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Manipulating the evidence with deepfake technology

How can you be sure that the person speaking on the screen is genuine? Find out how sophisticated digital manipulation is blurring the boundaries between real and ‘deepfake’.

The fast and the spurious

Extreme fasting has captured the public imagination for centuries. What pushes people to claim to go without food for improbable lengths of time?

Finding the words to talk about emptiness

Shored up by a diagnosis and medication, Cassie Doney tried to find out more about the profound feeling of emptiness they were experiencing. But research is thin on the ground.

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.

Restoring disorder to ‘The Book of Disquiet’

Printer Tim Hopkins explains what making an extraordinary new edition of Fernando Pessoa’s book revealed about both the text and the mind.

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.

Maladaptive daydreaming, gender myths and me

Can you daydream too much? Excessive daydreamer Laura Grace Simpkins reflects on studies into “maladaptive daydreaming” and asks why so few fellow dreamers seem to be men.

Of incubators, orchids and artificial wombs

In this extract from Claire Horn’s new book, ‘Eve: The Disobedient Future of Birth’, she traces the development of the artificial womb, soon to become a reality.

Mark O’Connell’s prescription for writing

The Wellcome Book Prize shortlisted author of ‘To Be a Machine’ answers five questions on health, inspiration and storytelling.

A Drop in the Ocean: internal reality

This immersive audio piece was designed to give listeners a greater understanding of psychosis, something that’s hard to explain in words.

A body apart from the head

We look back at the importance of the head, from how it’s influenced our language to the bold political statement of having it removed.

The men who meddled with nature

The ‘acclimatisation societies’ of the 19th century sought to ‘improve’ on the natural world by releasing non-native species into the wild. The effects were disastrous.

Breaking the rules of online dating

Artists are taking on the trolls of Tinder and the gremlins of Grindr to question the limits of online dating.

Found items

Books leave their traces in our minds, but we leave traces of ourselves in books too, as these fascinating items found inside old works show.

The Key to Memory: Write it down

Nick Dent explores what the Library of the Human Genome can tell us about how and why we remember.

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.

A head apart from the body

We look to the future of science via science fiction to explore how a head may live apart from its body.

Titans in the landscape

The current that kills

In the 19th century, electricity held life in the balance, with the power to execute – or reanimate.

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.

The eye of darshan

The Hindu concept of darshan means “divine revelation”, but it’s also about the multilayered ways in which we see the world around us. Adrian Plau explains how one image in a Panjabi manuscript relates to darshan, and why it’s so striking.

The poetic language of health

When his doctors could only offer phone consultations, James Morland turned to poetry to make sense of the medical terms describing his symptoms and test results.

When depression is worse than physical illness

Chronic physical illnesses can be accompanied by troubling depressive symptoms. Elly Aylwin-Foster urges doctors to treat every aspect of her condition with the same care.

Book design, dissected

Gwen Smith talks to art director Peter Dyer about imagery, colour, type and staying true to the pages within.

Our complicated love affair with light

Sunlight is essential, but our relationship with artificial light is less clear cut. It expands what’s possible; it also obscures and polices. In this long read, Lauren Collee pits light against night, and reveals the shady places in between.