not home, it is war.”
What could light up our hope in times of war?
We know how to do normal things in peacetime, but how do we keep our life going and maintain our hope in times of war?
The need for certainty
As we look at ourselves from the outside, taking our life seriously becomes difficult. This loss of confidence, as well as the attempt to regain it, are both matters related to the meaning of life. – Thomas Nagel, View from Nowhere
Children’s finances
Mel Rees, a contemporary Christian author, observed that “money [...] is life [...] in a tangible form.” He reasoned that life is “an expenditure of time and talent,” while money is “the result of the use of time and talent.”
Friendship, through the eyes of a grandparent
In the search for deeper meanings of interpersonal relationships, we have discovered the life stories of simple, dignified people, willing to share from the abundance of their joy. Thus, these are the seasons of friendship, through the eyes of special grandparents.
Stories for adults and hidden messages in children’s fairy tales
Children's books and cartoons contain more than just life lessons and morals such as "good always triumphs over evil". Some have political, social, and historical connotations, while others contain subliminal messages with sexual, discriminatory, or even malicious undertones.
In the world of “what if” | Why we are drawn to counterfactual thinking
The ability to imagine alternatives to events that have already occurred distinguishes humans from other creatures and machines—artificial intelligence has not yet succeeded in creating a device that can devise counterfactual scenarios. The fact that we can travel in an imaginary time and rewrite our actions and their outcomes can prove to be an advantage or can lead to dysfunctional emotional and cognitive...
The role of mindfulness meditation in boosting our hopes
I used to be among those who have a great aversion to the recommendation to "live in the present," firmly convinced that, in fact, this advice is nonsense. That, in reality, every moment we enjoy right now, is actually a millisecond behind, therefore, it is still not the coveted living in the present.
How to critically evaluate a text
Almost a century ago, writer Virginia Woolf noticed people’s tendency to approach books “with clouded and divided minds, asking fiction to be true, poetry to be false, biographies to be flattering and history to chime with prejudices.”


























