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How architecture builds a profession of stress
Architects might produce buildings that enhance our health, but at what cost? Kristin Hohenadel explores architecture’s pressurised and stressful culture.
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Intelligence testing, race and eugenics
Specious ideas and assumptions about intelligence that were born during the great flourishing of eugenics well over 100 years ago still inform the British education system today, as Nazlin Bhimani reveals.
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The intimate and invasive art of ethical taxidermy
Does displaying dead animals bring us closer to nature, or drive us further apart?
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Soil health and dairy farming in the UK
Although healthy soil means more nutritious dairy products, modern intensive farming methods pollute and degrade the environment. However, a regenerative agriculture movement is kicking back against mainstream industrial farming.
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Hands-on healthcare
A young hospital volunteer feared her contribution was a long way from the serious business of real healthcare. But time spent painting patients’ nails proved to be a valuable contribution to life on the ward.
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Is fake news killing fictive art?
Parafictional artists create projects where the imaginary interacts with real life. But the growth of so-called ‘fake news’ is providing a new challenge.
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Blood
Discover the history, mythology and taboos around blood and menopause, and hear from some contemporary voices about their experiences of periods and the onset of menopause.
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The psychological impact of nuclear war
How would you hold up psychologically if a nuclear bomb was dropped? Discover the British government’s secret predictions from the 1980s.
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How can we prevent violence?
Evidence shows that strategies to prevent some types of violence can be very effective, while other, less well-acknowledged forms continue unabated. But hope can still guide us into a more peaceful future.
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On being a father with OCD
As a parent to young children, Ben Falk worries whether he could somehow pass his OCD on to them. Here’s what the experts say.
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Sigrid Rausing’s prescription for writing
The Wellcome Book Prize shortlisted author of ‘Stay With Me’ answers five questions on health, inspiration and storytelling.
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How Californian dairy farmers stole a way of life
When European settlers drained a beautiful Californian lake to provide dairy grazing, the lives of nearby Native American peoples changed out of all recognition. But recent rainfall is strengthening hopes of a return to the old ways.
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An insider’s view of Play Well
Curator Shamita Sharmacharja offers behind-the-scenes insights into an exhibition about the serious business of play.
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Race, religion and the Black Madonna
Mystery and controversy surround the dark-skinned religious icon who represents the Virgin Mary throughout the Catholic world.
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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.
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The hell of hay fever
After years suffering in silence, David Jesudason finds speaking out about his pollen allergy gives him hope for a future where his hay-fever symptoms are under control.
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Remote romance and the common cold
Getting creatively romantic due to a virus sounds all too contemporary, but our archives show what socially distanced seduction looked like seven decades ago.
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Fighting shame by speaking out
Lucia Osborne-Crowley’s first instinct after being raped was to cover it up. Shame silenced her for ten years, but #MeToo gave her the courage to speak out.
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Two health centres, two ideologies
Two futuristic, light-filled buildings aimed to bring forward-looking healthcare to city dwellers. But the principles behind each were very different.
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An animated almanac for the modern world
Discover why Thomas Coleman wanted to make a medieval folding almanac relevant to the modern world and see the film for yourself.
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Can our minds be taken hostage?
It’s not unusual for captives to end up feeling strong bonds with their captors. But is it a matter of submission or survival?
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What Black women do when the NHS fails them
Sabrina-Maria Anderson explores misogynoir – hatred of Black women – within the NHS, and how women like her are consequently turning to other sources of medical support.
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The colonist who faced the blue terror
India, 1857. In a British enclave, Katherine Bartrum watches her friend, and then her family, succumb to the deadly cholera.
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What is structural violence?
Structural violence is seemingly invisible. But its tentacles have invaded every part of many people’s lives, thoughts, experiences and expectations, shaping them in ways they don’t even realise.
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Virtual reality and the fix of the future
Virtual reality, with its complex sensory tricks, takes us beyond the real world. Find out how these potentially addictive experiences can harm us – or might even have therapeutic uses.