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Should we be optimistic or pessimistic about our future? This is a question even specialists are concerned with, and it cannot be answered easily. It is difficult to predict what the future holds.

The Spanish flu filled graves in almost every cemetery in the world. However, surprisingly, this tragedy had largely been forgotten until recently. A century later, the issue returned to the centre of attention, with specialists wondering if they can identify a pattern in the evolution of the COVID-19 health crisis based on the pandemic from a century ago.

The rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan is the result of a history marked by local political ambitions, regional rivalry, and conflicting geopolitical aspirations, in which the religious element cannot be ignored. Who are the Taliban? What motivates them? Who helps them? What did they do when they ruled over Afghanistan, and what could they do now that they are back in power?

Anyone who suffers from depression is likely to be fed up with advice from otherwise well-meaning friends who send them all sorts of online articles promising yet another secret to curing depression.

Plato may have been one of the first to think this way, but in modern sociology it was Walter Lippmann who made history with the idea that people do not have access to reality in all its complexity, but operate on images of that reality that they construct for themselves.

Back when I was a student, I heard this joke that, despite being funny, made me stop and think. It went something like this: a man starts hearing an "inner voice" telling him to sell his house, move to Bucharest, and use all the money to bet on a black 13 at roulette. The man complies without question because the voice spoke with...

Who do we listen to? Who is right? Who is balanced? How should we react to the risk of the new coronavirus?

The moment we distort a person’s intention, statement, gesture or action for our own personal gain we are using, consciously or unconsciously, the straw man argument − a frequent fallacy.

In America, conservative Protestants seem to divorce at least as often as people of other religious orientations. The idea has become an opportunity for finger-pointing and accusations of hypocrisy, but this is only proof that the statistics are misinterpreted.

Most of us want to trust. We assume that others possess our own level of honesty and goodwill. Sadly, this is neither a sensible nor a safe attitude anymore.

I am not an expert on the phenomenon of death. But like all of us, I have to live in its shadow, and watch the restlessness and greed it causes. The same gloomy reports that circle the planet also reach me. I feel especially conscious of this as COVID-19 claims its first victims in my country.

The TV-series Friends was recently reviewed in The New York Times as “enormously easy to watch”. This characteristic however does not make the show unique, nor can it account for its popularity today, more than 15 years since its final episode.

One of the reasons quoted most often by those who refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19 is the hypothesis that vaccines cause infertility.

What is the future? The question may seem trivial. But when you think about it, you understand better what St Augustine confessed: "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to a questioner, I do not know".

Social interactions and the tools that facilitate them are changing the world in ways that even now, after all this time, we cannot anticipate.