This Podcast Will Kill You

Come one, come all to learn of the miraculous news we’re buzzing to share with you at this limited time, low price offer. If you’ve been troubled by aches and pains, sores and sneezes, look no further than this very special episode - good for whatever ails you. Brimming with historical detail and outlandish claims, we’re marching through the wild west of patent medicines in the 1...

A diagnosis of dementia of any kind is devastating. For those with the hereditary form of frontotemporal dementia (FTD), it could mean an entire family is destined for the same fate. In this week’s TPWKY book club episode, award-winning author  Robert Kolker paints an intimate portrait of one such family in The Vanishing Family: Love, Fate, and the Quest to End Dementia . Through Kolker...

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, has long mystified the medical community and brought tremendous sorrow to those impacted by the condition. But to tell the story of ALS as one solely of tragedy would do a disservice to those who have long fought to develop an effective treatment or raise awareness. Because it is through their tireless efforts that thos...

Shortly after birth, many newborns are given vitamin K to help their blood clot properly and reduce the chances of hemorrhage. Increasingly, especially here in the US, parents are refusing this life-saving intervention, leaving these babies more likely to develop deficiency bleeding which can lead to life-long brain damage and death. In this episode, we explore the many dimensions of vitamin K: ho...

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. Where do you turn to for help? Today’s book club episode reveals that the answer depends on your medical needs, your wealth, your social standing, and your gender. But one thing’s for certain: you had so...

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 what we know about why it works. To start off, we take you through the procedure step-by-step, including prep and what someone might experience in the days or weeks that follow. We then examine the situations for which E...

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 Dream. Comparatively few know that ECT is not only still used today but is an incredibly safe and effective treatment for an array of psychiatric conditions. In this and next week’s episode, we explore this stigmatize...

Already this summer, heatwaves are causing thousands of deaths across the world, catastrophic flooding threatens millions, wildfires rage across enormous swathes of the globe, many regions face extreme drought conditions, and a very strong El Niño is predicted for later this year, leading to further climate chaos. It’s a lot to take in. The devastating consequences of climate change c...

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 renowned not for their cute colors or weaving skills but for being fearsome, dangerous predators. The brown recluse is no exception. A bite from one of these arachnids can send someone to the hospital with a painful necrotizing wound an...

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 to have the answers, it becomes harder and harder to separate fact from fiction. Do these supplements actually do what they promise? Should I be wary of this commonly prescribed medication? Even if you’re not directly seeki...

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 LDL and atherosclerosis. This week, armed with that knowledge, we’re asking the big question: what do we do about high cholesterol? Statins emerged as a highly effective intervention but one that is not without its share of...

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 part of our cholesterol miniseries, we break down the science behind this compound and trace how we made the link between certain types of cholesterol and heart disease. First, we follow the path that cholesterol takes in our bodi...

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 wave after wave of gastrointestinal upset. What the heck is cyclosporiasis and where did it come from? How scared should we be of our raspberries or lettuce or cilantro? To dish out the answers as fast we could, we put toget...

Social media ads for egg freezing. A craigslist-like site for breast milk. Fertility fairs featuring IVF clinics alongside shamanic nutritionists. Surrogacy contracts offering a discount for multiple embryos. The rapidly-growing global fertility industry promises hope, fulfillment, and control, as long as you can afford it. Participating in this industry can be empowering. All parts of reproductio...

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 episode to earwax, aka cerumen. In one hour, we somehow manage to weave together stories of earwax impaction, misadventures in ear candling, glimpses of earwax in art history, and a whale of a tale as re...

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 quite impressive if you think about it. Which, of course, few of us do, besides adding tissues to our shopping list or cursing the dagger-like boogers that emerge during a trip to a particularly dry locale. But boogers deserve...

Stories of unethical medical experimentation often center around the individuals who spearheaded such atrocities or highlight how patient protection laws were changed in response to the studies. But rarely do they focus on the people who fought to bring these harms to light: the whistleblower. What does it take to blow the whistle, and what does it cost? Are we all capable of blowing the whistle o...

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 profound transformation thanks to crucial advances across diverse areas of medicine, such as skin grafting, antiseptic technique, and fluid balance. In this episode, we trace how those pieces of the puzzle were integrated to bring new h...

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 ability to manage burn wounds with any success, having instead to rely on our body’s innate healing responses. In this episode, we delve into those repair responses, explore what makes burns different from other types of...

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 people around the world wait years to receive an accurate diagnosis, which can take a profound physical and emotional toll. What underlies these missed or incorrect diagnoses, and what can we do about it? In this week’s TPW...

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 of the boat (or out of the car, or into the airplane sick bag), barfing up your breakfast. Motion sickness. We’ve all been there, or at least most of us have. Why? What is it about our physiology that breaks down as so...

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 thousands of people every year, and its distribution is growing. In this episode, we dissect this abundant fungus, examining how it makes us sick, who tends to get sick, and what we can do about it. We also take you through the hi...

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 other killers: syphilis. So feared and so stigmatized was syphilis that it was sometimes called “the secret disease.” A diagnosis would not only sentence you to a drawn-out and painful illness possibly resulting in deat...

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 tallow and butter recommended as “healthy” fats, a declaration that the war on protein is ending. “Since when have we been at war with protein?” you may reasonably ask. In part 2 of our...

Over the decades, dietary guidelines have taken a diverse array of shapes, from pamphlets to wheels, from plates to pyramids. In many cases, the shapes have changed more than the recommendations they contain. This week and next, we explore those recommendations - who’s making them, how they have changed over time, and how closely they align with what we should be eating. First, we delve into...