Over the last few days all of us in the West have been horrified by the spectacle of Islamic fanatics blowing away 10 of the staff of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, including its editor, Stephane Charbonnier and his police bodyguard. It shocks us precisely because we believe that one of our most fundamental freedoms, the right to free speech, is presently under threat by the most militant of political extremists, and that preserving it is a matter of fighting religious fundamentalists.

Last weekend I read an extraordinary article in the Sunday times about free speech which ran under the headline ‘Silenced: third of Britons feel they are denied free speech’

Something in me in constantly drawn to the idea of the group. When I wrote The Intention Experiment, I was less interested in the power of thought than the power of more than one set of thoughts.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year, the only one that celebrates the things in life that really matter: the power of family and connection, the sacred ritual of sharing plentiful food.

Last month I read Eban Alexander’s Proof of Heaven.  If you haven’t read it yet, it’s the story of a neuroscientist who experienced a week-long near death experience while in a death’s door coma after he’d developed bacterial meningitis.  While his relatives watched his lifeless body, he was fully conscious, traveling through different dimensions, ultimately to an extraordinary paradise. 

The first thing I noticed about Bryan was his laugh. I was a fellow editor in the shabby offices of a British publishing company in 1985 and, newly separated at the time from a three-year-old marriage, had very little to smile about.

Does the State reserve the right to have ultimate say over decisions about the medical treatment of children, if its views depart from those of the child’s parents?

I am thrilled to announce that we have won the fight to get What Doctors Don’t Tell You (WDDTY) back into Tesco.