New year, new you? History’s best transformations

Advice on making better resolutions. Is it time to stop focusing on making changes, and specifically at the crux of every year when the most poignant transformations in our lives are inevitable? Matthew Sweet argues that evolution is written into our bodies as it is written into the culture and provides several intriguing tales to support that claim. “Commentary on contemporary drug culture – by legislators, police or users – lacks much of a historical dimension beyond the odd graph tracking deaths or government spending. It rarely acknowledges the big story of the last century or so: the disappearance of mind-altering substances from everyday life.”