Sam Radford

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 19:41:15 +0000

Lovely to head out and enjoy some autumnal sunshine this morning.

Sun, 26 Oct 2025 14:00:00 +0000

It was a somewhat wet and wild walk, but was just what I needed to blow away the cobwebs!

Noticing

Sat, 04 Oct 2025 08:22:09 +0000

I enjoyed this reminder from Oliver Burkeman’s newsletter this morning:

To generate ideas, get better at noticing. A truth I’d already been stumbling towards was clarified for me by Rob Bell, in his excellent audio course Something to Say: When it comes to amassing a stockpile of ideas to write or speak about, or otherwise to use in your creative work, by far the most important thing is just to get into the habit of noticing things and making some record of them. That’s it. Random quotes you encounter, quirky things people say or do, thoughts or feelings that occur to you, intriguing facts that cross your radar: practice a) realising that you’re encountering them, then b) making a scribbled note, taking a phone photo, anything at all to jog your memory of the moment. Perhaps this strikes you as blindingly obvious! But it’s starkly different from a widespread focus these days on building tricked-out systems for storing or connecting your notes, getting AI to synthesise new insights from them, or storing material you encounter for digesting later on. The way Bell describes it (and the way I’ve experienced it too) is that connections and insights about the material happen spontaneously, or when the work calls for them. But first of all, the subconscious needs feeding – and noticing is how you do that.

Fri, 03 Oct 2025 13:04:18 +0000

Loving the moody weather today.

Trust your soul

Fri, 03 Oct 2025 08:05:02 +0000

I’m reading Anam Cara by John O’Donohue. It’s a rich, thoughtful book that I’m exploring a few pages at a time. Today’s passage had this section, which I thought was a striking reminder about how to live well:

It is far more creative to work with the idea of mindfulness rather than with the idea of will. Too often people try to change their lives by using the will as a kind of hammer to beat their life into proper shape. The intellect identifies the goal of the program, and the will accordingly forces the life into that shape. This way of approaching the sacredness of one’s own presence is externalist and violent. It brings you falsely outside yourself, and you can spend years lost in the wildernesses of your own mechanical, spiritual programs. You can perish in a famine of your own making. If you work with a different rhythm, you will come easily and naturally home to yourself. Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you do, it will take you where you need to go, but more important it will teach you a kindness of rhythm in your journey. There are no general principles for this art of being. Yet the signature of this unique journey is inscribed deeply in each soul. If you attend to yourself and seek to come into your presence, you will find exactly the right rhythm for your own life. The senses are generous pathways that can bring you home.

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 08:58:05 +0000

Had my first ever visit to the Emirates to watch Arsenal Women at the weekend. The 1-1 draw was disappointing, but it was a great day out!

The idolatry of geography

Thu, 19 Jun 2025 08:19:18 +0000

I finished the chapter in John Philip Newell’s The Great Search on Rabindranath Tagore this morning. Tagore was an Indian writer, thinker, and artist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. I thought this was particularly profound:

It was the nationalism of Britain that had humiliated India, he said. This would not be resolved by yet another nationalism trying to counteract it. Tagore called this “the idolatry of Geography”, an absolutizing of boundaries that breeds suspicion and disrespect for those on the other side of the barriers we have artificially created.

Sadly, it feels like we’re entering a period of history where the idolatry of geography is reasserting itself.

What if I’m wrong?

Sun, 25 May 2025 09:05:04 +0000

There’s an article in this week’s FT Weekend on the “seven intellectual habits of the best thinkers”. All seven habits are sensible, but number six was the most powerful reminder: Always assume you might be wrong. The author of the article, Simon Kuper, adds:

Mediocre thinkers prefer to confirm their initial assumptions. This “confirmation bias” stops them reaching new or deeper insights. By contrast, Darwin was always composing arguments against his own theories.

How different would the world be—in particular, the world of social media debate—if we were all practicing this habit?

Imogen is 13!

Fri, 23 May 2025 11:14:31 +0000

As of today, we are the parents of not one but two teenagers. And, hard as it is to believe, our youngest daughter is now a teenager. Imogen’s thirteen years have tumbled past like a stream. I am so proud of her—who she is already, and who she is still becoming.

There is plenty of angst, as you’d expect, but there is also an abundance of love and laughter. I feel incredibly grateful to get to be her father. I don’t feel old enough to have 13- and 16-year-old daughters. I probably look it, though!

The pause between scrolls

Thu, 22 May 2025 20:11:38 +0000

My friend Ryan Offutt shared a compelling article with me today—a review by Erik J. Larson of a new book, Superbloom, by Nicholas Carr. The book explores how so-called “technologies of connection” erode what is poetic and profoundly human. Two quotes stood out. First:

The real world, with its quiet repetitions and constraints, offers something the digital cannot: room for contemplation. The possibility of meaning. Familiarity, unlike novelty, is the ground from which philosophy grows. It is where depth takes root.

And then:

The real world, with its resistances and repetitions, is not less because it is boring. It is more because it endures. That, he seems to say, is where attention belongs now: not in the stream, but in the pause between scrolls. Not in the feed, but in the place where nothing updates.

The whole review is both insightful and disquieting—and well worth reading in full for anyone wrestling with how digital life reshapes what it means to be human.

