Note: Names have been changed for the sake of privacy. It’s been a decade since a letter arrived inviting me to the place that inspired Hogwarts. The messenger of good fortune was not an owl, but a dutiful postman. He crunched his way through the snow that frosty...

To tell this story, I have to tell you another one first. It’s about some rocks and a wise professor. ‘Can anyone tell me what this is?’ A boy in the back called out, ’It’s a mason jar, Sir’. ‘Yes! Exactly. A mason jar.’ The professor dipped his hand inside his breast...

Con-artists make up the bulk of the self-help genre. Their words offer us a sugar-high of hope. As that high fades, we see that we’ve pegged our promise for a better future on some magic beans. Self-hate or self-denial follows, as you either disavow the entire...

What a pickle. I know you’ve been searching for a cause to sink your teeth into. It’s a maddening task, trying to decide which fire to fight when you’re standing there with only one hose, and it looks like the world’s ablaze. Then there's the tragedy that follows...

Have you met this person? They can grab a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle, spill it onto the floor, and place all the pieces perfectly. No. Because that’s not how puzzles work. With experience and some luck, we can get faster, but we still have to go through the cognitive...

On weekends, The City of London is ripe for socially distanced strolling. On a typical workday, the population swells to half a million people before the tide goes out and the commuters flow back down ‘The Drain’ to return home, leaving a residue of 9,500 residences....

The request was in Italian, so we let our inquisitive smiles hang while our friend listened and translated the lady’s words into English. She was asking if we could repeat our performance from the top, so she could film it. The triad was born in 2016 in the seaside...

As a child, hearing the call of nature during the middle of the night felt life threatening. My imagination had decided that vampires were lurking in the dark, and not the sparkling sort that would have boys and girls swooning come the twilight of the new millennium,...

Jamie Miles' message to TEDxKazimierz 2016 is to ask whether lessons, wisdom and principles in our culture - from Plato to Pokémon - can inspire people to tackle one’s ambitions. Transcript Hello, during my time at Oxford, working at Google and running my YouTube...

The lady in the supermarché handed me my groceries. I beamed a smiled, 'Arigatou gozaimasu’. She stared at me, leaving me blushing as I made my exit. I was in Paris for work, and on my way to see some friends for the evening. I was picking up a few things from the...

There’s a fine line between creepy and compassionate. Turning up at your best friend’s house confessing your love for their partner is a bit much. Though on this occasion, that’s not what I did. I was on a train from Hiroshima to Tokyo. In the Friday rush to get home...

We all love the thrill of a good bit of vacuuming. It sits at the seductive intersection of being productive and offering instant gratification. Though I discovered that the admission of vacuuming as a hobby crosses some sort of social line. ‘How’s your lockdown...

Location Sydney, Australia 2017. Jamie has returned from his trip to the city centre. His backpack is swung over his shoulder, and he's dressed in swim shorts and a t-shirt. Jamie:Hey – are you awake?I have a quandaryI’m locked out of my friend’s flat in SydneyAnd...

Nowadays, why I cry is upside down. Like most children, sad things would move me to tears. I assume it’s because when we’re young, we’ve not grown accustomed to the world’s misfortune. Growing older, my settings have changed. Expecting the unfortunate, it can no...

I can pinpoint the exact moment that I learned to hate reading fiction. I was six years old and sitting in class, happy as a lamb inhaling the book I’d picked up. ‘Oh dear, what was this doing in there? You shouldn’t be reading this.’ My teacher lifted the book away...