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Ep 191 Famine: More than starvation
Season 8
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 …
Published on 2 months, 1 week ago
Ep 190 Starvation: More than hunger
Season 8
Deprived of food, our bodies do the best they can to keep us alive and functioning as long as possible. As the days pass, the rhythms of our lives change: our metabolism, our heartbeats, our hormones…
Published on 2 months, 2 weeks ago
Special Episode: Antonia Hylton & Madness
Season 8
The United States is in the midst of a monumental mental health crisis, with one in four people predicted to experience mental illness at some point in their lives. Adequate mental health care remain…
Published on 2 months, 3 weeks ago
Ep 189 Newborn screening: The future is here
Season 8
Every year, millions of babies around the world are screened for dozens of treatable conditions within the first day or two of life. What it takes is a few drops of blood on some filter paper, and wh…
Published on 3 months ago
Ep 188 Candida yeast: Here, there, and everywhere
Season 8
None of us are ever truly alone. Our bodies are home to untold numbers of microbes, chilling on our skin, in our guts, throughout our respiratory tract, inside our bellybuttons, under our fingernails…
Published on 3 months, 1 week ago
Special Episode: Mary Roach & Replaceable You
Season 8
When your car breaks down or your fridge goes on the fritz, you can order a replacement part and get things back up and running in no time. The same cannot always be said for another intricate machin…
Published on 3 months, 2 weeks ago
Ep 187 Hypothermia Part 2: How it helps
Season 8
Last week, we took you through all the ways that cold can harm us and the harrowing history of humans perishing at its icy hands. Ending the story there would be skipping over the parts where cold ge…
Published on 3 months, 3 weeks ago
Ep 186 Hypothermia Part 1: How it hurts
Season 8
For all our wondrous adaptations as a species - our big brains, our capacity for language, our opposable thumbs - we humans are not well-equipped to deal with the cold. Take us out of our insulated d…
Published on 3 months, 4 weeks ago
Special Episode: Lina Zeldovich & The Living Medicine
Season 8
The development of antibiotics was one of the greatest turning points in the history of medicine. Bacterial infections that were once death sentences were cured within a matter of days after administ…
Published on 4 months ago
Ep 185 The Great Smog of London: “Thick, drab, yellow, disgusting”
Season 8
Some things just go together: peanut butter and jelly, bacon and eggs, milk and cereal, London and smog. Or at least, that’s the way things used to be until the Great Smog of 1952. (Don’t worry, the …
Published on 4 months, 1 week ago