Ground Truths

Eric Topol ( 00:06 ): Hello, this is Eric Topol from Ground Truths, and I'm delighted to welcome Owen Tripp, who is a CEO of Included Health . And Owen, I'd like to start off if you would, with the story from 2016, because really what I'm interested in is patients and how to get the right doctor. So can you tell us about when you lost your hearing in your right ear back, what, nine years ago or so...

Eric Topol ( 00:05 ): Hello, it's Eric Topol from Ground Truths, and I've got some really exciting stuff to talk to you about today. And it's about the announcement for a new Center for pediatric CRISPR Cures. And I'm delight to introduce doctors Jennifer Doudna and Priscilla Chan. And so, first let me say this is amazing to see this thing going forward. It's an outgrowth of a New England Journal...

“To navigate proof, we must reach into a thicket of errors and biases. We must confront monsters and embrace uncertainty, balancing — and rebalancing —our beliefs. We must seek out every useful fragment of data, gather every relevant tool, searching wider and climbing further. Finding the good foundations among the bad. Dodging dogma and falsehoods. Questioning. Measuring. Triangulating. Convincin...

Thanks to so many of you who joined our live conversation with Devi Sridhar! Professor Devi Sridhar is the Chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh. Over the past 2 decades she has become one of the world’s leading authorities and advisors for promoting global health. Her new book —How No to Die Too Soon—provides a unique outlook for extending healthspan with a global perspecti...

My conversation with Matthew Walker, PhD on faculty at UC Berkeley where he is a professor of neuroscience and psychology , the founder and director of the Center for Human Sleep Science, and has a long history of seminal contributions on sleep science and health. Audio File (also downloadable at Apple Podcast and Spotify) “Sleep is a non-negotiable biological state required for the maintenance of...

Thank you Richard DeWald , Michael Mann , Dr Avneesh Khare , Maud Pasturaud , Lower Dementia Risk , and many others for tuning into my live video with Katie Couric ! Join me for my next live video in the app. Get full access to Ground Truths at erictopol.substack.com/subscribe

Audio File Ground Truths can also be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube. The UK is the world leader in human genomics, and laid the foundation for advancing medicine with the UK Biobank, Genomes England and now Our Future Health (w/ 5 million participants). Sir John Bell is a major force in driving and advising these and many other initiatives. After 22 years as the Regius Professor of M...

Audio file, also on Apple and Spotify Tyler Cowen, Ph. D, is the Holbert L. Harris Professor of Economics at George Mason University. He is the author of 17 books, most recently Talent . : How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World . Tyler has been recognized as one of the most influential economists of the past decade. He initiated and directs the philanthropic project Em...

In our divided world we face or avoid conflicts on a frequent basis. I turned to Bob Bordone and Joel Salinas to find out the best strategies to deal with these, including having them take on a mock conflict between each other on the merits of Covid research. Audio file You can also find this on Spotify and Apple podcasts with Ground Truths. The video is also posted on YouTube Transcript with Audi...

“Eventually, my dream would be to simulate a virtual cell.” —Demis Hassabis The aspiration to build the virtual cell is considered to be equivalent to a moonshot for digital biology. Recently, 42 leading life scientists published a paper in Cell on why this is so vital, and how it may ultimately be accomplished. This conversation is with 2 of the authors, Charlotte Bunne, now at EPFL and Steve Qua...

Thank you Katelyn Jetelina , Andy Meyers , Tracy Paeschke, MD, FACC , Bruce Lanphear , Tay MacIntyre , and many others for tuning into my live video with Katelyn Jetelina ! Join me for my next live video in the app. Get full access to Ground Truths at erictopol.substack.com/subscribe

Funding for the NIH and US biomedical research is imperiled at a momentous time of progress. Exemplifying this is the work of Dr. Anna Greka, a leading physician-scientist at the Broad Institute who is devoted to unlocking the mysteries of rare diseases— that cumulatively affect 30 million Americans— and finding cures, science supported by the NIH. A clip from our conversation The audio is availab...

Before getting into this new podcast, have you checked out the recent newsletter editions and podcasts of Ground Truths? — the first diagnostic immunome —a Covid nasal vaccine update — medical storytelling and uncertainty —why did doctors with A.I. get outperformed by A.I. alone? The audio is available on iTunes and Spotify. The full video is embedded here, at the top, and also can be found on You...

