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How slums make people sick

A newly gentrified corner of Bermondsey leaves little clue to its less salubrious history. But a few intrepid writers recorded the details of existence in one of London’s most squalid slums.

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.

My mother, and metaphors of a pandemic

A pandemic. Two members of one family, living thousands of miles apart. And months of calls and messages that helped them grow closer.

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?

The secrets your teeth hold

Discover how innocuous-looking human teeth hold a wealth of hidden information about our diet, health and evolution.

The quest to breed gifted children

If you had the chance, would you choose a genius baby?

How to rehabilitate the concrete jungle

A huge concrete housing estate from the 1960s, now seen as an ecological mistake, is being drastically redeveloped, compounding the environmental errors. Owen Hatherley posits a more creative solution.

Do good mothers make good democracy?

To be psychologically fit for democracy, one distinguished paediatrician argued that you need a ‘good enough mother’ – and that we must acknowledge the bad side of our feelings.

Queer cafés and gay mylk

Holly Regan explores queer London spaces where the alternative – oat milk – is the norm for the communities gathering there.

Refugee health on a pound a day

Two refugees living a hand-to-mouth existence in the UK explain how trauma has affected their health, and how a little kindness is bringing them hope.

Tracing the roots of our fears and fixations

Kate Summerscale explores the history of our anxieties and compulsions, and the new phobias and manias that are always emerging.

How music opens the doors of memory and the mind

People living with dementia can often still listen, perform or move to music. What does this tell us about how memories are formed?

Is your job bad for your teeth?

Some surprising occupations pose hidden risks to dental health. Could your ivories be in particular peril?

Born different

For Chris North, being born intersex in the 1940s meant his many childhood hospital visits, tests and operations were not explained or discussed. As he reveals, doctors encouraged strict secrecy.

Divining the world through an artist’s almanac

Amanda Couch's artists book, 'Huwawa in the Everyday: an almanac' is inspired by the entrail like folds of a medieval folding and its function as a guide for astrological divinations linking the body, health and the heavens. Like the original almanac her work is designed to be carried out into the wider world.

Pum Dunbar’s living lessons

Read the ‘legends’ that give insight into Pum Dunbar’s creative process while producing her recent series of collages.

How the Peckham Experiment inspired my fiction

Find out how an unruly mass of archive material from a 1930s radical health centre has inspired brand new writing.

Titans in the landscape

Dancing for joy

Dancing is a mood enhancer, it increases social bonding and it improves creativity. Maybe you really can dance all your troubles away.

Losing touch

In these pandemic times, when touch has become taboo, Agnese Reginaldo explores the importance of physical contact to our wellbeing.

When depression is worse than physical illness

Chronic physical illnesses can be accompanied by troubling depressive symptoms. Elly Aylwin-Foster urges doctors to treat every aspect of her condition with the same care.

The fine line between collecting and hoarding

Being ‘a collector’ is often celebrated but being labelled ‘a hoarder’ can be humiliating, at best. Georgie Evans asks what makes one set of objects a collection and another a hoard.

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.

Daria Martin on ‘Sensorium Tests’ and ‘At the Threshold’

Thalidomide survivors in the 21st century

As thalidomide survivors enter their 60s, they look back on their lives and the legacy of the thalidomide catastrophe.