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“Everybody desires a degree of independence”

I’m 26, and building a network of friends and my career. Unlike most people my age, I’m entirely dependent on carers to achieve this.

Belonging, babies and self-belief

As a first-time mother living abroad, it seemed too exhausting to truly connect with new acquaintances. Instead, Tanya Perdikou began to make a kind of peace with herself.

The friendly societies and healthcare

For a couple of centuries, friendly societies plugged the healthcare gap between expensive private care and charitable institutions for many thousands of people in the UK.

Beyond a green carpet

Plant ecologist Sara Middleton explores the amazing symbiotic relationships between the species that make up grasslands, and considers their future as rain becomes more scarce.

What lies ahead

After five long months, Mark Thomas is moving out of his mum’s and looking ahead. In the final episode of his podcast, Mark asks his network of health workers how they feel about the future.

WhatsApp aunties and the spread of fake news

The advantages of WhatApp chat groups – especially as a cost-free way of keeping in touch with family around the world – make them fertile ground for the spread of bogus medical advice. Writer Rianna Walcott explores how to encourage ‘aunties’ in the community to question the truth of unattributed health hoaxes.

Renaissance women and their killer cosmetics

In this extract from ‘How to be a Renaissance Woman’, Jill Burke delves into a complex world of beauty products, poison and patriarchy – and reveals the impossible contradictions of femininity faced by 16th-century women.

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.

Vaccinating a community, saving lives

Doctor Jane Harvey always goes the extra mile to care for her patients, and in recent months that’s extended to huge efforts to save lives with her coronavirus vaccination push.

A bad atmosphere in the Balkans

The citizens of Belgrade, one of the most polluted cities in Europe, are finally pushing back against the polluters, whose activities they’ve been encouraged to accept.

Searching for a place to call home

Wherever she’s lived, Tanya Perdikou has rarely felt at home, and numerous moves have perpetuated a sense of disconnection. But signs from nature offer powerful moments of connection.

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.

Social isolation and the search for sanctuary

Threatened with deportation, Furaha Asani turned to her church for support. Met with silence and disinterest, she walked away, but argues that churches should do much more for migrants.

Titans in the landscape

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.

Coasting to catastrophe

In climate change, everything – and everyone – is connected. The watery process that will gradually cut off the Isle of Thanet from the British mainland has begun, and everyone in the UK needs to pay attention.

A journey through slime

Did you know that slime cells signal to each other and seek out multiple partners? Welcome to bath time with Abi Palmer – and some revolting yet awe-inspiring grey slime.

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.

Eugenics and the welfare state

Indy Bhullar explores the ideas of William Beveridge and Richard Titmuss, who were strongly influenced by eugenic thinking, and yet championed the idea of the welfare state.

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.

How to rehabilitate the concrete jungle

A huge concrete housing estate from the 1960s, now seen as an ecological mistake, is being drastically redeveloped, compounding the environmental errors. Owen Hatherley posits a more creative solution.

Lying low for lockdown and beyond

For Liz Carr the chances of catching Covid-19 are the same as for anyone else, but as a Disabled person she's at much greater risk of not getting the treatment she needs if she falls ill.

The colonist who faced the blue terror

India, 1857. In a British enclave, Katherine Bartrum watches her friend, and then her family, succumb to the deadly cholera.

Indian botanicals and heritage wars

Colonial botanical texts, as astonishingly beautiful as they are, may cast very dark shadows.

The anatomy of a brain dissection

Dissecting the brain after death not only helps confirm a diagnosis, but it can also teach us so much more about the symptoms and causes of brain diseases and how to treat them.