Analysis

Raising a child is not easy at all. Raising someone else’s child is even harder. But raising six children who are not your own, giving up your life, sounds crazy to most of us.

There is no time like the end of the year that stirs our interest in self-improvement. Many of us are thinking of the new beginnings, lofty goals and big dreams we want to chase after, optimistic that the next year will be different to the last. Yet there is one thing we would do well to take in our stride before we enter...

History doesn't resemble Hollywood films. However self-evident this statement may be, it still comes as at least a partial surprise to many who imagine that history, while not quite like the movies, is still pretty close to the dramatic depictions.

Shamrocks, leprechauns and green beer: these are the images we associate with the patron saint of Ireland and the day named after him. On March 17 every year, people around the world gather to celebrate Irish culture and the saint who supposedly espouses it.

I believe that every Eastern European has, at some point, realised when meeting a Westerner that their interaction could be improved if they were more open themselves, as the foreigner usually is.

It is said that it takes a village to raise a child. It's folk wisdom acknowledging that the development of a person requires the contribution of the whole community. What value does the community add, especially when the community in question is the scientific one?

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Europe was hit hard by several disasters, the proportions of which are difficult to imagine today.

As strange as this question may seem, it is also difficult and has consequences that are not at all negligible. Even if it is not always phrased like this, or perhaps not even spoken out loud, this question arises in every home.

Problem gambling in Australia and New Zealand is an issue seldom talked about, but we ignore it at our peril.

"To feel that you have meaning is to feel immortal," psychology professor and author Clay Routledge wrote in 2014. Is this the only kind of immortality we will ever have?

There’s a 1995 clip from The David Letterman Show where Letterman is interviewing Bill Gates. Gates excitedly explains how the internet will change the future. Letterman is sceptical. He mentions a baseball game that had recently been broadcast live on the internet. “Does radio ring any bells?” he quips sarcastically, to laughter from his audience.

I have always loved family photographs, especially old ones. They allow you to wander freely through the stories of times and lives that are little known yet also familiar.

Fairy tales begin with the words "Once upon a time", which automatically send us into a timeless world of fantasy, imagination, and daydreaming.

Immersed in contemplation, I eagerly remove the gnarled, wet roots. As my thoughts drew closer to the tenuous yet vigorous spring beneath them, a word intersected my search like an intense beam of light. Harmony. I felt as if the tips of my thoughts had reached the source of the experience I was trying to decipher—happiness.

Europe is more divided than ever. What does that mean for our reading of biblical prophecy?