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Lost in the mall and other false memories

How can you remember an event that never took place? Find out how manipulation, misinformation and coercion can plant false memories in your mind.

Bringing biotech to the people

Amateur scientists have inspired all kinds of frightening scenarios, from Frankenstein’s monster to ‘The Fly’ and ‘Breaking Bad’. But it can be a force for good. Today’s DIYbio enthusiasts are having fun – and even making lucrative breakthrough discoveries.

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.

Rocking psychiatry with R D Laing

Turn on, tune in, drop out. Discover how six rock songs from the 1960s and 1970s link the ideas of famous therapist R D Laing with the era’s counterculture.

The art of scientific glassblowing

Exciting things happen when art, craft, engineering and science collide. Glassblower Gayle Price is proof of that.

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.

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.

Our complicated love affair with light

Sunlight is essential, but our relationship with artificial light is less clear cut. It expands what’s possible; it also obscures and polices. In this long read, Lauren Collee pits light against night, and reveals the shady places in between.

What is air, and how do we know?

Watching bubbles in fermenting beer led 18th-century scientist Joseph Priestley to invent sparkling water – and to discover that different gases make up the air we breathe.

Daria Martin on ‘Sensorium Tests’ and ‘At the Threshold’

An insider’s view of Play Well

Curator Shamita Sharmacharja offers behind-the-scenes insights into an exhibition about the serious business of play.

Demanding a diagnosis for invisible pain

After dozens of hospital visits and handfuls of painkillers, a plethora of scans and tests bring diagnosis closer for Jaipreet Virdi.

Maria McKinney on ‘Sire’

All my grandparents were farmers; I grew up in the countryside surrounded by farms and helped neighbours herd sheep and cattle into the field. My body of work called ‘Sire’ looks at the genomics of modern cattle breeding.

Illness and the influence of the stars

Could alien germs from space have caused major pandemics across the world? Taras Young investigates the ideas of a few unconventional scientists who believe this to be the case.

The sweet sound of synthetic speech

After Alex experienced a serious deterioration in his sight, he came to rely on artificial voices to help him with everyday tasks. Find out how synthetic speech came to be developed.

Happiness in time

Trying to define happiness is like trying to grasp water: it evades us, constantly changing and becoming evident only in retrospect.

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.

Rose Mackenberg’s deceptive activism

Discover how a New York private investigator became part of Houdini’s mission to expose the fraudulent mediums making money from their vulnerable, grieving clients.

Acid and the sexual psychonauts

How LSD fuelled one woman’s journey of sexual self-discovery in the late 1950s.

The shape of thought

Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s description of the moment in 1887 when he saw a brain cell for the first time never fails to move neuroscientist Richard Wingate to tears. Here he captures that enduring sense of wonder.

Virtual reality and the fix of the future

Virtual reality, with its complex sensory tricks, takes us beyond the real world. Find out how these potentially addictive experiences can harm us – or might even have therapeutic uses.

Self-obsessing in the age of selfies

The tiny, joyful spark of a social media ‘like’ can lead to a damaging obsession. Find out how far people will go when their phone addiction gets the upper hand.

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.