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Tesla, quacks and violet rays

Imagine a device that can treat everything from baldness to gout. Too good to be true? Yes, and it was banned – but not before hundreds were hoodwinked.

Hyperfocus and hobbies

Alex Chan talks about the power of ADHD-associated hyperfocus and how they’ve become wary of feeding it too often.

People against pollution

Alice Bell reflects on what happens when communities help solve environmental problems, and whether citizen science can help fight industrial pollution today.

The unimprovable white cane

Recent technological additions to the white cane aim to make the world easier for visually impaired people to navigate. Alex Lee explores whether new is really better.

Bringing biotech to the people

Amateur scientists have inspired all kinds of frightening scenarios, from Frankenstein’s monster to ‘The Fly’ and ‘Breaking Bad’. But it can be a force for good. Today’s DIYbio enthusiasts are having fun – and even making lucrative breakthrough discoveries.

Healing hard-working hands

The names we use to describe different hand injuries tell us about history, gender and class. Occupational therapist María Cristina Jiménez explores those injuries, and the changing ways we talk about them.

A wee spot of bother

Euphemisms can both appear to diminish experiences while at the same time making them easier to talk about. Carrie Hynds, who experienced the latter part of Northern Ireland’s “Troubles”, explores the relationship between language and trauma.

When the sun goes down

Despite the country’s colonial and industrial dominion, the finest minds of Victorian Britain began to fear the devastating effects of declining natural resources. Even the death of the sun.

A brief history of ventilation

As ventilators continue to play an important part in helping very ill coronavirus patients, medical historian Dr Lindsey Fitzharris traces their development from the first attempts at mouth-to-mouth resuscitation through centuries of medical crises.

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’.

Artificial intelligence and the dream of eternal life

Until now, eternal life was the stuff of fiction, or in the unknowable realms of religion. But an artificial intelligence that ‘remembers’ the whole of an individual’s experience could be the way to life after death.

The cook who became a pariah

New York, 1907. Mary Mallon spreads infection, unaware that her name will one day become synonymous with typhoid.

The sweet sound of synthetic speech

After Alex experienced a serious deterioration in his sight, he came to rely on artificial voices to help him with everyday tasks. Find out how synthetic speech came to be developed.

The art of scientific glassblowing

Exciting things happen when art, craft, engineering and science collide. Glassblower Gayle Price is proof of that.

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.

Titans in the landscape

How the Peckham Experiment inspired my fiction

Find out how an unruly mass of archive material from a 1930s radical health centre has inspired brand new writing.

The ‘undesirable epileptic’

Abused in her marriage for being 'a sick woman', Aparna Nair looked to history to make sense of the response to her epilepsy. She discovered how centuries of fear and discrimination were often endorsed by science and legislation.

Why the world needs collectors

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

Foraging for a taste of the past

Follow tips from a professional forager to recreate delicious 18th-century recipes from plants growing wild in parks and on urban wasteland.

Naked, not nude

Classicist Caroline Vout argues that it’s time to take the dust covers off the Ancient Greeks and Romans, and to encounter their bodies not nude, but naked.

Conflicted and confused about lithium

Covid-19 left Laura Grace Simpkins out of work and living back with her parents. She now had time to restart her research into her medication, but was she mad to continue?

Talent, tech and visual art

Jamie Hale finds a combination of talent and technology are crucial when it comes to creating great visual art, but how do you keep working when your circumstances are in constant flux?

How shame makes us sick

The fight-or-flight response can have long-term consequences for our bodies if left unchecked. Lucia Osborne-Crowley investigates how shame and trauma are connected, and how both can lead to chronic ill health.

Living in limbo when a loved one is missing

When someone goes missing, loved ones are thrown into a state akin to constant grieving; waiting for news, living in hope. Novelist Bev Thomas describes how they try to cope and carry on.