humanOS Radio

Everyone knows what it's like to feel sleepy after a big meal. Think of what happens after Thanksgiving dinner, or after getting a huge lunch at an Indian buffet. If you're like me, you're ready to crash. But why does this happen? Is it the tryptophan in the turkey? Is it from too many carbs? What you eat, how much you eat, and when you eat it all play a role. Consequently, there has been some dou...

You are fully in control over your food choices, right? Well, we know that a wide range of rules govern how we act, and even our beliefs, when we are with different groups of people. Social psychologists characterize this influence as 'social norms,' and guess what? This influence affects eating, too. In this latest episode of humanOS radio, Dan speaks with Emma Templeton from Thalia Wheatley's la...

Why are we fatter than our ancestors? In this interview, the second with Dr. Stephan Guyenet, we discuss his new book entitled, 'The Hungry Brain - Outsmarting the Instincts That Make Us Overeat.' In this episode, Stephan and Dan discuss genetics, stress, food palatability and reinforcement, and other important factors to shed light onto the mechanics behind weight regulation.

Can we stave off the aging process by transfusing young blood into old people? The idea that youthful blood might have rejuvenating properties has lingered in popular imagination for centuries. In this episode of humanOS Radio, Dan speaks with Drs. Michael and Irina Conboy of the Department of Engineering at UC Berkeley. Their lab investigates the process of tissue repair throughout the body, and...

I have to admit, I love this story. Two parents saw a problem effecting their children and did something about it. But not only did they try to help their children and their children's friends, they also are trying to help every child in the United States. The guests of this episode of humanOS Radio are Kelly and Juliet Starrett. Kelly is a Doctor of Physical Therapy and the author of the books: D...

Why is it that when you’re binge watching your favorite new series on Netflix, you can stay up for hours past your normal bedtime - even if you were tired before you started watching? On the other hand, if you weren’t being entertained or captivated by a game or puzzle, you’d be much more likely to be lulled to sleep at that time. Indeed, sleep and goal-directed behaviors are mutually exclusive: y...

Protein is really important for dieting success, right? Anyone who has interested in the science of dieting knows this, but recent research from Bettina Mittendorfer, Research Associate Professor at Washington University in St. Louis’s School of Medicine, and colleagues published in Cell Reports has raised doubts that protein is indeed a wholly-helpful solution. To shed light on this study and its...

In this show, Dan speaks with Dr. Jamie Zeitzer who is an Assistant Professor in Psychiatry & Behavioral Science at Stanford and at the VA Aging Clinical Research Center of Stanford University. In his research on light and the timing of biological rhythms, he noticed something curious: A brief flash of light has a greater ability to adjust body clock timing versus continuous light exposure. For in...

Dietary fat is a class of nutrients of which there are many different types. Some types appear to have clear beneficial effects on human physiology in certain contexts, like for example olive oil, while others appear to impair our health when they comprise too high a fraction of our calorie intake over time. Saturated fat has been called out for decades by health authorities as something we should...

Can we really stay young forever? This has been a goal of humans since the dawn of time. I know I would like to keep my peak abilities and not see those diminish over the decades. Aging is a subject that I have become increasingly interested in and it's not necessarily because I'm getting older. Understanding it can help guide how you live, even way before you start to feel old. Plenty of things w...

Where to you get the energy to do something hard or inconvenient? It matters because so much of what's important in life comes from finding that strength. The topic of the discussion in this podcast is motivation, which can be described as the activation energy needed to do most-to-all volitional activities. Specifically, we'll be discussing the leading behavior model of motivation called Self-Det...

Dan Pardi interviews Professor Stephen Hinshaw from UC Berkeley. Dr. Hinshaw is a world authority on the condition of attention deficit. He described ADHD as an 'equifinal' condition, meaning that it appears that there are multiple different biological pathways to inattentiveness. Optimal strategies to address the condition are reviewed.

Sitting has been called the new smoking. Is this true? Dan Pardi interviews Professor Travis Saunders of The University of Prince Edward Island and the founder of the Sedentary Behavior Research Network. Dr. Saunders discusses the state of the research on sitting and standing - what do we know, what questions remain, and practical ways to integrate this information into your day.

In this interview, Dan Pardi interviews evolutionary biologist, Professor David Samson of Duke University. Dr. Samson talks about his work research the sleep platforms (i.e., beds) or great apes in Africa. We discuss how these platforms appear to have contributed to deeper sleep in certain great apes, and in turn, how this deeper sleep seemingly contributed to greater cognitive abilities than comp...

Have you ever woken up and felt that you solved a problem during sleep? Maybe it's because during sleep our brains go through a process where neurons strengthen their connections with other neurons that fired together when we were exposed to new information during the day before we slept. In this interview, Professor Marcos Frank of Washington State University discusses the state of the science on...

Dr. Matt Buman, Professor at Arizona State University, joins us to discuss his work on exercise, work performance, and quantified self technologies.

In a ground-breaking study published in Current Biology, Professor Jerry Siegel at UCLA evaluated three societies living in natural conditions (e.g., modern day hunter-gatherers) to examine their sleep behaviors and physiology. He also analyzed external factors like natural light, ambient temperature and the season in which the data was collected. And by doing so, Dr. Siegel appeared to turn the w...

Dan Pardi interviews Hanno Pijl, M.D., Ph. D. and Esther Van Zuuren, M.D., both of Leiden Univeristy in the Netherlands, and both authors of a systematic review and meta-analysis of the paleolithic nutrition pattern for metabolic syndrome which published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in August of 2015.