Look at that little black and white photo. Three generations in one picture: three generations who will have experienced vastly different lives. This photograph was taken in the 1980s in the Siberian town of Nelemnoye, home to the Yukaghir people. The old grandmother in the […]
Month: January 2018

Meeting your ancestors: Two young men, one hundred years apart
Do you know that strange realisation you have, when you see old pictures of your grandparents, or even great grandparents? And you realise that they too were young once; that they had this whole life that you know very little about? And that their world […]

Magic and Medicine: On the benefits of fungi, blood, and iron paste
Did you know that the famous 5.300-year-old ‘iceman’ Ötzi found in the Italian Alps in the 1990s carried around a fungus that worked as an antibiotic? And that it would have helped him alleviate the symptoms of the parasites scientists have found in his colon? […]

Secrets of a metal heart
Someone, living in Kabul in the 1940s owned this little heart shaped box. I wonder what they kept in it. What secrets did the little metal heart keep safe? Maybe it belonged to a young woman, who kept her earrings and trinkets safe beneath its […]

A little extra luck for 2018—we need it!
I think most of us will agree that 2017 has been a bit of a crazy year. It has been the year of Trump and his Twitter wars on everything from North Korea to Meryl Streep to his own White House staff. There has been […]