The Pulse

Sleep — we all need it, but most people aren't getting enough of it. Ideally, we spend about a third of our lives asleep. When we're well rested, we feel like we can take on the world. But when we're not, we find ourselves exhausted, cranky, moody, forgetful ... and our overall health takes a hit. Clearly, sleep is important. The question is — why? What happens when we sleep? What makes it such an...

The process of therapy can sometimes seem a bit opaque. What exactly happens in therapy? How does it work? And which approach is right for which issues? On this episode, we get inside the heads of therapists to find out how they ply their craft, and what it takes to really feel better. We hear stories about what happened when a city took a bold step toward providing free, virtual mental health ser...

The human brain has an incredible capacity for processing information, from sensory data, to casual conversations, to everything we hear and read — in fractions of seconds. Not only that, our brains make sense of it all, allowing us to learn, work, form relationships, and navigate the world. On this episode, we take a closer look at how this all works — and why it sometimes doesn't. We hear storie...

Who becomes a physician in this country — and who never gets that chance? It's a question a lot of medical schools are grappling with, as groups like Black people and Latinos remain especially underrepresented among students. What would it take to attract and retain a more diverse group of students? On this episode, we hear stories about people's path to med school, and the challenges they face al...

What is love? Is it that warm and fuzzy feeling, that crazed obsession, that deep sentiment of trust and good will? It's all of those things, but where and how does love happen in our bodies? On this episode, we put love under the microscope (and into a brain scanner) to understand where this emotion begins, and where it takes us. We talk with neurologists and psychologists to get a better underst...