- Article
- Article
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.
- Article
- Article
The girl with no name
When a now anonymous teenager sold her tooth for transplant, she couldn’t have predicted that she’d end up at the heart of a troubling story about 18th-century beauty ideals.
- Article
- Article
Surviving fatness
It took time for LMM to discover that being fat and poor are mutually exclusive. Here she describes resisting fatphobia by being visible and leaning in to the stereotype.
- Article
- Article
How to be poor and happy
Money, security, self-sufficiency and charitable giving have long been linked to happiness. But what if you’re working class?
- Article
- Article
NHS strikes and the decade of discontent
When the social unrest of the 1970s spread to the NHS, dissatisfied staff challenged the status quo for the first time in quarter of a century.
- Article
- Article
When everyday environments become anxious spaces
Social anxiety disorder isolates those who experience it. Part of the solution is to design public spaces with mental health in mind.
- Article
- Article
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.
- Article
- Article
Drugs in Victorian Britain
Many common remedies were taken throughout the 19th century, with more people than ever using them. What was the social and cultural context of this development?
- Article
- Article
Vivekananda’s journey
How a young Indian monk’s travels around the world inspired modern yoga.
- Article
- Article
Why we no longer keep our dead at home
Today in the UK we rarely sit with, touch, or perhaps even see our loved ones after they’ve died. Past practices were very different and, Claire Cock-Starkey argues, were more helpful for those grieving.
- Article
- Article
Yoga gets physical
Modern yoga owes a debt to the physical culture movement that created a world obsessed with health and fitness.
- Article
- Article
The stranger who started an epidemic
New Orleans, 1853. James McGuigan arrives in the port city and succumbs to yellow fever.
- Interview
- Interview
Inside the mind of George Vasey, co-curator of Misbehaving Bodies
Discover how curator George Vasey honoured the approaches of Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery, who mischievously subvert clichés around illness and death.
- Article
- Article
Succumbing to stimming in dance
As a child, Susanna Dye felt ashamed of their need to stim, but has found a way to incorporate these repetitive movements into their creative practice as a dancer and facilitator.
- Book extract
- Book extract
The 200-year search for normal people
Sarah Chaney poses the question we’ve likely all asked at some point in our lives: 'Am I normal?’, and explores whether normality even exists.
- Article
- Article
Intelligence testing, race and eugenics
Specious ideas and assumptions about intelligence that were born during the great flourishing of eugenics well over 100 years ago still inform the British education system today, as Nazlin Bhimani reveals.
- Book extract
- Book extract
How to stay together while keeping apart
Vivek Murthy explores how we can keep physically distant while staying emotionally connected.
- Article
- Article
Duelling doctors
An enduring enthusiasm for 18th-century gentlemen to defend their ‘honour’ by duelling placed doctors in a delicate position. Specially when they faced being shot themselves.
- Book extract
- Book extract
A history of sex for sale
Kate Lister’s cultural history of the sex trade puts sex workers centre stage. In this extract, she argues why the way we write, think and talk about sex work matters.
- Article
- Article
Sharing Nature: Parks for people
Paula Broom’s photograph of Sydney’s Centennial Park shows the complexity and joy we find in urban greenery.
- Article
- Article
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?
- Article
- Article
Coleridge’s hypochondria
An intense focus on his own bodily sensations led poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge to self-medicate with narcotics. But this fascination also put Coleridge ahead of the medical sensibilities of his day.
- Article
- Article
Pain and the power of activism
Today, women with endometriosis have more access to better information than ever before. Jaipreet Virdi applauds the shared stories, online communities and self-help books empowering women in pain.
- Article
- Article
“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.
- Book extract
- Book extract
How stories bring us together
Elif Shafak considers how hard it is to be heard in our divided world, but how listening can nurture wisdom, connection and empathy.