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Translation

It can be OK to ask a direct question… sometimes skirting around the topic of cancer can make it the elephant in the room that hangs around awkwardly.

Ayurvedic Man: BSL

BSL translation of the Sanskrit Ayurvedic Man text.

Lustmord and the three perspectives of murder

Artist Jenny Holzer's work shines a light on the three perspectives of sexual murder: the victim, the perpetrator and the observer.

Giving shape to sound

Fascinated by language and how music feels, Deaf rapper Signkid creates tracks that give shape to sound. He discusses inspiration, access and performing for all audiences, D/deaf and hearing alike.

Lovesickness and ‘The Love Thief’

An 11th-century poem of love, lust and possibly gruesome death still resonates today.

Bringing Braille back to the modern world

For anyone who thinks Braille is so last century, read on. New tech is helping dust Braille down and bring it to today’s visually impaired people.

Interpreting the Ayurvedic Man

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

Yoga gets physical

Modern yoga owes a debt to the physical culture movement that created a world obsessed with health and fitness.

The freedom to provoke

Jamie Hale talks to performer and director Emma Selwyn about the joy of creating work that celebrates, rather than suppresses, autistic behaviours.

Isolation

Quarantine translation: terror with undertones of boredom and low level anxiety.

Indian botanicals and heritage wars

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

Migraine, creativity and me

Novelist Lydia Ruffles explores how migraine has made her mind stretch, shrink, widen and change, and how it’s influenced her art.

Providing care across languages

When medics are taught in English but their patients speak other languages, effective communication becomes fraught. Niyoshi Shah explores the linguistic gaps between patient and doctor.

Vivekananda’s journey

How a young Indian monk’s travels around the world inspired modern yoga.

Chillies and the trouble with Scoville

Measuring the heat of these peppers can leave you a little lukewarm.

Ayurveda: Knowledge for long life

The story of medicine in India is rich and complex. Aarathi Prasad investigates how it came to be this way.

The power of unicorns

Discover the unlikely connection between pharmaceuticals and unicorns.

Where hoarding and dementia meet

As Grandma’s dementia advanced, the things she’d amassed became more important: they consoled her. Clearing safe walkways through the piles became the first – though unwelcome – compromise.

Why zombies can’t help coming back

Although it might appear that zombies are a 20th-century phenomenon, created for the horror-movie industry, they’ve actually been around since medieval times. Find out what zombies like to do, and how to get rid of them.

Titans in the landscape

Drawing the human animal

We might try to deny our animal instincts, but this series of extraordinary 17th-century drawings suggests they are only too apparent.

Seeds for the future

Indigenous groups have a key role as guardians of biodiversity, and their knowledge could help us all preserve our world. To survive, we all need to collaborate, reject prejudice, and share what we know.

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.

Do you see what I see?

Is reality actually what you see, or just an elaborate illusion?

Plant portraits

The beautiful and mysterious illustrations in medieval herbals convey a wealth of knowledge about the plants they portray.