Qualia Reed

I use a lot of storytelling and metaphors in my work. This is part of who I am, and is partly because it comes natural to me. It’s why I write novels for fun in my spare time. There’s always something powerful for me, the way humans interact with stories and storytelling. It’s one of, if not our oldest art forms. It’s also more than that. Storytelling is a way of communicating ideas to each other when the plain facts themselves may not speak loudly enough. It’s why science needs art. So many...

Laughter is the best medicine I always try and bring humour to therapy when appropriate, and bringing laughs to my friends and family is one of my joys in life. Reflecting on that this week has sent me on a bit of a deep dive on the history of humans and humour. It wasn't a big shock that I soon saw that humour has always been a part of the human experience. One of the most interesting things I learned in this deep dive was that the world’s oldest known joke is from ancient Sumer, dating back...

Let’s say it plainly; loss sucks. It’s a unique kind of pain that we feel when a part of our story, our identity, slips away from us. This can occur when we lose a job, a relationship ends, or when someone dies. That pain, though totally subjective, is one of the universally human parts of our existence here on Earth. We even see animals mourning the loss of their own. Whatever the subjective uniqueness to the loss we face, music and art have helped us, perhaps since the very beginning of our...