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41 results
  • In pictures
  • In pictures

Bird-spotting from medieval to modern times

| Ross MacFarlane

What use is ‘twitching’? Exploring materials created over 500 years shows that there’s more to birdwatching than meets the eye.

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Getting around the rules of sex education

| Hannah J Elizabeth

What should we and shouldn’t we teach our teens about sex, inside and outside of the classroom?

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Natural eating in Jamaica and the Caribbean

| Riaz PhillipsAnna Keville Joyce

Riaz Phillips is passionate about the Jamaican food he grew up with and plant-based Caribbean food he came to later, like roti, baiganee and vegan stews and curries. Here he explores the origins and surging popularity of these natural ‘health foods’.

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Sex in graphic novels

| Stephen Lowther

Sex and sexuality have long been explored in the history of the graphic novel.

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Devilry and doom in 1666

| Charlotte SleighGergo Varga

Disastrous events and a significant combination of numbers signalled the end – or perhaps a new beginning – in 1666. But for some, this feverish period fuelled unprecedented inventiveness and development.

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Finding consolation in social isolation

| Tanya PerdikouNaomi Vona

Feeling isolated and anxious during the lockdowns of the last year, Tanya Perdikou found solace in reconnecting to her past and reaching out to neighbours in the present.

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Dying to be in nature

| Matthew PonsfordAndy Merritt

The modern funeral business is one that uses up precious resources and pollutes the planet. But you can make sure it’s only your memory that leaves its mark with these new and natural ways to leave this earth.

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Deciding a date for the end of the world

| Charlotte SleighGergo Varga

When will the world end? Charlotte Sleigh explores how our obsession with dates and dramatic imaginings of the end can distract us from the dangers slowly creeping up on us.

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Virtual reality and the fix of the future

| Stevyn Colgan

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.

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The making of ‘Quacks’

| Helen Babbs

How do you create a medical comedy that’s authentic and laugh-out-loud funny?

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The life and death of Tamagotchi and the virtual pet

| Jenna Jovi

Discover how the 1990s craze for Tamagotchis became a flood of robotic and virtual pets, sending their owners on an emotional rollercoaster ride.

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The power of unicorns

| Muriel Bailly

Discover the unlikely connection between pharmaceuticals and unicorns.

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The hidden history of homesickness

| Gail TolleyMaria Rivans

Gail Tolley delves into the history of homesickness and discovers that its rich past holds a clue to how we view the experience today.

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Parks and politics in Brixton’s past and present

| Jacqueline L ScottYvonne Maxwell

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.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

What the wind can bring

| Amanda Thomson

In this extract from ‘This Book is a Plant’, Amanda Thomson shares a newfound fascination with flowers, and reveals why our relationship with plants can also be complicated.

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The solidarity of sickness

| Sinéad GleesonCamilla Greenwell

Visiting an injured friend in hospital prompts writer Sinéad Gleeson to reflect on the instant rapport forged between compatriots in the kingdom of the sick.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

The neuroscience of how we navigate

| Christopher KempSteven Pocock

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?

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Western magic’s fascination with the foreigner

| Shelley Angelie SaggarThomas S G Farnetti

Could modern magic shows be perpetuating damaging cultural stereotypes? Shelley Saggar shows how ‘exotic’ costumes and imagery are far from harmless fun.

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The men who meddled with nature

| Allison C Meier

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.

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Why the world needs collectors

| Anna Faherty

Those who collect play an important role as “facilitators of curiosity”, says Anna Faherty.

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Finding my body through the wilderness

| Jennifer NealFaye Heller

Writer Jennifer Neal used vigorous exercise classes to try and heal herself in the years following an assault. But it was only while hiking outdoors that she found true strength.

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How to rehabilitate the concrete jungle

| Owen HatherleyJess Nash

A huge concrete housing estate from the 1960s, now seen as an ecological mistake, is being drastically redeveloped, compounding the environmental errors. Owen Hatherley posits a more creative solution.

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The intimate and invasive art of ethical taxidermy

| Helen BabbsThomas S G Farnetti

Does displaying dead animals bring us closer to nature, or drive us further apart?

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The side effects of lithium mining

| Laura Grace SimpkinsMatjaž Krivic

Laura Grace Simpkins attempts to untangle some uncomfortable truths about the social and environmental costs of making her medication.

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How to cure the eco-anxious

| Christine Ro

Could community activism be the key to overcoming a fear of environmental collapse?