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Ken’s ten: looking back at ten years of Wellcome Collection
Wellcome Collection founder Ken Arnold picks his favourite exhibits.
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Found items
Books leave their traces in our minds, but we leave traces of ourselves in books too, as these fascinating items found inside old works show.
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Theriac: An ancient brand?
The name theriac survived for around for two millennia as a pharmaceutical term. But a ‘brand’ name is not always a guarantee of quality.
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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.
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Race, religion and the Black Madonna
Mystery and controversy surround the dark-skinned religious icon who represents the Virgin Mary throughout the Catholic world.
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Living with less for spiritual gain
Today, a minimalist lifestyle is trumpeted as a route to happiness. Find out what religious ascetics from history and modern proponents of the spartan-looking home can teach us.
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The complex longing for home
It could be mild, an almost poetic longing. Or it could be visceral, deep, an overwhelming feeling that eats into your everyday life. Come with Gail Tolley as she introduces a deep dive into homesickness.
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Getting the measure of pain
In the 20th century doctors tried to find a way to measure pain. But even when ‘objective’ measures were rejected, an accurate understanding of another’s pain remained frustratingly elusive.
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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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- Book extract
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.
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Spanish flu and the depiction of disease
The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 killed many millions more than World War I did. Find out why contemporary artistic depictions of its devastating impact are so rare.
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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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The intimate and invasive art of ethical taxidermy
Does displaying dead animals bring us closer to nature, or drive us further apart?
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Indian botanicals and heritage wars
Colonial botanical texts, as astonishingly beautiful as they are, may cast very dark shadows.