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69 results
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How online dating can make us lonely

| Christina Patterson

The packed diary of an internet dater doesn’t necessarily denote fun, companionship and love. Find out what Christina Patterson learned on her internet-dating odyssey.

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Synaesthesia, or when senses overlap

| Lydia Ruffles

What’s it like to see heartbeats, taste Tube stations or hear paintings?

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A history of gestation outside the body

| Claire Horn

It’s been over 400 years since a Swiss alchemist theorised that foetuses could develop outside the womb. Claire Horn examines incubator technology past and present, and explores the possibilities recent prototypes might bring.

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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.

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Sigrid Rausing’s prescription for writing

| Jennifer Trent Staves

The Wellcome Book Prize shortlisted author of ‘Stay With Me’ answers five questions on health, inspiration and storytelling.

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Breaking the rules of online dating

| Alex Green

Artists are taking on the trolls of Tinder and the gremlins of Grindr to question the limits of online dating.

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The chymist’s trade card

| Julia Nurse

An 18th-century trade card reveals far more than its owner may have intended.

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Charged bodies

| Ruth Garde

Electrified humans brought education and performance together with a spark in the 18th century.

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The relationship between science and art

| Victoria Kingston

Often seen as opposites, science and art both depend on observation and synthesis.

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How the Peckham Experiment inspired my fiction

| James Wilkes

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

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The fine line between collecting and hoarding

| Georgie EvansNicole Coffield

Being ‘a collector’ is often celebrated but being labelled ‘a hoarder’ can be humiliating, at best. Georgie Evans asks what makes one set of objects a collection and another a hoard.

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Finding solidarity in arachnophobia

| Izzie PriceSteven Pocock

Arachnophobia is very different from just disliking spiders. Izzie Price shares the reality of having the phobia, and explores its likely origins.

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Butch drag in the builders’ caff

| Niven GovindenBenjamin Gilbert

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

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Dealing with the dead after a nuclear attack

| Taras Young

Cold War-era predictions of death on a vast scale became routine. But the British authorities were less prepared to dispose of the bodies.

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Native Americans through the 19th-century lens

| Allison C Meier

The stories behind Rinehart's photographs may not be as black and white as they first appear.

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The enduring myth of the mad genius

| Anna Faherty

There’s a fine line to tread between creativity and psychosis.

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Are you still nursing?

| Julia Martins

Julia Martins might get the side-eye for breastfeeding a three-year-old in the UK but, as she explains, examples from history, as well as the cultural norms of Brazil, where she grew up, are firmly on the side of extended nursing.

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Keeping death close

| Lauren EntwistleShay Azzari

Scattering her father’s ashes, Lauren Entwistle found herself longing for something physical that proved he once was a living, breathing person. Here she reflects on the objects that help us to grieve and remember.

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Life before assistive technology

| Alex LeeIan Treherne

When an inherited condition caused Alex Lee’s vision to deteriorate, he began to discover the technologies that would help him navigate the world around him. Here he describes how his life began to change.

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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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Investigating what lithium is and how it works

| Laura Grace SimpkinsMatjaž Krivic

The more questions Laura Grace Simpkins asked about lithium, the more she realised how little is known about this powerful drug and how it affects our mental health.

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Birth, babies and boxes of memories

| Erin BeestonNaomi Williams

With memories of her baby in neonatal intensive care still fresh, Erin Beeston decides to unearth the poignant objects her family kept following births, going back as far as Victorian times.

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Selling sex and sacrificing safety

| AbigailJessa Fairbrother

Sex workers who report crimes against them can face a “what do you expect?” attitude. But one organisation is working to protect vulnerable people in the sex industry.

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The intermediate life of spirits

| Courttia Newland

Courttia Newland explores the events and his feelings surrounding the death of his mother-in-law, Tara Chauhan.

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Fees, funding and the NHS

| Cal Flyn

In the 1950s, dramatic political battles over NHS charges brought down a government. But public confidence in the service still grew.