Before getting into this new podcast, have you checked out the recent newsletter editions of Ground Truths? —how are gut microbiome drives sugar cravings —the influence of s leep on brain waste clearance and aging —the new findings of microplastics in the brain —the surprise finding about doctors and A.I. In this podcast with Dr. Emily Silverman, an internist and founder of The Nocturnists , an aw...

The Chief Scientific Advisor at Novo Nordisk, Lotte Bjerre Knudsen, was the key force who pushed hard to develop GLP-1 drugs for treating obesity and subsequently for Alzheimer’s. She was recently recognized by the 2024 Lasker Medical Research Award, and the 2024 AAAS Bhaumik Breakthrough of the Year Award. That recognition is richly deserved, since it is unclear if the GLP-1 drug path to obesity...

Piezo touch and pressure-sensing ion channels are showing up everywhere as the explanation for physiologic phenomena, both at the macro and micro levels. Ardem Patapoutian, my friend and colleague at Scripps Research, discovered these receptors back in 2010 and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2021 for his work. As you’ll see/hear from our conversation, the field has exploded. And you’ll get to know...

American healthcare is well known for its extreme cost and worst outcomes among industrialized ( such as the 38 OECD member ) countries, and beyond that to be remarkably opaque. The high cost of prescription drugs contributes, and little has been done to change that except for the government passing the Affordable Insulin Now Act at the end of 2022 , enacted in 2023. But in January 2022 Mark Cuban...

A leader for conducting rigorous randomized trials of humans along with animal models for understanding nutrition and metabolism, Dr. Kevin Hall is a Senior Investigator at the National Institutes of Health , and Section Chief of the Integrative Physiology Section, NIDDK. In this podcast, we reviewed his prolific body of research a recent publications. The timing of optimizing our diet and nutriti...

Below is a brief video snippet from our conversation. Full videos of all Ground Truths podcasts can be seen on YouTube here . The current one is here . If you like the YouTube format, please subscribe! This one has embedded one of my favorite TikTok’s from Will. There are several links to others in the transcript. The audios are also available on Apple and Spotify. Transcript with links to both au...

Above is a brief video snippet from our conversation. Full videos of all Ground Truths podcasts can be seen on YouTube here . The audios are also available on Apple and Spotify. Transcript with links to audio and external citations Eric Topol ( 00:06 ): Well, hello it's Eric Topol with Ground Truths, and I'm really delighted to welcome Dr. Rachael Bedard, who is a physician geriatrician in New Yor...

Superimposed on an impressive body of work on the blood-brain-barrier and immune system, Prof Akassoglou and her collaborators just published an elegant study in Nature that centered on the direct binding os the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to fibrin with marked downstream pro-inflammatory effects. The findings and potential treatments have implications beyond Covid, Long Covid to other neurologic dis...

When I think of digital biology, I think of Patrick Hsu—he’s the prototype, a rarified talent in both life and computer science, who recently led the team that discovered bridge RNAs, what may be considered CRISPR 3.0 for genome editing, and is building new generative A.I. models for life science. You might call them LLLMs-large language of life models. He is Co-Founder and a Core Investigator of...

Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor are well regarded computer scientists at Princeton University and have just published a book with a provocative title, AI Snake Oil. Here I’ve interviewed Sayash and challenged him on this dismal title, for which he provides solid examples of predictive AI’s failures. Then we get into the promise of generative AI. Full videos of all Ground Truths podcasts can be...

Francis Collins is a veritable national treasure. He directed the National Institutes of Health from 2009 to 2021. Prior to that he led the National Human Genetics Research Institute (NHGRI) from 1997-2009, during which the human genome was first sequenced. As a physician-scientist, he has made multiple seminal discoveries on the genetic underpinnings of cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s disease, neur...

Professor Joseph Allen directs the Healthy Buildings Program at Harvard Chan School of Public Health. His expertise extends far beyond what makes buildings healthy. He has been a leading voice and advocate during the Covid pandemic for air quality and ventilation. He coined the term “Forever Chemicals” and has written extensively on this vital topic, no less other important exposures, which we cov...