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When ‘get well soon’ doesn’t cut it

When loved ones are seriously ill, we can hide behind dishonest platitudes or struggle to find the words. Meet the woman working to fix how we speak to sick people.

Getting around the rules of sex education

What should we and shouldn’t we teach our teens about sex, inside and outside of the classroom?

A brief history of tattoos

The earliest evidence of tattoo art dates from 5000 BC, and the practice continues to hold meaning for many cultures around the world.

Healing through ink

Taking an approach learned from his OCD treatment, Josh Weeks faced his fear of getting tattoos, and embraced inking as part of the healing process.

Naked, not nude

Classicist Caroline Vout argues that it’s time to take the dust covers off the Ancient Greeks and Romans, and to encounter their bodies not nude, but naked.

What is violence?

Criminologist Laura Bui explores her early understanding of violence and outlines its definition and wider consequences.

How ritual creates meaning

In a world that encourages us to quash our sense of wonder, ritual can help push away apathy and nurture life-enhancing creativity and imagination.

On nature cures and taking the waters

When chilly outdoor swims began to chip away at her depression, Jessica J Lee was drawn to a closer study of the complex natural world around her.

On contagion

Reading descriptions of the way humans become infested by parasitic flatworms, Daisy Lafarge experienced painful physical symptoms. Perhaps the very creature she was studying had invaded her body.

A virtual view of history

Step inside Anne Frank’s house or explore the galleries in a museum destroyed by fire. VR brings history and art satisfyingly close when we’re unable to get there in person.

The ‘epileptic’ in art and science

From scarred outsiders in literature to the cold voyeurism of medical films and photography, people who experience seizures and epilepsy are rarely shown in a compassionate light in popular culture.

When a private pee is a public disgrace

The free pee is getting rarer. And the lack of suitably equipped disabled toilets is condemning people to lives cloistered away in their own homes. Discover how toilet access for all is part of an equal society.

How writing helps me manage schizophrenia

Printing the body

The 18th century saw multiple technical developments in both printing and medicine. Colourful collaborations ensued – to the benefit of growing ranks of medical students.

Desperate housewives and suburban neurosis

Discover how a pioneering health centre replaced housewives’ supposedly empty home lives with a social space that encouraged healthy child rearing.

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.

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.

Born in the NHS

Despite underfunding, strikes and scandals, the first two decades of the 2000s has seen the British people’s love of and loyalty to the NHS soar.

Medics, migration and the NHS

In the 1960s the NHS became Britain’s biggest employer. So to help fill all those jobs, the government brought in thousands of workers from abroad.

Fees, funding and the NHS

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

You know the drill

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

Genius spirits and the mystery of creative inspiration

Once upon a time, we all had a genius.

You, a thousand years ago

Jack Hartnell argues that, if we were transported into the medieval past, we’d find ourselves somewhere different yet strangely familiar.

Race, religion and the Black Madonna

Mystery and controversy surround the dark-skinned religious icon who represents the Virgin Mary throughout the Catholic world.

Aphasia and drawing elephants

When Thomas Parkinson investigated the history of “speech science”, he discovered an unexpected link between empire, elephants and aphasia.