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Landscape

Sometimes the body feels like an unfamiliar landscape that you have no map for.

Titans in the landscape

Water of life?

From ancient sources of spiritual sustenance to the modern spa, Ross MacFarlane traces a brief history of healing waters.

Wetland

In this episode, JC and her contributors invite you to rethink the idea of of boggy marshlands, and see the ecological health, biodiversity, and carbon capturing benefits of these misunderstood spaces.

The post-war adverts that tried to cure lonely women

Isolated housewives, lonely female office workers: while the 1950s saw the birth of a general concern about them, manufacturers also spotted an opportunity. Find out how advertising promised that products could salve solitude.

Wasteland

In the final episode of ‘The Root of the Matter’, JC takes us to the wasteland. It’s a space that can teach us some of the most profound lessons about the plant world and our relationship to it.

Talent, tech and visual art

Jamie Hale finds a combination of talent and technology are crucial when it comes to creating great visual art, but how do you keep working when your circumstances are in constant flux?

How to cure the eco-anxious

Could community activism be the key to overcoming a fear of environmental collapse?

Notes upon arrival

In an effort to feel at home back in the country of her birth, poet Bhanu Kapil recognises the small revelations of nature in a chilly UK spring as a way to reconnect.

London, city of lost hospitals

Come on the trail of hundreds of ghost hospitals, whose remnants hold clues to medical treatments of the past.

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.

Graveyards as green getaways

Stressed city dwellers have been visiting cemeteries in greater numbers since the start of the pandemic. Discover how, despite the constant reminders of death, graveyards bring visitors a sense of renewal.

Dying to be in nature

The modern funeral business is one that uses up precious resources and pollutes the planet. But you can make sure it’s only your memory that leaves its mark with these new and natural ways to leave this earth.

Faces

Your face is a unique landscape. Do you like the terrain you see?

You

What if your body was just a host landscape for another sentient creature?

The unearthly children of science fiction’s Cold War

In the 1950s a new figure emerged in British novels, film and television: a disturbing young alien that revealed postwar society’s fear of the unruly power of teenagers.

Dazzling luxury

As the 20th century dawned, both elite and masses basked in the marvellous and unearthly glow of the new electric illumination.

Interpreting the Ayurvedic Man

A British Sign Language video is the latest interpretation of an unique 18th-century Nepali painting about Ayurvedic medicine.

Charged bodies

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

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.

The ancient doctors who refused payment

The NHS might only be 70 years old, but the idea of free healthcare goes back to Ancient Greece, when devout doctors provided their services without charge.

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?

Designing better mental health wards

Bringing colour and natural light to tired, grubby mental health wards has a measurably positive effect on patients. A few groundbreaking projects are showing the way.

How Californian dairy farmers stole a way of life

When European settlers drained a beautiful Californian lake to provide dairy grazing, the lives of nearby Native American peoples changed out of all recognition. But recent rainfall is strengthening hopes of a return to the old ways.

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.