This Podcast Will Kill You

What happens if you put a bunch of rats in an enclosure and provision them with unlimited food and water? Researcher John B. Calhoun was committed to finding out. Results from Calhoun’s “rat utopia” experiments from the mid-20th century revealed a behavioral dark side that emerged as space grew increasingly limited, ultimately leading to complete population collapse. As headlines conveyed dire warnings about globa...

Poop is an incredibly valuable and massively underutilized resource. However, most of us don’t see it that way because of our evolutionarily ingrained disgust towards poop. Flush toilets and intricate sewer systems have revolutionized health and hygiene by whisking our poop far away where we don’t have to think about it. But that poop has gotta go somewhere, and eventually, not thinking about it isn’t going to be ...

It might be stinky and it might be unpleasant to behold, but we all do it. For many of us, our poop is out of sight, out of mind once we flush it away. But for the next hour and fifteen minutes or so, we’re going to bring it back into mind as we delve into the rich world of poop. This episode, the first of a two-part miniseries on poop, features a wide cast of characters all with some role in the production or ma...

For much of the world, refrigeration is such a commonplace technology that we rarely stop to wonder at the many ways it has transformed our lives. From the foods we grow to where we grow them, from how they taste to what we eat, refrigeration has dramatically - and quite recently - changed our relationship to food, our health, and the environment. As Nicola Twilley describes in Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed ou...

Now that we know just how critical sleep is, we’re all making sure we get the amount we need, right? Unfortunately no. One-third to one-half of Americans are not getting enough sleep, according to public health guidelines. Why is that? Hypotheses abound, but many point the finger of blame at different aspects of modern society such as screen time, artificial light, a sedentary lifestyle. These narratives suggest that sleep in...

Sleep is a universal experience. It’s not just the lion that sleeps tonight - it’s also the butterfly, the chicken, the jellyfish, the dog, the snake, the worm, and of course the human. What is this widespread physiological process whose spell we are all under? What purpose (or purposes) does it serve? Why do we sleep the way we do? These are just some of the questions we’re going to get into in this week’s ...

The widespread use of leaded gasoline in the 20th century led to one of the world’s biggest public health and environmental disasters, the effects of which are still present today. Since its development in the 1920s, leaded gasoline has been linked to premature death, cognitive impairment, and behavioral issues in millions around the globe. How was such a toxic substance permitted to be sold, despite the tireless efforts of i...

Ah, the new year. After the last month and a half of indulgent food and drink, disrupted schedules, and laying around the house, who doesn’t feel like they’re in need of a whole-body cleanse? There are plenty of companies who are more than happy to provide that product or service that promises to flush away toxins from your skin, gut, blood, brain, you name it. But what exactly are they selling you? In this...

This episode originally aired on January 11th, 2022.

Chances are you know someone with endometriosis, or perhaps you’re affected yourself. But despite its incredibly high prevalence, endo remains almost criminally understudied, undertreated, and underacknowledged. In this episode, we aim to shed light on many aspects of endometriosis, first by examining the “what” and “how” of this disease: what’...

This episode originally aired on January 25th, 2022.

In light of the recent changes by RFK jr’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to eliminate the universal birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine in the US, a decision which will result in preventable infections and deaths in this country every year, it seems timely to remind everyone of the global consequences of this incredibly prevalent pathogen.

This week,...

Did your grandma ever warn you against going out in the cold with wet hair because “you’ll catch your death”? Or have you ever tossed a few more carrots into your shopping basket in the hope that they’ll improve your vision? There are countless health myths about how to prevent or treat disease, what food will give you superhuman powers or turn your kid into a whirlwind of energy. But is there any truth to t...

[Content warning: self-harm, suicide, violence]

In this day and age, we are equipped with an abundance of tools and knowledge to fight the spread of disease. Yet what good does that toolkit do if we lack the resources or the will to implement it where it is needed? One area of great need is our correctional facilities, our prisons, jails, immigration detention centers, and juvenile detention centers. In these settings,...

We ended last week’s episode on a bit of a cliffhanger: is salt actually bad for us and if so, why does there still seem to be a debate? This week’s episode holds all the answers. We’re sifting through the noise to figure out what salt actually does in our bodies, how it might impact our health, and why we crave this delicious substance. If you’ve ever wondered how we’ve arrived at the maximum daily so...

Have you ever thrown a pinch of spilled salt over your left shoulder? Or said to someone “well, take his opinion with a grain of salt”? Or looked up the potential salary of a job listing? Salt is so deeply embedded in our cultures, our languages, our history as a species that we often take its influence for granted. We may forget (or perhaps we never knew) how much history is held within the unassuming yet ubiquitous sa...

In an anatomy and physiology class, you may learn how the different heart valves work to circulate your blood, how the structure of your kidney helps to maintain electrolyte levels, and how the expansion and contraction of your lungs sets off a carefully orchestrated cascade of gas exchange and transport. The human body is an endlessly fascinating machine. But when you spend so much time learning about the body, you can lose sight ...

If you were asked to describe necrotizing fasciitis in three words, you might choose: rapid, deadly, and rare. The third of those adjectives may provide some comfort, but the first two are the clear inspiration for this infection’s more lurid nickname: flesh-eating bacteria. In this episode, we get up close and personal with necrotizing fasciitis and its causative agents. We start off by examining step by step ho...

It’s the stuff nightmares are made of. A fly lands on an open wound and lays hundreds of eggs, from which hatch countless ravenous maggots. There they writhe, devouring flesh, insatiable and relentless. Every minute they dig deeper and deeper until flesh gives way to bone. Even the species name of these maggots inspires a shiver of fear: Cochliomyia hominivorax - “man eater”. This nightmare of a fly i...

Science doesn’t always get it right the first time (or the second, or the third, or even the ninety-ninth!). And while we may chuckle at the outlandish things people believed or the goofy experiments they tried, we forget two things: 1) those failures helped us get where we are today and 2) a hundred years from now, people will probably be laughing at the “cutting edge” medical knowledge of today! In this week&rsq...

As we learned last week, starvation extends far beyond hunger and what a lack of food does to the human body. Similarly, famine is much more than a food shortage and starvation on a population-level scale. This week, we’re picking up where we left off last episode to explore the definitions, drivers, and many dimensions of famine. We trace famines throughout human history, asking how they have changed either in their incidenc...