To the surprise of the average workaholic American, the French government legally forbade employees from eating lunch at their desks for years. But just recently, in an effort to contain the spread of COVID-19, France’s Labor Ministry changed its labor code to allow folks to consume their midday meals at their work stations. Specifically, employees found eating lunch at their desks will no longer be at risk of incurring a fine.

Marin County will become the second Bay Area community experimenting with a guaranteed income program designed to improve the fortunes of lower-income residents. The Marin program will provide $1,000 monthly grants to 125 low wage-earning women of color who are raising at least one child in Marin County. It is being run not by the county but by the non-profit Marin Community Foundation. However, the Marin County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to contribute $400,000 to the program.

Drawing on her work in UK prisons, Manchester Metropolitan University's Kirstine Szifiris explains how philosophy can provide prisoners with the sense of growth essential to being human.

Gaby Morse, 28, and her partner, Doug Marshall, 30, had been living the dream in London: relishing the creative chaos and thriving on the social life of the capital – and barely noticing that they could only afford to live in separate, tiny flats.

Night 'owls' may be twice as likely as morning 'larks' to underperform at work and to run a heightened risk of early retirement due to disability, finds research published online in the journal Occupational & Environmental Medicine.

One day a number of years ago, I was deep into a game of draughts on holiday with my daughter, then almost four, in the small library of a beachfront town. Her eye drifted to a nearby table, where a black-and-white board bristled with far more interesting figures (many a future chess master has been innocently drawn in by “horses” and “castles”).

A new project utilizes unused space inside affordable housing blocks to implement multistory vertical farming greenhouses. In an interview with Fast Company, Nona Yehia, CEO of Vertical Harvest, describes how "bringing the farm back to the city center can have a lot of benefits."

The ethical life means being good to ourselves, to others, and to the world. But how do you choose if these demands compete?

On Friday, the National Labor Relations Board rejected Amazon’s attempt to delay a union vote set to begin on Monday, February 8. For many, the online giant’s bid was seen as a stalling tactic, including a motion to demand votes take place in-person — a clear health risk, as the COVID-19 virus still poses a major threat in the United States and globally.

Nationwide lockdowns and school closings have broken routines and left ultra-Orthodox Jews time for questioning and self-discovery. Some found the examined life worth leaving.

432 Park, one of the wealthiest addresses in the world, faces some significant design problems, and other luxury high-rises may share its fate.

German psychologist, social theorist and philosopher Erich Fromm once said, “Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much.” Fromm, famous for running away from Nazi Germany and his work with critical theory, is a celebrated figure. But recently, German researchers Armin Falk and Thomas Graeber, took his quote to task, in a study titled, “Delayed negative effects of prosocial spending on happiness.”

Last summer, Donald Trump and Ben Carson, then Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, co-bylined an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal promising to “protect America’s suburbs," describing how they reversed policies that would allow for the creation of denser living structures in areas zoned only for single-family homes.

When a survey by the Pew Research Center showed that the proportion of Americans aged 18 to 29 living with their parents increased during the pandemic, you may have seen some dramatic headlines announcing that this number is higher than at any time. another time since the Great Depression. But the real story, from my point of view, is less alarming and even more interesting.

The idea that materialistic values can obstruct our path to happiness dates back hundreds of years. The Buddha encouraged a balance between asceticism and pleasure; early Christian monasticism preached spiritual transformation through simple living; philosopher Lao Tzu warned that if you chase after money, “your heart will never unclench.”

The most famous dysfunctional family of 1990s television enjoyed, by today’s standards, an almost dreamily secure existence.

One of the things this pandemic has taken from us is the summer blockbuster. The summer months came and went, and throughout that time movie-goers largely stayed home. For people like director Christopher Nolan, whose movie Tenet released in theaters after a delayed launch and performed below expectations, this is a sign of the end of cinema. Outside of the strict confines of Hollywood, though, small theaters and distributors are seeing new ways to show movies and create community. Along the way, they're redefining what it means to be movie theaters.

While the tiny-house movement is built on living freely, owners told Insider it's actually difficult to find a place to park legally.

Millions of households are behind on their rent and face a potential "fiscal cliff" early next year.

The idea that democracy and billionaires are incompatible might seem radical to conservatives. But to America’s founders, it seemed like common sense. In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville produced one of the earliest accounts of the American dream. In his famous study of the Jacksonian U.S., the Frenchman wrote that Americans possessed “the charm of anticipated success” — a ubiquitous optimism that he attributed to our country’s democratic character, and to the “general equality of condition” that prevailed among its “people.”