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The white tears of Taranaki
Taranaki in Aotearoa, New Zealand, is home to the world’s largest dairy factory. Sarah Hopkinson questions the price paid by an area dominated by monoculture.
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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.
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Tracing the toxic story of tear gas
Investigating tear gas – from factory to Black Lives Matter protest – Imani Jacqueline Brown uncovers a toxic legacy where pollution, violence and racism are intimately entwined.
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How hip-hop can save your mental health
Hip-hop is an unusual tool in the mental health professional’s armoury. But fans and performers can testify to the sympathetic and restorative powers of the genre.
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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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Conserving Audrey
Elena describes how specially designed storage allows Audrey’s scrapbooks to retain all traces of her creative process, although their intrinsic fragility means deterioration is almost inevitable.
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Reversing the psychiatric gaze
Nineteenth-century psychiatrists were keen to categorise their patients’ illnesses reductively – by their physical appearance. But we can see a far more complex picture of mental distress, revealed by those patients able to express their inner worlds in art.
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Confession as therapy in the Middle Ages
The line between confession and counselling has been blurred for centuries.
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Healing hard-working hands
The names we use to describe different hand injuries tell us about history, gender and class. Occupational therapist María Cristina Jiménez explores those injuries, and the changing ways we talk about them.
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Written on my body
Scars mean David Jesudason has never enjoyed seeing his reflection. Recounting the stories behind the marks on his face and body, he finds the only one that symbolises hope and happiness.
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Life on the line
Former Samaritans helpline volunteer Katy Georgiou recalls the desperate voices she heard during her night shifts, and those whose isolation she helped to alleviate.
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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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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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The making of ‘Quacks’
How do you create a medical comedy that’s authentic and laugh-out-loud funny?
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Birthdays, appraisals and Harold Shipman
Our anonymous GP ponders how a prolific serial murderer has increased the workload of every family doctor.
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Daniel Regan on using photography to manage emotions
Artist Daniel Regan manages his emotions and stays grounded through photography, allowing him to engage in the world around him.
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Born different
For Chris North, being born intersex in the 1940s meant his many childhood hospital visits, tests and operations were not explained or discussed. As he reveals, doctors encouraged strict secrecy.
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Why the truth is better than a happy ending
Caroline Butterwick often uses lived experience to inform her journalism, but she’s discovered a tension between the truth and stories that will sell.
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A freezer full of breastmilk
When new mum Alev Scott began pumping her milk between feeds, she soon found she was freezing more breastmilk than her baby would ever need. So Alev began to investigate ways to share her oversupply.
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Finding solidarity in arachnophobia
Arachnophobia is very different from just disliking spiders. Izzie Price shares the reality of having the phobia, and explores its likely origins.
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Thalidomide survivors in the 21st century
As thalidomide survivors enter their 60s, they look back on their lives and the legacy of the thalidomide catastrophe.
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The psychological impact of nuclear war
How would you hold up psychologically if a nuclear bomb was dropped? Discover the British government’s secret predictions from the 1980s.
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The smile catchers
From facial recognition to emojis in apps, find out how the monitoring of emotions is used to get more out of workers.
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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.
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Investigating what lithium is and how it works
The more questions Laura Grace Simpkins asked about lithium, the more she realised how little is known about this powerful drug and how it affects our mental health.