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169 results
  • Podcast
  • Podcast

Splendid isolation

| Mark ThomasHelen AtkinsonNicolas KentSusan McNicholasFranklyn Rodgers

In episode four of his lockdown podcast, comedian Mark Thomas considers the impact isolation is having on him and his mum, and on the health workers he chats to every night.

  • Photo story
  • Photo story

’No you’re not’ – a portrait of autistic women

| Rosie Barnes

In this sensitive series of portraits and interviews, photographer Rosie Barnes acknowledges the voices and experiences of autistic women.

  • Photo story
  • Photo story

Generation portraits

| Julian Germain

Photographer Julian Germain’s major project focusing on portraits of multi-generational families came to a sudden halt during the various Covid-19 lockdowns. Here families celebrate coming together again in words and images.

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

Fraught fertility and making royal babies

| Estelle Paranque

Producing a male heir has been seen for centuries as a queen’s most important role. Here Estelle Paranque explores the lives of four queens whose route to royal motherhood was far from smooth.

  • Article
  • Article

Meredith Wadman’s prescription for writing

| Jennifer Trent Staves

The Wellcome Book Prize shortlisted author of ‘The Vaccine Race’ answers five questions on health, inspiration and storytelling.

  • 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

How I escaped my anxiety and depression through architecture and poetry

| Rhael ‘LionHeart’ CapeThomas S G Farnetti

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

  • Article
  • Article

The empty bungalow

| Georgie EvansNicole Coffield

Grandma’s unsteady piles of stuff have been dismantled and dispersed. From an empty bungalow, Georgie Evans makes a plea for hoarding behaviour to be better understood.

  • Photo story
  • Photo story

The last glass-eye maker in Britain

| Carmel KingHelen Babbs

Meet Jost Haas – the UK’s last artificial-eye maker working exclusively with glass.

  • Article
  • Article

How architecture builds a profession of stress

| Kristin Hohenadel

Architects might produce buildings that enhance our health, but at what cost? Kristin Hohenadel explores architecture’s pressurised and stressful culture.

  • Article
  • Article

The poetic language of health

| James MorlandPippa Dyrlaga

When his doctors could only offer phone consultations, James Morland turned to poetry to make sense of the medical terms describing his symptoms and test results.

  • Article
  • Article

Mixed heritage lesbian couples and fertility treatment

| Paula AkpanMiranda Forrester

For a lesbian couple who want to share their different cultural heritages with their child, fertility treatment can get very complicated.

  • Article
  • Article

Surviving sex work on the streets

| CharmaineJessa Fairbrother

In care at four, on the streets at nine, Charmaine has had a traumatic journey to reach life as it is now: no drugs, no sex work, looking after her mum, and enjoying her grandchildren. Here she writes honestly about her past.

  • 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

Unmasking neurodivergent parenthood

| Erin BeestonSteve Cross

Observing her eldest child’s neurodivergent traits and supporting his education set Erin Beeston wondering about her own ‘odd’ behaviour in childhood, and whether adult diagnosis could be empowering.

  • Article
  • Article

What is air, and how do we know?

| Hasok ChangTracy Satchwill

Watching bubbles in fermenting beer led 18th-century scientist Joseph Priestley to invent sparkling water – and to discover that different gases make up the air we breathe.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

How to stay together while keeping apart

| Vivek H MurthyKathleen Arundell

Vivek Murthy explores how we can keep physically distant while staying emotionally connected.

  • Article
  • Article

Medics and the bomb

| Taras Young

Would a nuclear attack on the UK overwhelm the NHS? At the height of the Cold War, despite government optimism, medics predicted doom.

  • Article
  • Article

Is shoegaze the loneliest genre of music?

| Christine Ro

Christine Ro explores the connection between shyness and shoegaze.

  • Article
  • Article

The amateur silversmith

| Geraldine Holden

It started as hobby and soon became a passion. Geraldine Holden tells us where the art and science of silver unite.

  • Article
  • Article

Surviving fatness

| LMMNan Carreira

It took time for LMM to discover that being fat and poor are mutually exclusive. Here she describes resisting fatphobia by being visible and leaning in to the stereotype.

  • Article
  • Article

Bleeding healthy

| Julia Nurse

For thousands of years, and in many different cultures, people have practised bloodletting for health and medical reasons. Julia Nurse explains where and when bleeding was used, how it was done, and why.

  • Article
  • Article

Appointments with plants

| Elizabeth-Jane BurnettMaïa Walcott

In our ‘always on’ culture, poet Elizabeth-Jane Burnett find a route away from screens – by following the ways of the trees and plants outside.

  • Article
  • Article

The doctor who challenged the unicorn myth

| Estelle ParanqueKathleen Arundell

Our era of fake news and medical misinformation is nothing new. Estelle Paranque relays the thrusts and parries of a 440-year-old row over a magical cure-all, the unicorn horn.

  • Article
  • Article

The freedom to provoke

| Jamie HaleStephen Allwright

Jamie Hale talks to performer and director Emma Selwyn about the joy of creating work that celebrates, rather than suppresses, autistic behaviours.