Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of

Happiness Podcast.

For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want

to share that science with you.

And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley.

I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that

calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds.

My mother always insisted that I was an English Catholic, not an Irish Catholic.

Did it really matter?

Find out.

Hello. I always did my level best to respect my friend Anne's Jewish sensibilities.

I mean I remembered the major festivals, Yom Kippur and Hanukkah and

refrain from ordering black pudding in restaurants and hesitating before tending any opinions on Zionism.

But I do vividly remember a singular lapse.

My Jewish friend Anne prided it herself on her Manchester origins and

she'd applied for a senior administrative job in that city and she'd been

rejected. It was the chairman she complained. I got the sense that he was

well anti-Semitic. Well I pretty crassly decided that some irony, some irony might

lift her mood. Well you can't be too surprised at that I said

after all as some bigots say your lot did kill Christ she fixed me with a

steely gaze no No, she's hurt definitively. That was the Leeds Jews.

Well it was a joke, a good joke, a joke that neatly drew attention to the complexity of ethnic, religious identity, a joke that reminded me of my mother's insistence that although we were Catholics, we were not Irish Catholics, but English Catholics. Such issues of identification pose

...