Articles

Our words and pictures explore the connections between science, medicine, life and art. Dive into one no matter where in the world you are.

1-20
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Lungs webcomic by Rob Bidder (detail)
  • Comic

Lungs

The nose and lungs work in harmony, but what initiates breath?

Part of Body Squabbles

Photograph of an alcoholic spirit bottle on a colourful background.
  • Serial
Part1

Booze and bad behaviour

Our love of alcohol is like a party that’s lasted nine centuries. But there are signs that the demon drink is losing its appeal.

Part of Intoxicating Histories

Illustration of a person standing isolated to the left facing towards a crowd of people interacting on the right.
  • Essay

When everyday environments become anxious spaces

Social anxiety disorder isolates those who experience it. Part of the solution is to design public spaces with mental health in mind.
Photograph in black and white of a man sitting on a walkway balcony looking out at the Barbican Centre, London.
  • Essay

How I escaped my anxiety and depression through architecture and poetry

Social anxiety led him to introversion and silence. The brutalist architecture of London’s Barbican Estate inspired his liberation in poetry.

Part of Guest Edited by LionHeart

  • Essay

This is what changed my approach to interior design

An interior designer examines how emotions and cognitive activity influenced her designs, and argues that spaces reflect the people within.

Part of Guest Edited by LionHeart

  • Essay

We are from here, but not from here

Novelist JJ Bola on being a refugee with a British passport and what that placenessless means for a search for identity.

Part of Guest Edited by LionHeart

  • Essay

The female fight to reclaim our space in the mosque

Salma El-Wardany tells of the fight to reclaim spaces for women in the mosque and further afield.

Part of Guest Edited by LionHeart

  • Image gallery

How the city lives inside me

Artist Murugiah illustrates his urban environment and the feelings of being consumed, falling, squeezed and trapped.

Part of Guest Edited by LionHeart

Hands comic by Rob Bidder (detail)
  • Comic

Hands

The presence of your hands is preserved in the things they touch

Part of Body Squabbles

A protest by nurses holding a banner advocating health spending over military spending
  • Essay

Medics and the bomb

Would a nuclear attack on the UK overwhelm the NHS? At the height of the Cold War, despite government optimism, medics predicted doom.
Silhouette photo of person standing on door frame
  • Essay

Reassuring ghosts and haunted houses

Explore the perversely comforting appeal of a ghost in the house.
  • Image gallery

Death around the world in ten objects

Death is many things to many cultures: violent, holy, frightening, calm, disgusting... or just a gateway to another life.

Part of From Our Collections

Healing comic by Rob Bidder (detail)
  • Comic

Healing

Airing our wounds and cleaning our psyches are just some of the ways we heal ourselves, says illustrator Rob Bidder.

Part of Body Squabbles

Plaque reads: This memorial marks the final resting place of many of the 1,128 men, women and children of Auckland who died as a result of New Zealand's worst epidemic which peaked in November 1918, killing a total of 8,573 New Zealanders. At the bottom it says it was donated and erected in 1988.
  • Essay

Why the 1918 Spanish flu defied both memory and imagination

The Black Death, AIDS and Ebola outbreaks are part of our collective cultural memory, but the Spanish flu outbreak has not been.
Image of children playing on a raised walkway in Deptford, London
  • Book extract

"Above resistant pavements, I floated"

In this extract from ‘Living with Buildings and Walking with Ghosts’, walk with Iain Sinclair through the streets of London.
Art comic by Rob Bidder (detail)
  • Comic

Art

Good or bad, high or low, art has been around as long as human beings.

Part of Body Squabbles

Time lapse photograph of a city at night
  • Story

How light pollution affects our circadian rhythms

Too much of the wrong sort of light can send our natural cycles off-kilter – is city life messing with your circadian rhythm?
Photograph of a selection of cards from the sex worker card collection at Wellcome Collection, laid out on a wooden tabletop.
  • Story

Dial ‘S’ for sex

In pre-internet days, phone boxes became a patchwork of ‘tart cards’ offering sexual services. Find out about the clandestine world they hint at.

Part of From Our Collections

  • Comic

Food

What do you have on your plate – animal, mineral or vegetable?

Part of Body Squabbles

A person's eyes have been replaced with hypnotic spirals containing facebook and instagram 'likes'.
  • Serial
Part6

How do advertisers get inside our heads?

Vance Packard exposed techniques of mass manipulation developed by 1950s advertisers that are still at work today in the age of big data.

Part of The Hidden Persuaders

Part of The War of Nerves