Stories

Our words and pictures explore the connections between science, medicine, life and art. Dive into a story no matter where in the world you are. (Want to write for us? Here's how.)

Coloured line engraving of a woman swimming in the waves of the sea whilst behind people stand on the beach and cliffs.
  • Image gallery

Backstroke to the future

Now one of the most popular forms of exercise, the health-giving properties of swimming have not always been recognised. Dive into a gallery that charts the course from water as site of danger to a space of health.

Part of From Our Collections

Cyborgs comic by Rob Bidder (detail)
  • Comic

Cyborgs

Are your mobile calendar, camera and calls making you into a cellular cyborg?

Part of Body Squabbles

Photograph of the profile of a mannequin's head in front of a tree trunk. In the background an out-of-focus young woman approaches.
  • Essay

Why the scariest monsters look almost human

Something is wrong, but you’re not sure what. Amy Jones explores exactly why your worst nightmare is the monster that’s almost human.

Part of Future Humans

An illustration in which a young woman in a hat stands behind four eerie-looking pre-teen children. In the foreground is a gramophone; in the background are a space rocket, a satellite and a radio.
  • Essay

The unearthly children of science fiction’s Cold War

In the 1950s a new figure emerged in British novels, film and television: a disturbing young alien that revealed postwar society’s fear of the unruly power of teenagers.

Part of Future Humans

Black and white still from a film showing a boy in a bed wearing a space helmet and playing with a model spacecraft, with other space-themed toys and comics on his lap.
  • Image gallery

Drugs, space travel and the ‘age of promise’

Space-age wonder drug Terramycin promised utopia, but might instead have triggered one of the biggest threats to our future.

Part of Future Humans

Intoxicating Histories

Read our six-part story on intoxicants, the different forms they can take, and the blurry lines between safe and dangerous, legal and illegal.

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Photograph of a robot holding a small dog on a lead, standing on a typical suburban pavement in front of a house.
  • Essay

Artificial intelligence and the dream of eternal life

Until now, eternal life was the stuff of fiction, or in the unknowable realms of religion. But an artificial intelligence that ‘remembers’ the whole of an individual’s experience could be the way to life after death.

Part of Future Humans

Skull comic by Rob Bidder (detail)
  • Comic

Skull

Give thanks every day to your skull for holding your face in place.

Part of Body Squabbles

A human eye within which there is sky, and the image of a missile
  • Essay

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.
Illustration of two doctors coughing and talking to each other in a GP office. There are game-like bars over their heads, representing their level of health.
  • Essay

When doctors get sick

Feeling guilty about developing a health problem, our anonymous GP contemplates how the system could better support doctors when they’re sick.

Part of The Secret GP

Image of colour manuscript in gold and blue, representing a horoscope. Large circle is in the middle with smaller circles in the centre. Inside these are symbols representing the signs of the zodiac.
  • Image gallery

Fantasies of the future

How accurately can we imagine the future? These past prognostications suggest that we cannot escape the pull of our own time and its biases.

Part of From Our Collections

Grease comic by Rob Bidder (detail)
  • Comic

Grease

Stains on your pillow are evidence of a late-night sebum party in your head.

Part of Body Squabbles