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The neuroscience of how we navigate

Christopher Kemp describes the mysterious case of Amanda Eller, a hiker who got lost in the woods. How can someone take a few steps off a well-marked trail and completely disappear?

Yoga gets physical

Modern yoga owes a debt to the physical culture movement that created a world obsessed with health and fitness.

Confusion, guilt, and the battle to breastfeed

Most new mums are told that breast is best. But breastfeeding doesn’t always come as easily or naturally as you might imagine.

Selling sex and sacrificing safety

Sex workers who report crimes against them can face a “what do you expect?” attitude. But one organisation is working to protect vulnerable people in the sex industry.

Chillies and the trouble with Scoville

Measuring the heat of these peppers can leave you a little lukewarm.

Sharing Nature: Parks for people

Paula Broom’s photograph of Sydney’s Centennial Park shows the complexity and joy we find in urban greenery.

Dazzling luxury

As the 20th century dawned, both elite and masses basked in the marvellous and unearthly glow of the new electric illumination.

The chymist’s trade card

An 18th-century trade card reveals far more than its owner may have intended.

Jim, the horse of death

Horses’ blood was used to produce an antitoxin that saved thousands of children from dying from diphtheria, but contamination was a deadly problem. Find out how a horse called Jim was the catalyst for the beginnings of medical regulation.

Titans in the landscape

A freezer full of breastmilk

When new mum Alev Scott began pumping her milk between feeds, she soon found she was freezing more breastmilk than her baby would ever need. So Alev began to investigate ways to share her oversupply.

Invisibility

Why do menopausal women feel invisible? Because nobody talks about menopause or because society doesn't value older women?

Native Americans through the 19th-century lens

The stories behind Rinehart's photographs may not be as black and white as they first appear.

Why zombies can’t help coming back

Although it might appear that zombies are a 20th-century phenomenon, created for the horror-movie industry, they’ve actually been around since medieval times. Find out what zombies like to do, and how to get rid of them.

The spectacle maker

Born into the eyewear business 80 years ago, Lawrence Jenkin still designs and makes glasses, while supporting and inspiring the generations of designers following him.

Finding out where my lithium comes from

The origins of the lithium Laura Grace Simpkins swallows daily are unclear. If we don’t know the provenance of our pills, how can we make informed decisions about them?

Rocking psychiatry with R D Laing

Turn on, tune in, drop out. Discover how six rock songs from the 1960s and 1970s link the ideas of famous therapist R D Laing with the era’s counterculture.

Reassuring ghosts and haunted houses

Explore the perversely comforting appeal of a ghost in the house.

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?

The poor child’s nurse

Charming family scenes in Victorian ads for children’s medicines were at odds with some of the dangerous ingredients they contained.

In the tracks of Derek Jarman’s tears

Researcher E K Myerson shares her moving encounters with the personal papers of artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman.

Silent threat

As Vanessa Peterson recovered from a frighteningly serious illness, she wondered whether it was linked to air quality. For many communities, she found, pollution is a political issue.

Domestic titans

Feeling trapped by the idea that an impenetrable carapace of space trash could surround the planet, Elvia Wilk turned to thoughts of the new worlds still to be revealed here on Earth.

Nurturing my autistic, gender-questioning child

As mother of an autistic child who questions her gender, Jude Lax describes cherishing her growing daughter as she explores her identity.

Coleridge’s hypochondria

An intense focus on his own bodily sensations led poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge to self-medicate with narcotics. But this fascination also put Coleridge ahead of the medical sensibilities of his day.