Thrive

The other day I went out for lunch. Once upon a time (in what I’ve come to refer to as the Before Times) that would have been an unremarkable statement. Lunches, coffees, dinners – these were all part of my working and personal life, a part I enjoyed very much. I don’t think I realised how much I’d missed it, though, until I went out for that lunch. Life has become quite closed in lately, hasn’t it? Even though we can go out, many of us are not. At lunch we discussed how we’ve forgotten how to get dressed to go out, how excited I was to wear “proper” shoes and put on lipstick. The banter with our server felt fun and special, and eating food I hadn’t cooked myself was…

An American study suggests that the tuatara, New Zealand’s much-loved taonga reptile species, may have evolved as long as 190 million years ago, and has hardly changed since. The researchers say today’s tuatara has a similar skeletal structure and jaw to fossils of a just discovered species of ancient sphenodontian – the tuatara’s reptile whānau – in Arizona, dating all the way back to the Early Jurassic period. EVEN MILD COVID-19 CAN HARM THE BRAIN In one of the biggest Covid-19 brain-imaging studies yet, UK researchers compared brain scans from 785 people aged 51 to 81 before and after mostly mild Covid infection with brain scans from people who hadn’t had Covid. They found “significant, deleterious” long-term effects in the people who’d been infected, including changes in parts of the brain that…

A father’s hand is placed on the train window. He is mirroring his wife and child, their bodies and futures separated by a thin glass sheet. In just moments his family will pull away on their search for safety while he will remain to fight for his homeland. A family flee their home, ducking for cover as bombs rain down in the corner of the camera frame. A colourful unicorn is centred on the screen, clutched in the hands of a young child. My daughter has one not dissimilar. In neighbouring Romania, lines of men queue at a train station, readying themselves to join their compatriots. These aren’t trained soldiers. They are accountants, builders, chefs, architects and data analysts. Regular men, like the ones you live with or work alongside, like the…

Imagine an organic garden where honeybees share a flight path with vintage warbirds and recreational aircraft circling overhead. It’s all in a day’s work at Hamlin Road Organic Farm, which is situated just a bunny hop, skip and jump from Ardmore Airport in South Auckland. The airfield is the busiest in New Zealand – half of the country’s trainee pilots earn their wings there – but just across the road, no one pays any attention to the droning engines, least of all the bees navigating through the citrus trees and clumps of garlic chives. Hamlin Road’s passionate team of eight gardeners – Arielle, Clint, Frederick, Jess, Justine, Manny, Mark and “team coach” Sarah Hewitt – are all happiest keeping their hands in the soil, rather than their heads in the clouds.…

Research has revealed startling gender-based differences in the medical management of pain. Women are taken less seriously when they report pain, treated less aggressively for pain, and are more likely to have their pain explained away as psychological. So why does the gender pain gap exist? And what can be done about it? Jodie was in her early twenties when she began experiencing frequent and intense headaches. Seeking an answer to her sudden head pain, Jodie saw multiple doctors and was repeatedly told her headaches were normal. After meeting her husband and having children, Jodie also began experiencing severe fatigue. “I would go to the doctors; they would do blood tests and say, ‘There’s nothing’s wrong’ and I just got worse and worse,” recalls Jodie. Over the years, Jodie’s headaches became even…

As our first Covid lockdown approached, many New Zealanders put vegetable gardening on their lockdown project list, and I did too. When I discovered that our local seed and seedling providers had completely sold out, I became uneasy. The upside was that it meant people were using this time to start growing food. The downside was the scary realisation that we don’t have local seed sovereignty. I was shocked to discover that a few global corporations hold most of the power over our planet’s seeds. I had always wanted to be part of a community garden, but it took the threat of being prevented from growing food to mobilise me. I started researching community gardens online, and was excited to learn how popular they are becoming worldwide – it turns out, localisation…