Last week I saw the results of a 100-year-long Study of Happiness by Harvard University. What did the 36,475 days of data reveal? Just one, measly statistically significant correlation I’m afraid. I also watched a documentary that visited a small slum in Mumbai. A...

Jonah Berger was a puzzled man. He had spent nearly a decade studying what made people share information. He had proved scientifically exactly what made things ‘go viral’. They were always useful, visually prominent, made us laugh, cry or get angry, helped us look...

Today is a little riff on my usual theme. Nathan Milstein was one of the great musicians of the 20th Century. He was a violinist with a golden sound. One who never turned to power when elegance would solve the problem. He was a performer with a near-spiritual...

I rushed out of Old Street Station, 19 years old, late as usual. Up Clerkenwell Road next, violin banging on my back, then hard right into the grounds of St Luke’s church. I spent much of my free time there, watching orchestras rehearse, studying the conductors I’d...

In his brilliant book Stumbling Upon Happiness Daniel Gilbert discovers just how little we know about what makes us happy. When it comes to 'achieving our dreams', we're terrible at predicting how this will make us feel. And even worse at remembering those feelings...

It begins around 2 pm. The dust-baked lorries on the road to Monti Cristi - hand-rolled cigars, cotton plants, coffee beans, rice sacks - slow to a crawl. The fields of plantains and goats lining the road start to shimmer and glisten. And in the doorways of colourful...