Dr Amina Aitsi-Selmi MD PhD

Keep Calm and Carry On, the 1939 UK government poster said, as the country prepared for bombs to blitz cities. The 2.5 million copies weren’t distributed but appealing to British stiff upper lip stoicism was considered a wartime strategy... Today, the world’s superpower is unpredictable, extreme heat is literally causing potatoes to boil in the ground, and tech CEOs casually place the risk of human extinction in the next decade at 10%... As someone who works in the transforma

A few years ago, a study on solitude was published in Nature Scientific Reports exploring whether balancing alone time and social time increases overall wellbeing. The research landscape is split: some studies highlight the upsides of being alone (more autonomy, less pressure, space for creativity), while others point to the downsides (loneliness, isolation). In this study, it wasn’t simply the amount of alone time that predicted loneliness, but whether that amount was higher

On a morning walk, I noticed a robin on a bridge. It was delightfully unafraid. At the edge of the bridge, someone had built a group of stone people — some smiling, some not — huddled together. I stopped to look for a few moments. While imagining how they felt, I turned and noticed the robin had flown closer and was looking at me, waiting and gazing. It reversed the direction of attention. Who was looking at who? In that flash of an instant, it was clear I wasn’t the centre o