Curious by Nature

Dr. Mohammad Moghimi is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

His team has developed a "chipless patch" that can sense the tiny electrical differences between healthy tissue and a tumor.

If a salamander loses a leg, it doesn't just heal, it grows a perfect new one. Humans, however, have seemingly lost this "instruction manual" for regeneration over millions of years of evolution.

Dr. Josh Currie is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Wake Forest University. He studies axolotls and zebrafish to understand why these animals can regrow limbs and tails while we can't. 

Sandro Galea is the Margaret Ryan Dean and the Kahn Professor of Public Health at the Washington University School of Public Health. He shares his unique path and perspective on public health and shares ways that WashU is focusing on improving the health for many people locally and globally. 

Iron deficiency affects millions of people, especially women, yet many go years without knowing it, even though it’s one of the most treatable conditions.

Dr. George Goshua is a physician-scientist and assistant professor at Yale School of Medicine, where he studies how gaps in diagnosis and access to care can leave patients untreated. His work highlights how something as simple as iron levels can have long-term effects on energy, pregnancy, and even the next generation.

The episode has also been shared with leadership at the American Society of Hematology (ASH), which is leading national efforts to improve awareness, diagnosis, and treatment of iron deficiency. Learn more through the ASH Iron Deficiency Initiative.

Shaun Davies, Associate Professor of Finance and Faculty Director of the Burridge Center for Finance at the University of Colorado Boulder, explains how financial markets respond to global instability and geopolitical conflict.

For many of us, the constant stream of headlines about conflict in the Middle East can feel overwhelming and disheartening. From an economic perspective, consumers often worry about and struggle with rising food and gas prices.

Meanwhile, do financial markets have the kind of checks and balances needed to withstand periods of high instability?

With AI now able to mimic voices, write convincing messages, and even fake video calls, telling what’s real online is harder than ever.

Sebastian Schuetz is an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he studies how organizations manage cyber risk like data breaches and ransomware attacks. 

Eating healthy doesn’t mean spending more money.

We often assume that more expensive food is better for us, but research shows that price has surprisingly little to do with nutrition.

Professor William Masters is an economist at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition, where he studies how food prices relate to health and environmental impact. His work reveals that it’s possible to eat both nutritious and climate-friendly meals, without spending more.

What if your body is quietly guiding your food choices in ways you don’t even realize?

Jeff Brunstrom is a professor of experimental psychology at the University of Bristol, where he studies how our brains, behavior, and environment shape the way we eat.

His research suggests that we’re not just passively consuming food, we may have “nutritional intelligence,” where our bodies push us toward certain foods to meet our needs. But in today’s world of ultra-processed meals, that system can be disrupted, leading us to eat more without realizing why.

Why is brain cancer so hard to treat, and what if the brain itself is helping it spread? 

Glioblastoma is one of the most aggressive cancers, not because it forms a single tumor, but because it spreads like invisible threads throughout the brain, making it nearly impossible to remove completely. 

Dr. Sheila Singh is a Professor of Neuro-Oncology and Neurosurgery at King’s College London, Co-Head of the School of Cancer (with Pharmaceutical Sciences), and Director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center, while also serving as a part-time Professor of Surgery and Biochemistry at McMaster University. Her research uncovers how brain cells may actually be helping cancer grow and spread, and how existing drugs could be repurposed to stop it.

Every year, researchers publish discoveries that could improve our lives, from health to technology to public policy. But much of that work never reaches the people who could benefit from it. It stays behind paywalls, written in technical language, and shared mostly within academic circles.

Dr. Quan Xie is an associate professor of digital advertising at Southern Methodist University. Her research explores how scholars can better share their work using storytelling, digital platforms, and tools like AI to bring research beyond the journal and into the real world.