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Fake news and the flu
Discover how history shows that fake news could play a deadly role – by generating potentially lethal misinformation during a future pandemic.
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The metamorphosis of masturbation
Throughout history, medics and campaigners have tried to stamp out masturbation – but is modern science transforming its reputation?
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Spiritual joy
Spiritual joy can be a source of strength. Like the optimistic Pollyanna, there’s a lot to be said for finding reasons to rejoice, even in adversity.
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How music opens the doors of memory and the mind
People living with dementia can often still listen, perform or move to music. What does this tell us about how memories are formed?
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What writing myself has revealed
Caroline Butterwick talks to two creators about how lived experience feeds their art, and reflects on her own year of writing about her life.
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Mask, ritual and fertility
Today many of us learn about fertility, conception and pregnancy online. But that wasn’t always the way. Discover how masks and rituals played an important educational role.
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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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The healing power of breathing
The healing powers of different breathing methods are said to help with a range of health challenges, from asthma to PTSD. Effie Webb traces their spiritual origins and explores the modern proliferation of breathwork therapies.
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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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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.
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The art of scientific glassblowing
Exciting things happen when art, craft, engineering and science collide. Glassblower Gayle Price is proof of that.
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Don’t call me a strong Black woman
Her upbringing taught Jaydee Seaforth that she could never show pain or weakness, even when her internal distress was extreme. Find out how she learned to listen to her body.
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Illness and the influence of the stars
Could alien germs from space have caused major pandemics across the world? Taras Young investigates the ideas of a few unconventional scientists who believe this to be the case.
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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 complex longing for home
It could be mild, an almost poetic longing. Or it could be visceral, deep, an overwhelming feeling that eats into your everyday life. Come with Gail Tolley as she introduces a deep dive into homesickness.
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Getting the measure of pain
In the 20th century doctors tried to find a way to measure pain. But even when ‘objective’ measures were rejected, an accurate understanding of another’s pain remained frustratingly elusive.
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London, city of lost hospitals
Come on the trail of hundreds of ghost hospitals, whose remnants hold clues to medical treatments of the past.
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The yogi as hermit, warrior, criminal and showman
How the modern world changed the life and reputation of the yogi.
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The Key to Memory: Follow your nose
Elissavet Ntoulia explores what a pair of pomanders can tell us about how and why we remember.
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Parks and politics in Brixton’s past and present
Gentrification is creeping along Railton Road, but racial inequality still lingers in memories of the 1980s, and in the continuing lack of green-space access.
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Defying deafness through music
Did you know that Beethoven’s profession meant he was ashamed to admit to being deaf? Find out how similar prejudices persist today and how our writer is helping to break them down.
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Do good mothers make good democracy?
To be psychologically fit for democracy, one distinguished paediatrician argued that you need a ‘good enough mother’ – and that we must acknowledge the bad side of our feelings.
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The indelible harm caused by conversion therapy
With first-hand evidence from two powerful testimonies, neurologist Jules Montague explores the destructive history of conversion therapy, a punitive treatment designed to ‘cure’ people of homosexuality.
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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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The intimate and invasive art of ethical taxidermy
Does displaying dead animals bring us closer to nature, or drive us further apart?