This Podcast Will Kill You

Special Episode: Dr. Alanna Skuse & The Surgeon, The Midwife, The Quack

Imagine yourself as a 17th century English peasant or merchant or noble. Let’s say you’re dealing with some intense stomach pain or a cut on your leg that won’t heal. Whe

Ep 221 Electroconvulsive Therapy Part 2: A current conversation

This week, we’re picking up where we left off last episode in our exploration of ECT by examining how this therapy is administered, which conditions it’s used for, and wh

Ep 220 Electroconvulsive Therapy Part 1: A charged history

For many, a mention of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) conjures images of torture or mind control from popular media like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or Requiem for a

Special Episode: Clayton Page Aldern & The Weight of Nature

Already this summer, heatwaves are causing thousands of deaths across the world, catastrophic flooding threatens millions, wildfires rage across enormous swathes of the g

Ep 219 The Brown Recluse: Fearsome foe or slandered spider?

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 renown

Special Episode: Deborah Cohen & Bad Influence

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

Ep 218 The Lowdown on Statins

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

Ep 217 The High Stakes of Cholesterol

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

Ep 216 Cyclospora: Explosive Diarrhea Everywhere

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

Special Episode: Alev Scott & Cash Cow

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

Ep 215 The Hidden Depths of Earwax

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 epi

Ep 214 Boogers: Digging for treasure

Hard and crusty. Green and gloopy. Clear and watery. Boogers come in a veritable rainbow of colors and a full spectrum of textures from liquid to solid. They’re really qu

Special Episode: Dr. Carl Elliott & The Occasional Human Sacrifice

Stories of unethical medical experimentation often center around the individuals who spearheaded such atrocities or highlight how patient protection laws were changed in

Ep 213 Burns Part 2: It’s like sci-fi but real 

At the turn of the 20th century, a severe burn was often a death sentence. Today, that is no longer the case. Over the past eighty years, burn care has undergone a profou

Ep 212 Burns Part 1: The first million or so years

Burns have been a part of the human experience since our hominin relatives began controlling fire 1.5 million years ago. Until very recently, we’ve been limited in our ab

Special Episode: Alexandra Sifferlin & The Elusive Body

An accurate diagnosis can give us so much. It can give us a path forward. It can give us answers to long-standing questions. And it can give us much-needed hope. Yet many

Ep 211 Motion Sickness: It comes in waves

It comes on sneakily. You become aware of your stomach. You break out in a cold sweat. Your mouth fills with saliva. And before you know it, you’re leaning over the side

Ep 210 Histoplasmosis: Bats, birds, and budding yeast

Once thought to be a rare, always fatal disease, histoplasmosis is now recognized as one of the most prevalent fungal infections in North America. It infects hundreds of

Special Episode: Dr. Olivia Weisser & The Dreaded Pox

In a time when smallpox, tuberculosis, measles, and typhus ran rampant through the streets of London, there was another disease that instilled even more fear than these o

Ep 209 Dietary Guidelines Part 2: Why is there protein in everything?

If you’ve come across the latest dietary guidelines, a few things may have caught your attention: a big ol’ steak front and center in the new “inverted pyramid”, beef tal