In 2016, a team of researchers at the Yale School of Public Health published a study with a quietly charming title, A Chapter a Day, and a finding that made a great many book lovers sit up. Following more than three and a half thousand older adults for over a decade, they found that the …
The old Greek kitchen was never designed as a wellness lab. It was built around what grew well, what kept people full, what stretched across a week, and what tasted good enough to repeat. The strange part is how many of those ordinary habits now line up with the things American nutritionists spend their time …
There is a quiet fear that shadows the idea of growing old alone, the fear of isolation, of days without a friendly face, of a life shrinking to four walls. It is a perfectly real concern, and one worth taking seriously. But it is also one that the physical and social fabric of much of …
I will admit I was skeptical. Living in Europe, I had gradually started to notice that the people around me seemed to use far less deodorant, and far less of everything else, than I was used to. No overpowering clouds of scent following people down the street, no elaborate arsenal of products, just a lighter, …
An American arriving in Spain often comes away with a strange first impression, that the people, for all their famous warmth, seem oddly blunt. Conversations feel louder, more direct, and less cushioned than back home. Strong opinions land without warning or apology. Someone interrupts mid-sentence. A request arrives without the soft padding of pleases and …
Most retirement stories are written for couples. Two pensions, two Social Security checks, one shared rent, expenses split down the middle. But a great many people arrive at retirement on their own, through divorce, widowhood, or simply a life lived solo, and for them the familiar advice does not quite fit. This is the story …
There is a small object that sits beside nearly every toilet in Europe, in homes, in cafés, in the very humblest bar and the very grandest apartment alike, that many American visitors notice, register as slightly odd, and then completely fail to understand. It is the toilet brush. In the United States, a toilet brush …
Tourists don’t order “bad” food in Italy. They order tourist food. That’s the difference. The dish might taste fine. It might even be great in a specific place. But in many cities, the most common tourist orders are basically a sign that you’re eating in a restaurant designed for you, not for Italians who live …
Spend a summer afternoon anywhere in Greece and you will notice that almost everyone is holding the same thing. Not a phone, not a book, but a tall, frosted glass of iced coffee, sweating gently in the heat, crowned with a layer of foam. Greeks do not merely drink cold coffee in summer, they live …
Among all the factors that researchers have connected to a longer, healthier life, one keeps surfacing that has nothing to do with diet, exercise, or medicine. It is the simple matter of having a reason to get out of bed in the morning, a sense of purpose. Study after study, across continents and cultures, has …
Watch two Italians in full conversational flight and you might reach for your phone to call for help. Voices rise, hands fly through the air, both people talk at once, faces flushing with feeling, chairs pushed back, and the whole thing looks, to an American, like a quarrel about to come to blows. Then, just …
They had planned the move together. The two of them had spent years imagining a later life somewhere warm and bright by the sea, poring over maps, saving carefully, picturing the mornings they would share. And then, before the plan could become real, her husband died, and she found herself at sixty-four holding a dream …