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44 results
  • Long read
  • Long read

Rehab centres and the ‘cure’ for addiction

| Guy StaggJess Nash

Guy Stagg takes us on a brief history of rehab centres and their approaches to addiction and recovery.

  • Article
  • Article

The epilepsy diagnosis

| Aparna NairTracy Satchwill

Epilepsy exists between the mind and body, something that Aparna Nair experienced for herself when she was diagnosed as a teenager.

  • Article
  • Article

Can our sexual desires be transformed?

| Charlie WilliamsSarah MarksDaniel Pick

In the 1950s, many psychiatrists thought that homosexuality could be reformed. One found that it couldn’t – and his discoveries led to a change in the law.

  • Article
  • Article

Mask, ritual and fertility

| Chimwemwe PhiriSteven Pocock

Today many of us learn about fertility, conception and pregnancy online. But that wasn’t always the way. Discover how masks and rituals played an important educational role.

  • Article
  • Article

Does mass media pave the way to fascism?

| Charlie WilliamsSarah MarksDaniel Pick

In the aftermath of World War II, psychoanalysts found the psychological roots of authoritarianism closer to home than was comfortable.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

Ayurveda: Knowledge for long life

| Aarathi Prasad

The story of medicine in India is rich and complex. Aarathi Prasad investigates how it came to be this way.

  • Article
  • Article

Acid and the sexual psychonauts

| Alex DymockBen MechenLeah Moyle

How LSD fuelled one woman’s journey of sexual self-discovery in the late 1950s.

  • Article
  • Article

Sacred cows and nutritional purity in India

| Apoorva SripathiCat O’Neil

Apoorva Sripathi explores the complex reasons behind India’s recent boom in all things dairy – beginning with a 1970s Western food-aid programme.

  • Article
  • Article

Can isolation lead to manipulation?

| Charlie WilliamsSarah MarksDaniel Pick

Military-funded researchers wanted to know if isolation techniques could facilitate brainwashing. One neuroscientist suggested that it might improve our own control over our minds.

  • Article
  • Article

How to talk to kids about race

| Pragya AgarwalJoelle Avelino

When her daughter decided blonde was best, a red flag went up for Pragya Agarwal. In this essay, the behavioural scientist discusses childhood development, race and representation.

  • Article
  • Article

Would you like to buy a unicorn?

| Cassidy Phillips

The story behind why somebody tried to sell Henry Wellcome a unicorn head in 1928.

  • Article
  • Article

Theriac: An ancient brand?

| Briony Hudson

The name theriac survived for around for two millennia as a pharmaceutical term. But a ‘brand’ name is not always a guarantee of quality.

  • Article
  • Article

How tuberculosis became a test case for eugenic theory

| Hannah CornishGergo Varga

A 19th-century collaboration that failed to prove how facial features could indicate the diseases people were most likely to suffer from became a significant stepping stone in the new ‘science’ of eugenics.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

You know the drill

| Richard Barnett

Richard Barnett opens wide the true meaning of a healthy mouth.

  • Article
  • Article

Going viral in the online anti-vaccine wars

| Alex Green

‘Anti-vaxxers’ are taking their message online using powerful images as well as words. But is the pro campaigners’ response any better?

  • Article
  • Article

Indian botanicals and heritage wars

| Sita Reddy

Colonial botanical texts, as astonishingly beautiful as they are, may cast very dark shadows.

  • Article
  • Article

Finding a cure for homesickness

| Gail TolleyMaria Rivans

While technology can mitigate some aspects of homesickness, other components of home are harder to replicate. Find out how 21st-century studies are helping homesickness sufferers find silver linings in their new situation.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

My important, ridiculous nose

| A L Kennedy

The nose is a much-maligned appendage, but it’s a powerful organ capable of invoking powerful emotions from past memories and sexual attraction.

  • Long read
  • Long read

Our complicated love affair with light

| Lauren ColleeSteven Pocock

Sunlight is essential, but our relationship with artificial light is less clear cut. It expands what’s possible; it also obscures and polices. In this long read, Lauren Collee pits light against night, and reveals the shady places in between.