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FREAKY FASCINATIONS
The very idea of a freak show may be completely alien to our modern way of thinking, but the origins of this love affair with the unusual side of nature goes back hundreds, if not thousands of years. It ranges from Goliath in the Old Testament to the depictions of impish dwarfs that adorned the pottery and stonework of ancient Greece and Rome, and on to the underground dwellers of Norse and Germanic mythology who would both trick and curse unsuspecting humans for pleasure or revenge. Indeed, the original meaning of the word ‘freak’ is that of a sudden change, a trick or a prank, and as we shall see there is more than a little truth in this. For dwarfs in particular it was to be the royal houses…
Cow cuddling is healing hearts!
After yet another stressful day carrying an endless workload at her corporate job, 43-year-old Lisa Buccieri let out a sigh of frustration. “There has to be something better out there for me,” she blurted out loud in exasperation. Suddenly, memories of her past growing up on a dairy farm filled her mind. She had always gone to her cows when life got her down. Just a simple hug, their sweet grassy smell, the calm in their loving brown eyes as she just sat with them in the quiet, was all it took to give her just the therapy she needed. What if there was a way to start a cow cuddling business where others could feel that same comfort, too? she asked herself. For the last few years, she had…
‘WE HAVEN’T HAD LONG ENOUGH TO EVOLVE AND RESPOND TO FARMING LET ALONE THE IPHONE’
Human is the latest landmark documentary series from the BBC that turns attention on us. Who are we? How did we get here? Guiding us on the epic, mind-expanding journey is paleoanthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi, who has undergone her own radical evolution. As a teenager, she became a creationist missionary and applied to study Evolutionary Biology at Imperial College London, specifically aiming to disprove the theory – now she’s one of the leading lights in the field that’s constantly making new discoveries that reshape our thinking about who we are. The series tells us the story of humans so far. She tells Big Issue where we might be heading next. BIG ISSUE: You travelled all around the world to tell the story of our evolution. How did it feel to retrace…
