Stories

We tell stories about health and human experience. Our words and pictures make connections, provoke new thinking and share lived experiences. Propose a story to us.

  • Comic

Unpaid break

Taking a break at work, you look out of the window and feel...

Part of Safe for Work

  • Article

Epidemic threats and racist legacies

Epidemiology is the systematic, data-driven study of health and disease in populations. But as historian Jacob Steere-Williams suggests, this most scientific of fields emerged in the 19th century imbued with a doctrine of Western imperialism – a legacy that continues to influence how we talk about disease.

  • Comic

Doing emails

A person pauses while typing an email, sensing their fingers resting on the keys...

Part of Safe for Work
  • In pictures

Sexy (medieval) times

Penis badges, the mysterious Office of the Night, and sneezing as a form of contraception – enter the surprising world of medieval sex. It wasn’t cold baths and self-denial for everyone, as Katherine Harvey explains.

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Thank you for listening

The most important part of the job.

Part of Sorry to keep you waiting

Exploring our mental health

A selection of stories about the historical and social contexts of mental health.

  • Serial

Lithium Mania

Laura Grace Simpkins investigates her relationship with her medication and her mental health, asking if lithium is the bitter pill she has to swallow.

  • Article

Cracks that let the light in

Rai Waddingham lives with voices other people cannot hear. Here she describes how she has come to accept, understand and calm her voices, and to acknowledge her strength.

Part of Broken hearts not broken brains
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How the mental health system fails Black people

Accessing mental healthcare as a Black woman can be a challenging experience. Rianna Walcott shares her story, alongside those of three other women, to reveal the barriers she faced.

Part of Being patient
  • Article

Confession as therapy in the Middle Ages

The line between confession and counselling has been blurred for centuries.

Part of Therapy
  • Article

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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Desperate housewives and suburban neurosis

Discover how a pioneering health centre replaced housewives’ supposedly empty home lives with a social space that encouraged healthy child rearing.

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Books

We publish thought-provoking books exploring health and human experiences.

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Illness and the influence of the stars

Could alien germs from space have caused major pandemics across the world? Taras Young investigates the ideas of a few unconventional scientists who believe this to be the case.

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Why we need to decolonise the skies

Astronomer Dr Tana Joseph explores how rethinking way we look at the stars could improve our relationship with our own planet and make it a healthier place to live.

  • Comic

Humans of healthcare

Just everyday heroes.

Part of Sorry to keep you waiting
  • Article

The family food of a kebab van man

Melek Erdal celebrates the physical and mental resilience of her father Yusuf, forged by isolation and dislocation, and reinforced by the distinctive cuisine of his home country, Turkey.

Part of The Taste of Health
  • Article

Natural eating in Jamaica and the Caribbean

Riaz Phillips is passionate about the Jamaican food he grew up with and plant-based Caribbean food he came to later, like roti, baiganee and vegan stews and curries. Here he explores the origins and surging popularity of these natural ‘health foods’.

Part of The Taste of Health
  • Article

The food diary and the power of unhealth

Food diaries might appear to present a strictly factual record of dietary choices, but what they don’t include is the more revealing story, as Virginia Hartley suggests.

Part of The Taste of Health
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