Special Episode: Deborah Blum & The Poison Squad

Already this summer, heatwaves are causing thousands of deaths across the world, catastrophic flooding threatens millions, wildfires rage across enormous swathes of the globe, many regions face extrem...

25 Aug 44min

Few spiders hold the dubious honor of name recognition among the general public. Most that do, like black widows, Australian funnel-web, the Goliath birdeater, are renowned not for their cute colors o...

18 Aug 58min

If you have a medical question, where do you turn? How often is google or social media your first stop? As you sift through the AI overview and countless reels professing to have the answers, it becom...

11 Aug 51min

Last week, we set the stage by breaking down the science behind cholesterol: how it moves through our body, why it causes disease, and when we discovered the link between LDL and atherosclerosis. This...

4 Aug 1h 10min

So your latest blood test results have come in, and you see a couple of numbers for cholesterol. What do those numbers mean, and why do we care about them? In this first part of our cholesterol minise...

28 Jul 1h 3min

You’ve seen the headlines: a food-borne parasite is infecting people across the US, leaving them chained to the toilet sometimes for weeks on end, as they are ravaged by wave after wave of gastrointes...

21 Jul 54min

Social media ads for egg freezing. A craigslist-like site for breast milk. Fertility fairs featuring IVF clinics alongside shamanic nutritionists. Surrogacy contracts offering a discount for multiple ...

14 Jul 48min

In keeping with last week’s theme of “bodily excretions that are kinda gross that you don’t really think about but are actually really important”, we’re devoting this episode to earwax, aka cerumen. I...

7 Jul 54min