- Book extract
- Book extract
How to stay together while keeping apart
Vivek Murthy explores how we can keep physically distant while staying emotionally connected.
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Designing death in the virtual city
Danger and death are fun when they’re virtual – and when they incorporate realistic elements. Now the tables are turned, as urban planners learn from game environments.
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The boundaries that shape my writing
While writing about her life can be enormously helpful, Caroline Butterwick needs to regularly reassess her boundaries. Here she explores the line between what’s public and what’s private, and how porous that can be.
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When contemporary dance meets dyspraxia
Discover why a rare neurological condition meant an enthusiastic club-night dancer struggled with formal dance classes. And how persisting with those classes paid off.
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Designing better mental health wards
Bringing colour and natural light to tired, grubby mental health wards has a measurably positive effect on patients. A few groundbreaking projects are showing the way.
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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.
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Battling the heteronormativity of sexual health
As a queer, Black women, Mary W is sick of the never-ending hetero-cycle of clinic appointments, where her needs and sexuality are always a surprise to the doctor. She calls for a revolution.
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Why we need to decolonise the skies
Astronomer Dr Tana Joseph explores how rethinking way we look at the stars could improve our relationship with our own planet and make it a healthier place to live.
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How tuberculosis became a test case for eugenic theory
A 19th-century collaboration that failed to prove how facial features could indicate the diseases people were most likely to suffer from became a significant stepping stone in the new ‘science’ of eugenics.
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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.
- Book extract
- Book extract
The give and take of caring
Kate Mosse argues that how we define ‘care’ matters, and explores the reciprocity of caring and being cared for.
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- Article
Making sense of senses lost
In rapid succession, Steve Barker suddenly lost sight and hearing on his left side. The effect on how he perceives the world has been profound.
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Belonging and why we long for it
Tanya Perdikou’s upbringing emphasised conventional respectability, but other influential family members embraced the bohemian life. Caught between two sets of values, she questions where, if anywhere, she fits in.
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How homesickness inspires art
Gail Tolley looks at homesickness through the eyes of three contemporary artists and finds powerful new themes of identity and connection.
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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.
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The search for a cure for endometriosis
Discover how a white American doctor’s experimental operations on black female slaves laid the foundations for modern gynaecological surgery.
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The intermediate life of spirits
Courttia Newland explores the events and his feelings surrounding the death of his mother-in-law, Tara Chauhan.
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How the magician’s assistant creates the illusion
Without breaking the spell, performer Naomi Paxton reveals the subtle ways the magician’s assistant helps the audience to keep believing.
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Why all of us are evil
Science proves that we’re all capable of evil: your secret fantasy about killing someone you hate is surprisingly normal. But the way to better moral choices is to fight emotional instinct.
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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.
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Are people born violent?
Laura Bui explores how the nature vs nurture debate applies to those who commit homicide.
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The secret lives of Britain’s first Black physicians
Dr Annabel Sowemimo explores the web of connections between early Black British doctors, the role of empire in West Africa and the pernicious reach of scientific racism.
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How nature is defending itself in court
The idea that nature has legal rights is increasingly being taken seriously, but who gets to speak for it? Isabella Kaminski asks how the non-human can be represented within a human-made system.
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Air of threat
Novelist Chloe Aridjis vividly describes the suffocating atmosphere of Mexico City, as a combination of topography, crowded neighbourhoods, and reckless political diktats create a downward spiral.
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Happiness in time
Trying to define happiness is like trying to grasp water: it evades us, constantly changing and becoming evident only in retrospect.