- Article
- Article
The power of unicorns
Discover the unlikely connection between pharmaceuticals and unicorns.
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How I escaped my anxiety and depression through architecture and poetry
Social anxiety led him to introversion and silence. The brutalist architecture of London’s Barbican Estate inspired his liberation in poetry.
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- Article
Born different
For Chris North, being born intersex in the 1940s meant his many childhood hospital visits, tests and operations were not explained or discussed. As he reveals, doctors encouraged strict secrecy.
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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.
- Book extract
- Book extract
How to stay together while keeping apart
Vivek Murthy explores how we can keep physically distant while staying emotionally connected.
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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.
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To write in golden photographs
When Rachel Genn’s brother disappeared, a newspaper article led the family to his bedside. But the accident he’d barely survived was not to be the last tragedy in his life.
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Laughing at disaster
If joking around can help us cope when the worst happens, could comedy be a useful way to connect on climate change?
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Autistic togetherness during lockdown
While lockdown has presented autistic people with greater challenges than life pre-COVID, many have found strength and comfort in the situation. Autistic writer and performer Kate Fox explains how.
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- Article
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.
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When a private pee is a public disgrace
The free pee is getting rarer. And the lack of suitably equipped disabled toilets is condemning people to lives cloistered away in their own homes. Discover how toilet access for all is part of an equal society.
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- Article
How the magician’s assistant creates the illusion
Without breaking the spell, performer Naomi Paxton reveals the subtle ways the magician’s assistant helps the audience to keep believing.
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- Article
Equality in genetics
Genetic counsellor Sasha Henriques harnessed her energy and resolve to tackle the racial biases she saw in her profession – with positive and promising results.
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The shock of cardiac arrest when you’re young and fit
Footballer Christian Eriksen’s on-pitch collapse in 2020, witnessed by thousands, was shocking. Fellow cardiac-arrest survivor Meg Fozzard explores the risks in the young and fit, and how we can all help.
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Dress and the magic of touch
Fashion, of course, is largely about appearance, but the feeling of clothes on your skin is a complex sensory experience. Shahidha Bari contemplates the human connections in the business of creating and wearing clothes.
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- Article
The gym of cartoon men
In men, body dysmorphia can be expressed as ‘bigorexia’ – the belief that your body is too weak and thin – or anorexia. Andrew McMillan explores two sides of the same coin.
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- Article
Dynamo on the past, present and future of magic
The magician takes a tour and shares stories of history and inspiration.
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Hyperfocus and hobbies
Alex Chan talks about the power of ADHD-associated hyperfocus and how they’ve become wary of feeding it too often.
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Little feet on Pett Level Beach
Poet and author Penny Pepper has vivid memories of childhood beach trips when her father was still alive, enthusiastically encouraging her curiosity and love of nature.
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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.
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Navigating in a connected world
Alex Lee ponders the promising ideas, stalled projects and pricey gadgets that aim to help visually impaired people get out and about. But it seems that an actual human could be the essential ingredient.
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This is a MOOD
Adults might sometimes dismiss teenagers’ ‘moodiness’, but adolescence is a time of complex shifts in brain and body, which are intricately bound up with fluctuating feelings.
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- Article
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’.
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- Article
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.
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Does mass media pave the way to fascism?
In the aftermath of World War II, psychoanalysts found the psychological roots of authoritarianism closer to home than was comfortable.