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Broadcasting trans lives in the 1980s

Discover how a 1980 British TV documentary broke new ground by portraying transgender people, their lives and their medical treatment in a normalising way.

Doctor in the house

A house is not always a home – sometimes it’s impermanent, impersonal. But other aspects of the itinerant life can be the source of a sense of home.

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.

Born in the NHS

Despite underfunding, strikes and scandals, the first two decades of the 2000s has seen the British people’s love of and loyalty to the NHS soar.

Titans in the landscape

A bad atmosphere in the Balkans

The citizens of Belgrade, one of the most polluted cities in Europe, are finally pushing back against the polluters, whose activities they’ve been encouraged to accept.

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.

Confronting male stereotypes in the classroom

Sometimes men just don’t like football. Writer and teacher Okechukwu Nzelu decides to be himself in front of his students.

Butch drag in the builders’ caff

Two men in a café dressed in practical workwear might seem indistinguishable, but closer inspection reveals layers of complex, nuanced identity.

The female fight to reclaim our space in the mosque

Salma El-Wardany tells of the fight to reclaim spaces for women in the mosque and further afield.

Cracks that let the light in

Rai Waddingham lives with voices other people cannot hear. Here she describes how she has come to accept, understand and calm her voices, and to acknowledge her strength.

Building a dream in the garden suburbs

In the late 19th century a ‘garden suburb’ promised a retreat from London’s dirt and crowds. See how this new concept was developed to appeal to the health concerns of the literary classes.

The tower in fiction, film and life

The high-rise estates born of postwar idealism soon became symbols of crime and squalor. But after one terrible tragedy, public bodies are being forced to rethink our towers.

In the tracks of Derek Jarman’s tears

Researcher E K Myerson shares her moving encounters with the personal papers of artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman.

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.

Revelations of blindness in the Middle Ages

Medieval texts, from Islamic medical treatises to Christian books of miracles, reveal surprisingly varied and complex experiences of blindness. But when medieval scholar Jude Seal experienced visual impairment themselves, they gained an even deeper understanding of the lives they were studying.

Natural eating in Jamaica and the Caribbean

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’.

Going viral in the online anti-vaccine wars

‘Anti-vaxxers’ are taking their message online using powerful images as well as words. But is the pro campaigners’ response any better?

Soil health and dairy farming in the UK

Although healthy soil means more nutritious dairy products, modern intensive farming methods pollute and degrade the environment. However, a regenerative agriculture movement is kicking back against mainstream industrial farming.

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.

Sacred cows and nutritional purity in India

Apoorva Sripathi explores the complex reasons behind India’s recent boom in all things dairy – beginning with a 1970s Western food-aid programme.

Hunting lost plants in botanical collections

A bark specimen at Kew recalls the story of a South American man who harvested the most potent source of the only effective malaria treatment available in the late 1800s. Killed for his work and forgotten by history, Manuel Mamani was a victim of the colonial juggernaut.

The year of the dog

The relationship between dogs and humans goes back a long way. These pictures from our archives show some of the highs and lows.

Faces of the NHS

Meet some of the exceptional workers whose careers span the seven decades of the NHS. Their portraits and words reveal their passion for medicine and for taking care of people.

Thomas Sankara and the stomachs that made themselves heard

Thomas Sankara’s vision to transform farming and health in Burkina Faso turned to dust with his assassination. Perry Blankson highlights the considerable achievements of Sankara’s brief span in power.