This Podcast Will Kill You
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This Podcast Will Kill You
This podcast might not actually kill you, but Erin Welsh and Erin Allmann Updyke cover so many things that can. In each episode, they tackle a different topic, teaching listeners about the biology, history, and epidemiology of a different disease or medical mystery. They do the scientific research,...
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Special Episode: Dr. Homer Venters & Outbreak Behind Bars
[Content warning: self-harm, suicide, violence]
In this day and age, we are equipped with an abundance of tools and knowledge to fight the sprea...
Ep 195 Salt Part 2: The Substance
We ended last week’s episode on a bit of a cliffhanger: is salt actually bad for us and if so, why does there still seem to be a debate? This week’s e...
Ep 194 Salt Part 1: The Seasoning
Have you ever thrown a pinch of spilled salt over your left shoulder? Or said to someone “well, take his opinion with a grain of salt”? Or looked up t...
Special Episode: Gabriel Weston & Alive
In an anatomy and physiology class, you may learn how the different heart valves work to circulate your blood, how the structure of your kidney helps...
Ep 193 Necrotizing Fasciitis: A strange beast
If you were asked to describe necrotizing fasciitis in three words, you might choose: rapid, deadly, and rare. The third of those adjectives may provi...
Ep 192 New World Screwworm: Oh-oh here they come
It’s the stuff nightmares are made of. A fly lands on an open wound and lays hundreds of eggs, from which hatch countless ravenous maggots. There they...
Special Episode: Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris and Adrian Teal & Dead Ends!
Science doesn’t always get it right the first time (or the second, or the third, or even the ninety-ninth!). And while we may chuckle at the outlandis...
Ep 191 Famine: More than starvation
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 fo...
Ep 190 Starvation: More than hunger
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 cha...
Special Episode: Antonia Hylton & Madness
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 i...
Ep 189 Newborn screening: The future is here
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...
Ep 188 Candida yeast: Here, there, and everywhere
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 trac...
Special Episode: Mary Roach & Replaceable You
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 c...
Ep 187 Hypothermia Part 2: How it helps
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 the...
Ep 186 Hypothermia Part 1: How it hurts
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 d...
Special Episode: Lina Zeldovich & The Living Medicine
The development of antibiotics was one of the greatest turning points in the history of medicine. Bacterial infections that were once death sentences...
Ep 185 The Great Smog of London: “Thick, drab, yellow, disgusting”
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...
Ep 184 The Gallbladder: Humor us
For most of us, there probably hasn’t been a good reason for you to think about your gallbladder. Ever. Much of the time, it sits there, silently stor...
Special Episode: Carl Zimmer & Airborne
In the first years of the COVID pandemic, a debate raged: was the virus transmitted via respiratory droplets, or was it airborne? For some, this disti...
Ep 183 SSRIs Part 2: Action
Last week, we took you on a journey of discovery and innovation, and this week we’re gonna tell you how the heck it all works. That means a deep dive...
Ep 182 SSRIs Part 1: Origin
Since first hitting the shelves nearly 40 years ago, SSRIs have become one of the most commonly prescribed classes of antidepressants around the world...
Special Episode: Wendy Chin-Tanner & King of the Armadillos
We’ve got a very special episode of the TPWKY book club this week! We’re featuring our very first fiction book: King of the Armadillos by Wendy Chin-T...
Ep 181 PCOS: Beyond the cysts
What’s in a name? What can you really tell from a label like “polycystic ovarian syndrome”? And how much of that is more misconception than truth? The...
Ep 180 Food Dyes: It’s all marketing
This episode, we aren’t asking you to taste the rainbow, but we are scrutinizing the artificial dyes that give it its color. When you’re munching on b...
Special Episode: Professor Steven Mithen & The Language Puzzle
From the earliest grunts and gestures to the complex sentences we use today to convey a multitude of concepts, language has evolved to become one of h...
Ep 179 Fluoride 2: Fighting tooth and nail
In last week’s episode, we traced the history of fluoridation (and the anti-fluoridation movement) to its roots in the early 20th century, but we left...
Ep 178 Fluoride 1: The real tooth fairy
Is it just us, or does it seem like every other week there’s a new headline about some state or town banning water fluoridation? As it turns out, this...
Special Episode: Dr. Wendy Kline & Exposed
For many of us, pelvic exams are a routine part of our healthcare. Of course, that doesn’t mean we don’t await them with some dread or anxiety; natura...
Ep 177 Toxic Shock Syndrome: A shock to the system
If you’ve ever read the little instructions pamphlet included in a box of tampons, you probably came across a paragraph calling attention to a conditi...
Ep 176 Strychnine: The WD-40 of Victorian Medicine
This week, we’re coming at you with a classic TPWKY episode on one of the most notorious poisons out there: strychnine. Although strychnine might not...
Special Episode: Dr. Adam Ratner & Booster Shots
For the past few months, measles has been in regular rotation in the news cycle here in the US, with outbreaks occurring across the country in regions...
Ep 175 What’s the deal with raw milk: Part 2
Last week, we started this two-parter with a big picture view of pasteurization and the raw milk movement. In this episode, we address the alleged hea...
Ep 174 What’s the deal with raw milk: Part 1
Seriously, what’s the deal? Lately, it seems like raw milk has started to pop up more and more frequently in our feeds, with influencers touting the a...
Special Episode: John Green & Everything Is Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, or consumption as it was once known, might conjure up images of huge sanitoriums or writers and artists from the late 1800s (Moulin Roug...
Ep 173 Childhood Vaccine Schedule 2: Who’s making the call?
After last week’s episode, we all know about each of the diseases that we’re protected against thanks to our childhood vaccine schedule here in the US...
Ep 172 Childhood Vaccine Schedule 1: Let’s give it a shot
We’re already back with our first episode of season 8! This week and next, we’re exploring childhood vaccine schedules - what diseases they protect us...
Ep 171 Pregnancy: Act 4
Content Warning: This episode includes mentions of miscarriage, pregnancy loss, pregnancy complications, traumatic birth experiences, and other potent...
Ep 170 Pregnancy: Act 3
Content Warning: This episode includes mentions of miscarriage, pregnancy loss, pregnancy complications, traumatic birth experiences, and other potent...
Ep 169 Pregnancy: Act 2
Content Warning: This episode includes mentions of miscarriage, pregnancy loss, pregnancy complications, traumatic birth experiences, and other potent...
Ep 168 Pregnancy: Act 1
Content Warning: This episode includes mentions of miscarriage, pregnancy loss, pregnancy complications, traumatic birth experiences, and other potent...