Science
video
Technology and the self
Greetings from Green Bank – the small town where modern technology is banned
10 minutes
essay
Illness and disease
The war on cancer
Is it time to abandon the century-old idea that cancer is best met with a ‘fight’ from patients and their doctors alike?
Elaine Schattner
essay
Consciousness and altered states
Animal, vegetable, mineral
Cruel and unscientific, the ‘vegetative state’ diagnosis stems from a hierarchical and bigoted view of all living things
Ben Platts-Mills
video
Social psychology
Social contagions can cause genuine illness, and TikTok may be a superspreader
10 minutes
essay
Mental health
The helpful delusion
Evidence is growing that mental illness is more than dysfunction, with enormous implications for treatment
Justin Garson
essay
Illness and disease
Are they the canaries?
People with multiple chemical sensitivity seem to be allergic to the world. What, if anything, can medicine do for them?
Xi Chen
video
Mood and emotion
‘Let me dream you into my reality’: memories illuminate an unthinkable isolation
12 minutes
video
Art
A massive art installation attempts to put the COVID-19 deaths in perspective
15 minutes
essay
Stories and literature
Kafka the hypochondriac
Franz Kafka believed illness was at the root of his writing yet he embraced wellness fads with hearty vigour
Will Rees
essay
Mood and emotion
Hope is not optimism
Even when you know that prospects are grim, hope can help. It’s not just a feeling, but a way to step into the future
David B Feldman & Benjamin W Corn
essay
Medicine
The body is not a machine
Modern biomedicine sees the body as a closed mechanistic system. But illness shows us to be permeable, ecological beings
Nitin K Ahuja
essay
History of science
Healthcare workers of yore
Looking past conventional histories of medicine we see that women delivered much of medieval healthcare. Just as today
Sara Ritchey
video
Meaning and the good life
To know or not to know? Lillian weighs the costs of a life-changing genetic test
10 minutes
essay
Food and drink
The food wars
Vitamins or whole foods; high-fat or low-fat; sugar or sweetener. Will we ever get a clear idea about what we should eat?
Amos Zeeberg
essay
Pleasure and pain
Apocalypse, please
The COVID-19 pandemic, like other catastrophes before it, got some of us hooked on phobic energy and terror. Why?
Travis Alexander
essay
Art
Art from a mind at sea
Louise’s Parkinsonism didn’t tamp her artistic drive, but exposed the link between perception, thought and creativity
Michael Stanley
video
Anthropology
On the run from COVID-19, an Indigenous family treks deep into the Amazon rainforest
17 minutes
essay
Global history
Plagues and empires
What can the decline of the Roman Empire and the end of European feudalism tell us about COVID-19 and the future of the West?
John Rapley
essay
Mental health
The seed of suffering
The p-factor is the dark matter of psychiatry: an invisible, unifying force that might lie behind a multitude of mental disorders
Alex Riley
video
Wellbeing
The controversial New Age guru who believed self-love healed all – even AIDS
18 minutes
video
Pleasure and pain
After losing his sight, a skateboarder takes an unexpected path to realising his dreams
12 minutes
video
Biology
When medicine offers no relief, a biohacker begins a radical self-experiment
12 minutes
essay
Illness and disease
Natural and unnatural
‘Natural’ remedies are metaphysically inconsistent and unscientific. Yet they offer something that modern medicine cannot
Alan Jay Levinovitz
essay
Space exploration
A lunar pandemic
In the 1960s, NASA went to huge expense to contain possible pathogens from the Moon. What can we learn from the attempt?
Dagomar Degroot