Erythromelalgia: When Your Feet Turn Into Hot Coals
A rare nerve disorder that makes hands and feet burn so ferociously sufferers dunk them in ice and risk frostbite while doctors tinker with sodium channel tricks.Read More 
They Banned Coffee For Being Too Chatty
Centuries ago courts and sultans tried to outlaw the caffeine-fuelled gossip clubs called coffeehouses - and they were terrified for good reasons.Read More 
The Postman Who Mail-Ordered a Palace
He was a rural French postie who spent 33 years carting pebbles on his rounds and turned them into a proper palace that still makes architects blush.Read More 
Stendhal Syndrome: When Art Steals Your Breath
Florence will charm you senseless; people have literally fainted in front of Botticelli and doctors took notes.Read More 
Thorny Devil Drinks With Its Skin
Darling, this prickly Aussie lizard channels dew and rain across its body like a built-in straw and engineers have been taking notes.Read More 
Those Dolphins That Wear Sponges - Properly Clever
In Shark Bay some bottlenose dolphins jam a marine sponge on their rostrum, go rooting for dinner and teach their kids the trick like it's family gossip.Read More 
Hakarl: How Iceland Ferments a Poisonous Shark and Sells It With Swagger
They take a urea-soaked Greenland shark, bury it like a secret, dry it till the poison is gone, and then invite you to pretend the ammonia is 'flavor'.Read More 
They Ate Arsenic For a Pretty Face, Honestly
Victorian ladies popped arsenic tonics and 'complexion wafers' to look pale and flawless, then wondered why their teeth fell out and their skin joked back.Read More 
Spotted Hyenas: The Ladies Who Mean Business
Meet the hyena females who pee, mate and give birth through a showy faux-penis and run the joint-ruthless, regal, and oddly elegant.Read More 
The Sodder Children: A Christmas Vanish
On Christmas Eve 1945 a West Virginia house burned and five of the Sodder kids never reappeared-no bones, no bodies, and a family left to run a private detective agency called stubbornness.Read More
