‘If you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll get bit’: can an alligator be man’s best friend?

WallyGator has been certified an emotional support animal and attracted crowds on a recent trip to Philadelphia

Side Effects by David Haslam review – what do we want from healthcare?

The ex-chair of Nice considers the spiralling costs of medical treatment and asks how we might fix a creaking NHS

Sleepless nights make people more selfish and asocial – study

Losing even one hour of rest reduces ‘innate desire of humans to help one another’, US research finds

The sento owners making group bathing in Japan cool again

Covid accelerated a decline but a new breed of bathhouse is reimagining a Japanese tradition

I had babies in Germany 10 years apart. This is what I learned about healthcare, motherhood and race

My son was born soon after we moved to Berlin to open a bookshop. Last year I had twins – and things went far less smoothly

‘I felt I was being assessed on my skin colour’: Black women around the world share their birth stories

From Rio to Reykjavik, London to Shanghai, Black women face a maternal health crisis. Six mothers share their stories of pregnancy, birth – and racism

Meditation app Calm sacks one-fifth of staff

Wellness tech company, which enjoyed a boom in custom during the Covid lockdown, has let 90 of its 400 staff go

Being cheerful on the outside can help you – and others – feel it on the inside

Cheerfulness can boost your energy levels, even in tough times – as philosophers and writers have long recognised, writes Donna Ferguson

Contemplation can help problem-solving and boost creativity, study claims

People prefer to keep busy rather than to enjoy a moment of reflection, researchers find

It took catching Covid to get my children out of my bed, but I can finally sleep again

After seven years of sleeping together, this bonding exercise was difficult to stop, and now I’m glad we’ve made the break, says Guardian columnist Emma Brockes