Please Explain (The Leonard Lopate Show)

If you snore loudly and you wake up feeling tired even after a full night's sleep, you may have sleep apnea, is a potentially serious disorder in which breathing repeatedly stops and starts. On this week’s Please Explain two sleep specialists talk about what sleep apnea is and what problems and complications it may cause. We’re joined by Dr. David M. Rapoport, Professor and Medical Director of NYU Sleep Disorders Center; and Dr. Susan Redline is Professor of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Senior Physician, Division of Sleep Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Physician, Division of Pulmonary Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Complaining is a favorite pastime for some people, but it is possible to complain in order to get results and prompt change? On this week’s Please Explain we’ll find out how! Tod Marks, Senior Projects Editor at Consumer Reports, and Guy Winch, Psychology Today blogger and author of The Squeaky Wheel and Emotional First Aid, explain the art of complaining effectively.

After a Florida man disappeared into a sinkhole that swallowed his bedroom, many people began wondering how stable the ground beneath our feet really is. On this week's Please Explain, Randall Orndorff, Director of the USGS Eastern Geology and Paleoclimate Science Center, explains what sinkholes are, why they form, where and when they are most likely to occur and how best to prevent them or predict and prepare for them.

Dr. Jerome Groopman, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Chief of Experimental Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and staff writer for The New Yorker, explains new approaches to Alzheimer’s research for this week’s Please Explain. Three decades of Alzheimer’s research has brought few results in changing the course of the disease, and there have been few developments in drugs to reverse or slow cognitive decline. In his latest article, “Before Night Falls,” in the June 24 issue of The New Yorker, he looks at the potential of new studies.

This week we’ll explore how the body perceives pain—what causes it, how it affects us, and how to treat it. We're joined by Dr. Denise Chou, Assistant Professor of Neurology, Columbia University Headache and Facial Pain Center; and Dr. Jing Wang, Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology, NYU School of Medicine, and director of research and education at NYU Langone’s Center for the Study and Treatment of Pain.

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The America Psychiatric Association’s newly updated and revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) is the result of more than 10 years of effort by hundreds of international mental health experts. The DSM is used by clinicians and researchers to diagnose and classify mental disorders in order to improve diagnoses, treatment, and research. Dr. Michael First, Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University and Research Psychiatrist at the Biometrics Department at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, explains how clinicians use the DSM, how it’s put together, and why this edition has been controversial.

Pasta is a staple of Italian food, but noodles are also an important part of Asian cuisine. Pasta is versatile, comes in hundreds of shapes and sizes, and on this week’s Please Explain we’ll find out how it’s made and ways to cook with it. Joining us: Ron Palladino, pasta expert and Fresh Pasta counter general manager at Eataly, and Jack Bishop, editorial director of America’s Test Kitchen and author of several cookbooks, including The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook, Pasta e Verdura, and the editor of Pasta Revolution.  

Lou DiPalo, third-generation expert olive oil importer and the co-owner of Di Palo Fine Foods in New York City, and Nancy Harmon Jenkins, a writer and food historian who’s the author of The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook, tell us all about olive oil--from its history to to how it's made to its many varieties.

For Please Explain, Curious Cook Harold McGee talks about the science of cooking—from how heat changes meat to the differences between baking powder and baking soda. He’s the author of a number of books, including Keys to Good Cooking, and On Food and Cooking.

Eugenia Bone, author of Mycophilia: Revelations of the Weird World of Mushrooms, talks about the world of mushrooms and other fungi. She’ll cover how to forage for mushrooms, how to identify the good and the poisonous, how fungi grow, and how to eat them.