Season 2 features stories of converging paths. In our first episode, we meet Sophia Xu, a graduate student in Jing-Ke Weng’s lab at Whitehead Institute, who’s bringing together modern scientific methods and ancient Eastern herbal remedies to investigate how molecules from natural products interact with the human body—and maybe even find a cure for hangovers along the way.

Produced by Raleigh McElvery and Conor Gearin. Music for this episode came from the Free Music Archive and Blue Dot Sessions at www.sessions.blue. In order of appearance:

“Something Elated” — Broke for Free

“Children of Lemuel” — Blue Dot Sessions

“Rapids” — Blue Dot Sessions

“Rafter” — Blue Dot Sessions

“When in the West” — Blue Dot Sessions

“Silver Lanyard” — Blue Dot Sessions

“Falaal” — Blue Dot Sessions

“Building the Sled” — Blue Dot Sessions

“Thannoid” — Blue Dot Sessions