The loss of curiosity in pursuit of convenience

Wed, 21 May 2025 10:23:25 +0000

I read a thought-provoking article by Joan Westenberg this morning. She makes the case that many of the ways technology brings convenience to our lives come at the cost of our curiosity. If we don’t have to work as hard to get something, will we value it as much? And what do we miss out on by not having to go down blind alleys—the false starts and tangents that curiosity thrives on?

Here are two segments that especially stood out:

…in the real world, knowledge is earned through movement. Friction. Ambiguity. The old experience of falling into a stack of books at the library wasn’t efficient, but that was hardly the point. You’d go in looking for one answer and come out with five better questions. That’s how curiosity thrives: in the space between expected and unexpected, between map and territory.

And then:

We don’t need more information. We have oceans of it. What we need are tools that reintroduce friction in thoughtful ways. Interfaces that don’t just answer us, but provoke us. Not to make things harder for the sake of it—to remind us that adult curiosity is not a default state. It must be cultivated. And right now, the culture of convenience is starving it.

Golden ages thrive on openness

Wed, 07 May 2025 08:13:30 +0000

There’s a fascinating article in The Economist this week on how golden ages start and end. It’s inspired by a new book called Peak Human by Johan Norberg, a Swedish historian. The author argues that there is one thing the most successful societies had in common:

…the polities that outshone their peers did so because they were more open: to trade, to strangers and to ideas that discomfited the mighty. When they closed up again, they lost their shine.

The book was written before Donald Trump’s election and the current tariff and trade wars. Even so, the book’s point holds without needing to mention him explicitly.

“Mental Load – the Movie”

Sat, 03 May 2025 07:33:58 +0000

Caitlin Moran’s column in The Times this morning is a thought-provoking take on the reality show Stacey & Joe. Seeing beyond the lightness of the show, she observes that what the show should really be called is Mental Load – the Movie as it highlights the discrepancies in what men and women do—or don’t do—around the house. She concludes:

…I’ve started to see Stacey & Joe not as a joyful piece of primetime relaxation - but an important social document… in every episode, the disparity. There are two high-profile showbiz adults, with big careers, in the house — but only one knows how to use the washing machine, or thinks to pick their clothes off the floor. And only one is finding time for fishing trips with the lads.

Wed, 16 Apr 2025 20:00:55 +0000

My heart is not happy with me watching this #Arsenal game, but I’d have absolutely taken 0–0 at half time prior to kick off. Especially as we’ve look more like scoring (and should have scored that penalty).

Wed, 16 Apr 2025 07:24:33 +0000

People are saying #Arsenal should play it safe tonight, focus on protecting the 3–0 lead. That doesn’t sit right with me. We shouldn’t be careless, but our mindset should be to take this game by the jugular and kill it off. Go for it. Don’t invite them onto us by sitting back and playing safe.

Tue, 15 Apr 2025 09:50:02 +0000

🔗 Have we been thinking about ADHD all wrong?

This is a long—very long!—article, but well worth the time.

Screen usage and back and neck pain

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 07:08:46 +0000

This is definitely something I worry about with my girls.

🔗 My patients used to have back pain at 40. Now they’re in their 20s

Musculoskeletal problems of all kinds are increasing among children and teenagers — with NHS referrals among those aged 18 and under up 50 per cent since 2019. The recent wave of younger patients comprises the first people who had a mobile phone at secondary school and a smartphone in their early twenties. They gamed through their teens and went to university with a laptop. They fully embraced the idea of taking your laptop with you everywhere and working anywhere. They have sat leaning over their laptop and mobile phones in that curved C-shaped desk “office posture” for ten years before they got anywhere near an office. The effects of all this are incredibly stark.

Fri, 04 Apr 2025 08:02:17 +0000

“Trump’s latest approval rating dropped this week to just 43%.”

What does it say about America that nearly half the country is still on board with him? After everything?

I’m glad it’s dropping, but how is it still this high?!

Age and forgiveness

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 14:44:15 +0000

The older I get, the more it feels like I must forgive almost everything for not being perfect, or as I first wanted or needed it to be.

—Richard Rohr, The Tears of Things

Sun, 09 Mar 2025 19:48:09 +0000

📚 I gave All Our Shimmering Skies by Trent Dalton a solid shot—made it about 30% through—but it’s just not clicking for me. No matter how much I try, I can’t seem to get into it, so I’m moving on to something that grabs me more!

Sat, 08 Mar 2025 11:49:01 +0000

Enjoying a relaxing spa day at Champneys Springs in Leicestershire with Rachel. Spent a blissful hour and a half making my way through FT Weekend—there’s still something uniquely satisfying about a leisurely newspaper read on a weekend. Informative, engaging, and a great companion to a day of unwinding.

Wed, 26 Feb 2025 21:30:42 +0000

📚 Finished reading The Mystery Guest by Nita Prose last night. Very enjoyable! The socially awkward yet endearing main character works well. In the best sense of the word, it’s just a really nice book!

Wed, 26 Feb 2025 21:25:25 +0000

#Arsenal just not nearly threatening enough. Not enough guile. Not enough pace. Not enough potency. Disappointing. There’s reasons, but still…

Mon, 24 Feb 2025 12:54:34 +0000

Great to see that Apple’s AirPods Pro hearing aid feature is now available in the UK.

🔗 You can now use AirPods Pro as hearing aids in the UK

Sat, 22 Feb 2025 18:44:52 +0000

🏉 Didn’t really deserve that, and a really inconsistent, bitty performance, but not going to complain about finally beating Scotland again!