6 h. ago How listening to music can help women undergoing IVF get pregnant

One theory, say the researchers, is that music stimulates the release of the brain chemical dopamine, which helps regulate mood and emotions, and which also reduces inflammation.

Politics

6 d. ago ‘It’s less intimidating, less vulnerable’: why cooking in company helps us to talk

The pressure’s off when we’re not staring at each other, we can relax and have a nice chatOn the day after Boxing Day last year, my dad and I went to buy some cabbage. My aunt and cousins were joining us for dinner that evening and we had a meal to prepare. The local supermarket was closed and the cabbage, sourced from an Italian deli around the corner, was obscenely overpriced. In a bind, we bought some anyway and headed back home to begin cooking. Standing around the kitchen island chopping and peeling vegetables, preparing a rib of beef and assembling a side dish of dauphinoise potatoes, we listened to music and chatted. The meal was a success and the cabbage – lightly browned and decorated with caraway seeds – tasty. But most important was that, for the time we had spent cooking, I felt closer to my dad.This kind of intimacy almost always occurs for me while I’m cooking with someone. When I was 14, I was paired with a classmate in food technology where we were tasked with making...

Politics

6 d. ago Microplastics found in human ovary follicular fluid for the first time

Peer-reviewed study’s findings raises fresh question on the toxic substances’ impact on fertilityMicroplastics have been found for the first time in human ovary follicular fluid, raising a new round of questions about the ubiquitous and toxic substances’ potential impact on women’s fertility.The new peer-reviewed research published in Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety checked for microplastics in the follicular fluid of 18 women undergoing assisted reproductive treatment at a fertility clinic in Salerno, Italy, and detected them in 14. Continue reading...

Politics

9 d. ago America used to fire the world’s imagination – but now the cultural conversation is being silenced | Van Badham

Not only are TV-watching, book-reading, show-going, music-listening travellers declining to visit the US, we have started to cease to imagine itThis week, fresh data revealed the United States has seen its biggest drop in Australian tourists since Covid. It’s hardly surprising. Innocent people are being snatched by authorities from American streets. Citizens of foreign countries are being stopped, shackled and detained. The EU is now sending its emissaries with burner phones, lest personal social media posts critical of President Trump be discovered by border agents and who knows what happens next? Forcible relocation to a Salvadorian supermax prison, seemingly without chance of release, is suddenly not out of the question.It all seems like something from Hollywood dystopia; the V series, maybe. Or Escape from New York. It’s pretty much the plot line of the first season of Andor – which I strongly recommend that everyone watch before the Trump regime clocks what that show is advisin...

Events

9 d. ago ‘One minute it’s “would you like to listen to Galaxie 500?”, the next humanity’s enslaved’: can anyone escape Spotify?

As a new book skewers Spotify’s effect on music, two Guardian music writers spent a week assessing the limits of living with and without itLaura Snapes, deputy music editor I was set the task of not listening to Spotify for a week, but Alexis, your task was much worse: only listening to Spotify-created playlists, and the songs it suggested to you based on your listening history. How did that go?Alexis Petridis, chief rock and pop critic One day in the car I just listened to nothing instead of facing it again. When it plays me songs I like, it’s not what I want to hear at that moment. That’s not to say the music it was recommending wasn’t good. One morning it played Schizophrenia by Sonic Youth. I love that song but I didn’t want to hear it then. It played me Billie Holliday’s Riffin’ the Scotch followed by My Bloody Valentine, which clearly demonstrates the great breadth of my music taste – but just because I like it all doesn’t mean I want to hear it all together. I didn’t like tha...

Politics

1 week ago Pregnant Bake Off star Laura Adlington, 36, reveals she 'wasted a lot of time and money' on fertility experts who told her to lose weight as she opens up about her IVF journey

Laura revealed in 2022 that she had to come to terms with the fact she may never have a family after being told by doctors she would need to lose around 14 stone.

Politics

1 week ago Music can lift mood, foster community and even rewire brains – but does it need to have a purpose?

The therapeutic role music can play is the focus of a string of new books and even an entire BBC radio station. But why can’t we just listen to music for music’s sake?Growing up, I never questioned the intrinsic value of classical music. My father practising classical and jazz guitar was the aural wallpaper to my childhood, and at my rural state school I took lessons on the recorder, the violin, the cello, the trombone, the piano. The after-school clubs on offer included, somewhat implausibly, an ocarina ensemble. Music was art, and wasn’t art the point of it all, when you got right down to it? The reason to live, after we cater for all our basic needs? It was certainly what led me to become first a classical musician, and then a music historian.But when my dad died unexpectedly in 2019, it threw my relationship with music into sharp relief. All of a sudden, I couldn’t bear listening to it. It was too painful, or it grated on my nerves and made me angry. I started to question how an...

Politics

1 week ago Bake Off star Laura Adlington announces pregnancy after nine year fertility struggle

Great British Bake Off finalist Laura Adlington has shared her “miracle” pregnancy news after nine years of struggling to conceive.

Politics

1 week ago Great British Bake Off star Laura Adlington announces 'miracle' pregnancy after years of struggles

Former Great British Bake Off runner up Laura Adlington has been delighted to announce she is pregnant after successfully conceiving a child with the help of IVF

Politics

1 week ago Laura Adlington, 36, is pregnant! GBBO star in 'shock' as she shares 'miracle' IVF baby news after nine years of infertility and previously being told to lose 14st to have a child

Laura Adlington is pregnant!

Events

2 w. ago Woman conceives a child with the help of a robot in AI powered pregnancy

The 40-year-old woman from Mexico had difficulty producing eggs and failed to get pregnant via IVF - so 'precise' AI was used with a 'level of accuracy beyond human capability'

Politics

4 w. ago Harry Styles listens to music through wired headphones as he passes a starstruck Deliveroo driver

Harry Styles was spotted listening to music through a pair of wired headphones while out and about in central London on Thursday afternoon.

Transport

4 w. ago Tina Malone details the moment she begged her IVF doctor on her 50th birthday to 'make her pregnant' after turning her life around and losing 12 stone following her previous rejection

Tina Malone has recalled the incredible moment she walked into her IVF doctor's office on her 50th birthday and begged him to 'make me pregnant'.

Politics