- Interview
- Interview
Refugee health on a pound a day
Two refugees living a hand-to-mouth existence in the UK explain how trauma has affected their health, and how a little kindness is bringing them hope.
- Article
- Article
Disability in the post-pandemic world
Disabled people have suffered more than most during Covid-19, but there is still a chance to build a kinder society. Dolly Sen explores whether we will come together, or allow more brutal disparities to develop in the worsening recession.
- Article
- Article
Getting sexy with cinnamon
Add some flavour to your love life with this spice. It will warm up more than just your buns.
- Article
- Article
Homesick for planet Earth
Find out how homesick astronauts spend their free time, and how recreating home cooking from freeze-dried ingredients can cheer them all up.
- Article
- Article
Parasites and pests from the medieval to the modern
Humans have been reluctant hosts to a plethora of unpleasant parasites for centuries. And medieval evidence shows our modern distaste for these little irritations is just as ancient.
- Article
- Article
The intermediate life of spirits
Courttia Newland explores the events and his feelings surrounding the death of his mother-in-law, Tara Chauhan.
- Article
- Article
It’s getting mighty crowded
Mid-20th-century population-density research on mice produced a whiskered apocalypse, predicted to become the fate of humans too. But perhaps a more compassionate approach could fend this off.
- Article
- Article
Can our sexual desires be transformed?
In the 1950s, many psychiatrists thought that homosexuality could be reformed. One found that it couldn’t – and his discoveries led to a change in the law.
- Comic
- Comic
Modern hunter-gatherer
Finding food has never been so easy
- Book extract
- Book extract
What the wind can bring
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.
- Article
- Article
Believe yourself better
There’s more to recovery than medication. In future, our unconscious minds could be recruited to put a positive spin on our health problems, helping us feel better faster.
- Article
- Article
The cook who became a pariah
New York, 1907. Mary Mallon spreads infection, unaware that her name will one day become synonymous with typhoid.
- Book extract
- Book extract
Eating their own kind
In his grisly history of cannibalism, zoologist Bill Schutt asks what drives an animal to feast on its own flesh and blood.
- Article
- Article
The joy of playing hide-and-seek with rats
Playing hide-and-seek with lab rats has shown scientists that joy can be a great motivator for learning and social interaction – and not just for rats.
- Article
- Article
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.
- Article
- Article
The sickness in the wellness industry
In recovery from anorexia, Gwen Smith began to realise how the wellness industry needs its followers to feel bad about themselves in order to make money out them.
- Book extract
- Book extract
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.
- Article
- Article
How to cure the eco-anxious
Could community activism be the key to overcoming a fear of environmental collapse?
- Article
- Article
A little wildness
To salve her longing for a dog, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan chose a puppy. She found that, despite centuries of domestication, her dog still retains aspects of her wild ancestry.
- Article
- Article
Remote romance and the common cold
Getting creatively romantic due to a virus sounds all too contemporary, but our archives show what socially distanced seduction looked like seven decades ago.
- Photo story
- Photo story
Portraits, from a distance
Join photographer Michelle Sank on her daily walk around Exeter. Strength, frustration, resilience and eccentricity all show in these candid images portraying life under the constraints of coronavirus lockdown.
- Article
- Article
Being trans in the world of sex work
Unstable. Predatory. Risk takers. Dr Adrienne Macartney sheds stark light on the hostile and negative assumptions faced by trans sex workers.
- Article
- Article
Happy Joy Smile
Drawn from real-life experiences, this short story depicts a character negotiating the UK’s current mental health system. Discover what happens as they encounter waiting lists, sketchy healthcare and punitive government bureaucracy.
- Article
- Article
Good animals, bad humans?
Could an animal be more evolved than a human? Victorian psychologists thought that in some cases the answer could be ‘yes’.
- Article
- Article
Abandoning daydreams of a life without diabetes
After years of longing for a cure for her type 1 diabetes, Daisy Watson Shaw, partly due to medical advances in managing the condition, has reached a state of acceptance. Her wishes now are for greater understanding.