Viktoria Hamma

On being both particle and wave — how science can be spiritual Today we are talking about the following statement: We are the double-slit experiment. We are both particle and wave. We are both matter and energy, both the light passing through and a collection of arranged particles. It sounds like poetry. And in one sense, it is. But underneath the poetry is a piece of real, replicated, hundred-year-old physics — an experiment so unsettling that the people who ran it spent the rest of their...

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." It's one of the first things many of us were taught as children but I'm not sure I agree. Because words don't break like bones do, and then heal. Words stay. They settle into the subconscious mind, quietly, and they keep shaping how we feel about ourselves and our bodies for years — sometimes for a lifetime. Broken bones knit back together in six weeks. A sentence someone said to you when you were seven can still be running...

There is a version of you who is roughly four years old, and they are still making decisions on your behalf. Not metaphorically. You already know this if you have ever apologised for something that was not your fault, before you consciously registered you were doing it. If your chest has ever tightened at a particular tone of voice. If you have found yourself, well into adulthood, working for the approval of someone whose approval you do not want and do not need. You did not decide to do any...