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When self-deception becomes global hoax
Being deceived isn’t always a case of believing someone else’s lie. Experiments have shown that many of us can be manipulated into accepting our own fictions as true.
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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.
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The shocking ‘treatment’ to make lesbians straight
Being a lesbian has never been a crime in the UK, but 50 years ago, some psychologists experimented with treatments to try to ‘cure’ women of their orientation. Find out what this involved.
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A message from my skin
As wildfires threatened Seattle, resident Sydney Baker experienced corresponding flares of acne and rashes. Her skin was telling her something about the health of the world around her.
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Desperate housewives and suburban neurosis
Discover how a pioneering health centre replaced housewives’ supposedly empty home lives with a social space that encouraged healthy child rearing.
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Kathryn Mannix’s prescription for writing
The Wellcome Book Prize shortlisted author of ‘With the End in Mind’ answers five questions on health, inspiration and storytelling.
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Hysteria
Mental health and emotional symptoms are common during menopause, but a long history of dismissing sufferers as 'hysterical women', at the mercy of their emotions has made it much harder to discuss these issues and to get support.
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Sharing Nature: Over the rainbow
Here’s your choice of the most meaningful nature photo on the theme of health.
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Tracing the toxic story of tear gas
Investigating tear gas – from factory to Black Lives Matter protest – Imani Jacqueline Brown uncovers a toxic legacy where pollution, violence and racism are intimately entwined.
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Chemical highs and psychedelic research
Could recreational drugs make you happy? Kate Wilkinson explores why keen clubber Simon believes taking psychedelics has helped him develop as a person.
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Air of threat
Novelist Chloe Aridjis vividly describes the suffocating atmosphere of Mexico City, as a combination of topography, crowded neighbourhoods, and reckless political diktats create a downward spiral.
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Life lessons across the digital divide
What could 86-year-old Tony teach 20-something Adele as she showed him how to use his smartphone? Rather a lot about digital exclusion, it turns out.
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Finding out where my lithium comes from
The origins of the lithium Laura Grace Simpkins swallows daily are unclear. If we don’t know the provenance of our pills, how can we make informed decisions about them?
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Why the 1918 Spanish flu defied both memory and imagination
The Black Death, AIDS and Ebola outbreaks are part of our collective cultural memory, but the Spanish flu outbreak has not been.
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Yoga adapts to time and place
A yoga teacher in 1930s India inspired today’s transnational practice with his spectacular fusion of tradition and innovation.
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Drug sharing in desperate times
When Nicole was threatened with deportation, her mental health deteriorated. Now without a job, a passport or a doctor, she depends on others to send her their leftover anxiety drugs.
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Delusional recycling and the problem with plastic
Many of us are guilty of wishful thinking when it comes to our rubbish. Arianne Shahvisi exposes shaky recycling infrastructure and overseas dumping, arguing for an end to waste colonialism.
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Unravelling genetic origins from the potato to cinchona
Starting with the humble potato, Nataly Allasi Canales reveals how researchers unearth the genetic origins of modern plant varieties, and explains why their work is so important for biodiversity.
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- Book extract
The science of why things spread
From deadly pandemics to viral tweets, Adam Kucharski explores what makes something contagious.
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Bubbles of history
Since the 1960s, scientists have been able to study the air from past centuries by analysing particles in Arctic ice samples. But as the polar ice melts, the future of this research is changing.
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The painter, the psychiatrist and a fashion for hysteria
A dramatic painting brings a famous event in medical history alive. But it also tells a tale about the health preoccupations of the time.
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Charged bodies
Electrified humans brought education and performance together with a spark in the 18th century.
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Crones
Menopause can be tough when nobody talks about it and all the stereotypes are negative, but it can also be transformative, marking the start of a new stage of life - cronehood.
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Investigating what lithium is and how it works
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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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?