The brain is not hard-wired to deal with a Lotto win. When Margaret Heaney compared the winning numbers with those on her ticket, images of them travelled in waves to her occipital lobe, just above the nape of her neck, where the brain runs a real-time map of the visual world...

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The pursuit of happiness

State of mind

The number of New Zealanders seeking help for mental illness is rising: it’s now the third-highest cause of ill health in the country, and doctors, specialists and community organisations are struggling to meet the need for treatment and intensive care. Meanwhile, researchers are attempting to identify what takes place in the brain before and during a mental illness. It’s a young and inexact science—and at the moment, it’s all we’ve got.

No place like home

More than 30,000 New Zealanders lack a proper home, and live instead in cars, caravan parks, night shelters, boarding houses or on the street. In this country, people lead increasingly precarious lives.

Slaves to the rhythm

Your body is controlled by chemicals, telling you when to wake, when to eat, even controlling your physical strength.

Out in the cold

After 76 years of ministering to the nation’s children, health camps have become a uniquely New Zealand institution.

Give the gift that lasts all year

Subscribe for a loved one before December 11 and they'll receive a free 2019 wall calendar featuring the finalists of this the New Zealand Geographic Photographer of the Year competition. With lush new issues arriving every two months, it will be a gift enjoyed by the whole family.

Visit the Poor Knights Islands from your armchair...

New Zealand Geographic's NZVR Project lets you travel through New Zealand's wild places using virtual reality on any phone, tablet or desktop computer. Glide with stingrays at the Poor Knights, swim through swaying sargassum weed at the Three Kings, dive with pilot whales off the edge of the continental shelf, explore the shallows of Parengarenga Harbour, experience the charms and challenges of the Hauraki Gulf... even swim with humpback whales in Niue!

Production was funded by Foundation North's Gulf Innovation Fund Together (GIFT), NZonAir and supported by partners WWF and Sir Peter Blake Trust.


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PLASTIC WASTE KILLING SEABIRDS
A more targeted approach to cleaning up plastic in the ocean could help to reduce seabird deaths, a researcher says, especially considering there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean within the next 30 years.

DOC TO MONITOR DOLPHINS AFTER STRANDING
The Department of Conservation (DOC) is keeping a close eye on a pod of dolphins in the Far North after four stranded on Tokerau Beach this morning.

HARD TRUTHS ABOUT RECYCLING
The Sustainable Business Network put out a 47-page report on New Zealand’s plastic packaging system, and there’s a line that leaps out: recycling won’t fix the plastic crisis.