Science is, rightly, searching for drugs to arrest ageing or to slow the advance of dementia. But the evidence suggests that many of the most powerful factors determining how you age come from what you do, and what you do with others: whether you work, whether you play music, whether you have regular visitors.

In every capitalist economy there are anti-capitalist movements, activists, and even political parties; in a way, that there are no longer anti-democratic movements, activists, and parties.

Over 5,000 years, states have made surprisingly consistent claims about their duties. They have promised to protect people from threats; promote their welfare; deliver justice and also, perhaps less obviously, uphold truth - originally truths about the cosmos, and more recently truths drawn from reason and knowledge.

The most important innovators often don't need any technologies - just imagination and acute sensitivity to people's needs.

Societies advance through innovation every bit as much as economies do.

The longer you commute the less happy you're likely to be.

Advisers who think that they are very clever while all around them are a bit thick, and that all the problems of the world would be solved if the thick listened to the clever, are liable to be disappointed.