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39 results
  • 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.

  • 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

“Everybody desires a degree of independence”

| Jamie HaleBenjamin Gilbert

I’m 26, and building a network of friends and my career. Unlike most people my age, I’m entirely dependent on carers to achieve this.

  • 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.

  • Article
  • Article

Abandoning daydreams of a life without diabetes

| Daisy Watson ShawTony Pickering

After years of longing for a cure for her type 1 diabetes, Daisy Watson Shaw, partly due to medical advances in managing the condition, has reached a state of acceptance. Her wishes now are for greater understanding.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

The history of brainwashing

| Daniel PickSteven Pocock

Is it possible to control what other people think? In this abridged extract from his book ‘Brainwashed’, psychoanalyst and historian Daniel Pick offers us a new history of thought control.

  • Article
  • Article

Fees, funding and the NHS

| Cal Flyn

In the 1950s, dramatic political battles over NHS charges brought down a government. But public confidence in the service still grew.

  • Article
  • Article

The seizure dog

| Aparna NairTracy Satchwill

Aparna Nair's dog Charlie made her feel safe in the world. His uncanny ability to sense when she was about to experience a seizure also gave her an unexpected ally in her struggles with epilepsy.

  • Article
  • Article

Cowpox, Covid-19 and Jenner’s vaccination legacy

| Owen GowerSteven Pocock

The well-known story of vaccination pioneer Edward Jenner has at its heart his drive to make vaccines free of charge and available to all. Now his principles extend to the global campaign for a people’s patent-free vaccine for Covid-19.

  • 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

Yoga adapts to time and place

| Lalita Kaplish

A yoga teacher in 1930s India inspired today’s transnational practice with his spectacular fusion of tradition and innovation.

  • Article
  • Article

The ‘undesirable epileptic’

| Aparna NairTracy Satchwill

Abused in her marriage for being 'a sick woman', Aparna Nair looked to history to make sense of the response to her epilepsy. She discovered how centuries of fear and discrimination were often endorsed by science and legislation.

  • Article
  • Article

Why are women more willing donors than men?

| Hannah PartosThomas S G Farnetti

Why is there a gender imbalance when it comes to the donation of organs, blood and tissue, and what can be done about it?

  • Article
  • Article

An insider’s view of Play Well

| Gwendolyn SmithSteven Pocock

Curator Shamita Sharmacharja offers behind-the-scenes insights into an exhibition about the serious business of play.