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.)

Illustration by Ana Bustelo of woman lying down taking LSD
  • Essay

Acid and the sexual psychonauts

How LSD fuelled one woman’s journey of sexual self-discovery in the late 1950s.
  • Image gallery

Miracle cure-alls throughout the ages

From the elixir of life to radium, humans have always searched for a panacea: something to cure every ill. But instead it’s only highlighted our anxieties and preoccupations throughout history.

Part of From Our Collections

  • Comic

Tattoos

Tattoos to remember, tattoos to enhance, tattoos to disguise – which sort of tattoo is for you?

Part of Body Squabbles

Photograph of writer Gwen Smith sat behind a table which is covered in vegetables, holding carrots in one hand and a green health drink in the other. She is looking sceptically at the vegetables.
  • Essay

The sickness in the wellness industry

In recovery from anorexia, Gwen Smith began to realise how the wellness industry needs its followers to feel bad about themselves in order to make money out them.
Illustration of doctor showering patients with sleeping pills
  • Essay

Why I don’t like prescribing sleeping pills

Sleeping pills often seem a simple option for aiding sleep or when dealing with anxiety, but there are many risks, and our anonymous GP is not afraid to say no to patients.

Part of The Secret GP

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.

Photograph of an alcoholic spirit bottle on a colourful background.
  • Serial
Part1

Booze and bad behaviour

Part of Intoxicating Histories

Photograph of a pretend sheet of LSD tabs with a butterfly motif, against a colourful abstract background.
  • Serial
Part2

Tripping for spiritualism and science

Part of Intoxicating Histories

Photograph of an e-cigarette, against a colourful abstract background surrounded by wisps of smoke.
  • Serial
Part3

Inhaling happiness and gasping for a high

Part of Intoxicating Histories

Photograph of syringe filled with liquid sticking out of a colourful background.
  • Serial
Part4

Deadly doses and the hardest of hard drugs

Part of Intoxicating Histories

Photograph of a smart phone held in a selfie-stick, in front of a colourful swirly background. The background pattern is repeated on the phone screen.
  • Serial
Part5

Self-obsessing in the age of selfies

Part of Intoxicating Histories

Photograph of a VR headset on a colourful patterned background.
  • Serial
Part6

Virtual reality and the fix of the future

Part of Intoxicating Histories

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Photograph of an architectural detail inside the Paimio Sanatorium, designed and built by the architect Alvar Aalto.
  • Image gallery

Exploring Alvar Aalto’s Paimio Sanatorium

Seemingly small features help to make Alvar Aalto’s Paimio Sanatorium in Finland one healing element for the tuberculosis patients he designed it for.
Cover image from Tiffany Watt Smith’s ‘Schadenfreude’
  • Book extract

How to manage your Schadenfreude

Do you sometimes enjoy witnessing others’ distress? Tiffany Watt Smith suggests five ways to manage - and even embrace - the perplexing emotion of Schadenfreude.

Part of Inside Our Books

Print of old nose diagram
  • Book extract

My important, ridiculous nose

The nose is a much-maligned appendage, but it’s a powerful organ capable of invoking powerful emotions from past memories and sexual attraction.

Part of Inside Our Books

Photograph of a young woman sitting at a wooden table in a hermitage. On the other side the table is an empty chair carved from a tree trunk. behind her are three small arched windows which show the trees and mist outside.
  • Image gallery

The hermit life from medieval to modern

Can hermits get lonely? Explore solitary lives through the ages, from early religious ascetics to children imprisoned in churches, and on to those compelled to withdraw from modern life in the 21st century.

Part of The Loneliness Epidemic

Photograph of a young man sat in a deck chair on a sandy beach, looking out to sea. To his right is an empty deck chair.
  • Essay

Robinson Crusoe and the morality of solitude

Robinson Crusoe, fiction’s most famous castaway, was certainly isolated, but did he suffer the intrinsically modern affliction of loneliness?

Part of The Loneliness Epidemic

Photograph of a man sat in a living room armchair looking out of a window, his chin resting on his hand. To his right is an identical armchair which is empty,
  • Essay

Sick of being lonely

When his relationship ended, Thom James first withdrew from the world, then began to suffer from illnesses with no apparent physical cause.

Part of The Loneliness Epidemic