Welcome to How It Works, the magazine that explains everything you never knew you wanted to know about the world we live in. Loaded with fully illustrated guides and expert knowledge, and with sections dedicated to science, technology, transportation, space, history and the environment, no subject is too big or small for How It Works to explain.

WELCOME • The magazine that feeds minds!

Meet the team…

LIZARD FROM HELL

CHURCH OF SKULLS

Nuclear fusion reactors here by 2025

Physics Nobel Prize awarded for black hole discoveries

Something ripped the skin off this star before it died

Four lakes may be under Mars’ south pole

59 priest mummies and a god unearthed in Egypt

Fossils of Ice Age manatees discovered

‘Tired’ brain cells may distort your sense of time

Early life on Earth may have breathed arsenic

Woman’s headache was actually a brain tapeworm

WISH LIST • The latest SECURITY gadgets

APPS & TOOLS

20 SPOOKY • EXPLANATIONS FOR THE WORLD'S CREEPIEST CURIOSITIES

DID YOU KNOW?

5 FACTS ABOUT • FAMOUS PRISONERS OF THE TOWER OF LONDON

ALL ABOUT ALLERGIES • Sneezing, swelling and worse: what happens when your immune system goes into overdrive?

WHAT IS ANAPHYLAXIS?

DID YOU KNOW?

HOW DOES THE BODY RESPOND TO AN ALLERGEN?

5 FACT ABOUT UNCOMMON ALLERGIES

ALLERGY TYPES • From our outer surface to internal organs, where does the immune system target?

HOW TO DIAGNOSE AN ALLERGY

Why is Novichok so deadly? • How this toxic nerve agent affects the human body

Novichok poisoning symptoms • What the nerve agent does to the body

Understanding Novichok

INSIDE A CORONAVIRUS TEST LAB • Meet two scientists from the UK’s COVID-19 megalab, working around the clock to test the public

A day in the life of a COVID lab scientist • An average day shift at the UK Biocentre

TESTING FOR COVID-19

THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS • How mass hysteria and misinformation in 17th-century America became a cautionary horror story

HOW TO SPOT A WITCH IN 1692

Hoover Dam construction • It was one of the most ambitious projects in the world, but how was the Hoover Dam constructed?

VAMPIRE PLANTS • Discover the botanical parasites draining the life from their leafy hosts

Draining their life • The stem of a host plant (centre) is penetrated by three dodder vine suckers

Nightmare before Christmas

HOW HELLROOT GROWS • Otherwise known as Orobanche minor, this vampire plant starts draining its victim as a seedling

5 FACT ABOUT PERILOUS PARASITES

TYPES OF FAULTS

Earthquakes • Earthquakes are not-so-subtle reminders that the Earth is very much alive – and kicking

Tectonic plates explained • Understanding earthquakes happen

The Earth’s tectonic plates

Head to head • THE BIGGEST AND BADDEST EARTHQUAKES OF ALL TIME

MONSTER TRUCKS • WHAT POWERS MASSIVE TRUCKS THAT CAN DRIVE OVER ALMOST ANYTHING?

Monster trucks by the numbers

Taming monsters

Bigfoot: the original monster • Bigfoot is the first and most famous monster truck. Chandler’s original was retired in the mid-1980s, but he has continued to name each of his many trucks since in numerical order – the latest is Bigfoot 21

The air cushion

Hovercraft • How do these incredible machines traverse both land and sea?

Inside an LCAC hovercraft • What are the components of a hovercraft that enable it to float?

Planning from the detail

Slice-by-slice images

Inside an MRI scanner • When doctors need the highest quality images possible they turn to MRI...