Historian Josephine Quinn is the first woman to lead the Ancient History department at the University of Cambridge. She is also an honorary member of Wadham College and an emeritus fellow at Worcester College, both at the University of Oxford. Quinn is a well-known expert on the ancient Mediterranean, and her work questions many traditional ideas about identity, culture, and civilization.

With a global and thoughtful approach, Quinn shows that ancient societies were much more connected than we usually think. In her book In Search of the Phoenicians (2018), she challenges the idea that the Phoenicians were one united group of sailors and traders. Instead, she explains that this identity was created much later for political or cultural reasons. Her latest book, How the World Made the West (2024), looks again at where the idea of “the West” comes from. She argues that it was not created by just Greece and Rome, but by many different cultures through trade, migration, and mixing of ideas.

“The real problem is the idea of ‘civilizations,’” Quinn says. “That’s what we should stop teaching. The word ‘civilizations,’ as we use it today, only started in 19th-century Europe, around the same time people started talking about ‘the West.’ It’s easier to treat people badly if you believe they are totally different from you, if you can put them in a separate category. But humans have always wanted to connect with each other. If we stop thinking in terms of separate civilizations, we can see history more clearly.”

Quinn encourages us to look at history as a conversation between people and cultures, not just a series of isolated empires or nations. In the end, her work reminds us that both the past and the present are built on human connections.

El mito de la media naranja, las relaciones tóxicas o el síndrome de Wendy y Peter pan. Son algunos de los temas que aborda, en un nuevo episodio de 'Aprendemos Juntos 2030', el psicólogo Luis Muiño para “dejar de romantizar” el amor romántico: “El amor romántico es como un hechizo. Nos engaña con una visión idealizada del otro”. Y añade: “Cuando el hechizo se rompe, a menudo descubrimos que nuestra pareja es alguien diferente al que creíamos ver”.

Según afirma, el 90% de las personas que acuden a terapia, lo hacen a causa del amor. O, matiza, "a causa de una visión distorsionada de lo que es el amor”. Muiño nos anima a renovar la manera en que concebimos la pareja y aboga por aprender a construir amores que no estén basados en la idealización y en la posesión, sino en "un amor más libre y más sano: un amor posromántico”, concluye.

Luis Muiño es un psicoterapeuta y divulgador español dedicado a promover la salud mental y el bienestar emocional. Su trabajo combina la divulgación científica con acciones de impacto social. Sus ideas se caracterizan por su pragmatismo, profundo conocimiento de las conductas humanas y una forma original de comunicar, cualidades por las que obtuvo el premio de periodismo del Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Madrid. A lo largo de su carrera, ha colaborado en diversos programas, como ‘El factor humano’ en Radio Nacional de España, y ha escrito en publicaciones como ‘Muy Interesante’, ‘El País’ y ‘La Vanguardia’. Además, es autor de varios libros, entre los que destacan ‘La trampa del amor’ y ‘Entiende tu mente’, este último inspirado en su popular podcast del mismo nombre, uno de los más buscados en español.