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In some African communities, during the harsh dry season when food becomes scarce and mothers can no longer feed all their children, a tragic custom persists: some children are left in open-air enclosures to die of starvation.

“God's viewpoint is sometimes different from ours—so different that we could not even guess at it unless He had given us a Book which tells us such things.”[1](Corrie ten Boom)

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.

For many people, the New Year is the catalyst for making changes they didn't have time or energy for in the previous year. On 1 January, the list of resolutions grows promisingly long, but keeping them can become a real ordeal in the tangle of daily problems and deadlines. Statistics show that even before the month of snowdrops, many of the commitments made...

Many doomsayers have “cried wolf” when it comes to the end of the world. Does that mean it’s not going to happen at all?

"Most of us now living have a chance for personal, physical immortality." This is the sentence French biologist and philosopher Jean Rostand (son of the writer Edmond de Rostand) used to begin the preface of a book on cryonics, The Prospect of Immortality, by the physics professor and science fiction writer Robert C. W. Ettinger.

When I was 20, my spiritual life felt like an exam where I had been given a topic I hadn’t prepared for.

In grief, acceptance and rebellion intertwine, and meaning emerges from tears, faith, and the hope that death does not have the last word.

Looking back, I realize how the ferocious world beneath the heavens is tamed, at crucial moments, through communication on that biblical Ladder of Jacob.

Ultra-rich Silicon Valley tech magnate Bryan Johnson has been regularly having transfusions of his own son’s blood plasma in an effort to live longer. The treatments are expensive and are essentially still being trialled.

The stakes are high when it comes to homosexuality, promiscuity, alcoholism, violence, and the like. Previously seen as a result of environmental influence and moral choice, they have now become a genetical given.

On August 28, 2011, when the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial was opened to the public in Washington D.C., 48 years had passed since the famous “I have a dream” speech by the young African-American Baptist pastor.

Paris, November 13, 2015. A European capital is struck cruelly by fundamentalists who justify their crimes in the name of something sacred—an event that shocked the entire world. It was neither the first nor, unfortunately, the last tragedy whose impact on the public has become a subject of analysis.

Even if half of us refer to creativity as a rare trait that only the other half has, in reality, creativity is much like a muscle: the more we use it, the more creative we become.

The factors behind successful ageing have been the subject of research for decades, but the subjective side of ageing still needs to be explored. Because successful ageing is more than an attempt to defy age and its frailties, it is a process in which, in addition to losses, benefits need to be taken into account—not just those delivered by good genetics or a...