This Podcast Will Kill You

For every article about the risks of sun exposure or a guide to sunscreens, you don’t have to look far to find one about the health benefits of sunshine or a how-to for achieving the best tan. Messaging around sun exposure is mixed, to say the least, and it’s no wonder that despite having more sun protection tools than ever before, rates of skin cancer have never been higher. In this episode, we delve into the relationship between UV radiation and skin cancers, answering your (sun)burning questions about the different types of cancers and how sunscreens actually work. We then explore the history of sun protective methods and how attitudes around tanning have changed dramatically over time. We wrap up the episode with a look at rates of skin cancers around the globe today and exciting research showing the benefits of sunscreens as well as how AI might be used to help diagnose skin cancer. Tune in for an info-packed episode that will have you reaching for that sunscreen bottle.

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On the night of December 2, 1984, a deadly gas leak at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India led to what has been described as the world’s worst industrial disaster. In the immediate aftermath of the gas leak, thousands of people died and hundreds of thousands were injured from exposure to the toxic gas methyl isocyanate. But long after the international headlines and news reports dwindled to silence, long after Union Carbide paid a paltry settlement to survivors, long after the disaster faded from much of the world’s memory, the gas leak continues to haunt the residents of Bhopal. In this episode, we trace the path of methyl isocyanate from initial discovery to the night of the disaster and the years that followed. We then explore what about this gas makes it so very deadly before assessing how the contamination still present at the site is causing health problems for residents decades after the gas leak.

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“Throbbing, pulsating pain.” “Like a drill boring into your head.” “As though your head is gripped by a vise.” “Stabbing pain hammering through your brain.” There is no shortage of metaphors used to describe the horrific, incapacitating pain of migraines. But try as we might, can any of them truly convey what it feels like to be at the mercy of such pain? In many ways, migraines reveal our shortcomings: with language that fails to accurately describe pain, with empathy when we continue to dismiss migraines as “just really bad headaches”, with medicine as we struggle to find reliable treatments and preventatives, and with biology as we fail to understand the complete pathology of this condition. In this episode, we do our best to explore these shortcomings by deep diving into what we do know about the biology and history of migraines. Why do some people get migraines and others don’t? How do certain medications work? What the heck is going on with aura? Have migraines always been around? How have people dealt with them or perceived them historically? What’s on the horizon for migraines in the future? As always, we’ve got lots of questions and lots of answers for you, so tune in today!

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Fungal infections don’t often make an appearance on this podcast, but when they do, you know you’re in for a wild ride. In this episode, we explore the rare but potentially deadly fungal infection blastomycosis. We trace the journey of Blastomyces spores as they depart from their cozy homes of decomposing wood and make their way first into mammalian lungs before possibly moving into the skin, intestines, and brain. How and why these fungi can be so deadly is our next stop, one that takes us into an unexpected direction: the fall of dinosaurs, the rise of mammals and the role that pathogenic fungi played in this transition. We delve into why comparatively few fungi are pathogenic to humans and how our warm-bloodedness may protect us. But, as we discuss in the episode’s conclusion, that protection may be weakened as our warming planet selects for fungi that can tolerate increasing temperatures. Dinos, dogs, deep time, and deadly outbreaks - this episode has it all.

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There’s no denying that human imagination is a powerful thing. It has led us to create incredible works of art, literature that transports its readers to other realms, technology that revolutionizes the way we communicate and travel, music and film that makes us laugh, cry, and hit repeat. But our imagination often falls short when trying to conceive of the world from another person’s perspective, especially when it comes to senses. In this episode, we delve into one of the most prominent examples of this: color vision and color vision deficiencies. First, we take you through how color vision works and just how non-universal this experience is. We then explore the origins of color vision and what evolutionary significance it may have held before getting into the discovery of color vision deficiency and its impact on industry. We close out this colorful episode by chatting about some of the latest developments and products geared towards those with color vision deficiency.

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Hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD). The dreaded scourge of daycares, kindergartens, even occasionally college campuses, and the topic of this week’s episode. From the multiple viruses that cause HFMD to the wide array of symptoms (bye bye, fingernails), from the relatively recent discovery of this disease to the ancient origins of all viruses (deep time, y’all), from the changing nature of outbreaks to the development of potential vaccines (fingers crossed) - in this episode we’re going way beyond the basics of hand, foot, and mouth disease. Whether or not you’ve had the pleasure of being up close and personal with this disease, this episode is sure to leave you slightly horrified/mildly impressed by the infectiousness, longevity, resilience, and deep roots of the HFMD viruses.

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Most of us are familiar with asthma. Maybe you have the disease yourself or maybe a friend, family member, or coworker has it. Or maybe you’ve just watched a tv show or movie featuring a character with asthma. However you learned about this disease, you probably still have some lingering questions about it, like “how do inhalers work?”, “what are the different types of asthma?”, “where does the word asthma come from?”, “can other animals get asthma?”, and “can Erin and Erin tell me everything they possibly can about asthma?” The answer to that last question is a resounding yes, and the answers to the others you’ll find in today’s episode, where we take you through the complicated but somehow also straightforward biology of this disease, the long history of asthma peppered with firsthand accounts, and the promising research that may transform the way we live with this disease.

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Our final TPWKY book club selection of the season will test the limits of your imagination by asking you to consider what it might be like to smell the world through the nose of a dog or to see flowers through the ultraviolet vision of a bee. It will make you ponder the tradeoffs inherent in sensory perception and what an animal’s dominant senses can tell us about what is most important to their species. It will have you contemplating what the future holds for sensory research, both in terms of what new senses we might discover as well as the impacts of sensory pollution on an ecosystem. In short, it will change the way you perceive the world. Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist Ed Yong joins us to chat about his incredible book, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us. Yong, whose other book I Contain Multitudes is another TPWKY favorite, leads us on an expedition beyond the boundaries of human senses as we chat about what an octopus tastes, how the line between communication and perception is blurred in electric fish, the evolutionary arms race between bats and moths, and even the long-standing question of why zebras have stripes. Tune in for the riveting and magical conclusion to this season’s miniseries.

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The CDC’s list of highest priority bioterrorism agents is a short one, with only six pathogens making the cut. Among the more familiar names on the list, such as anthrax, botulism, plague, smallpox, and viral hemorrhagic fevers, is the topic of today’s episode: Francisella tularensis. Unless you’re a hunter or work with small mammals, you may not recognize the name of this pathogen or the disease it causes - tularemia - let alone the characteristics that earned it a place on the CDC’s list. By the end of this episode, though, all that will have changed. Join us as we explore why this pathogen’s brutal biology makes it a force to be reckoned with, how the history of its discovery has surprising origins in the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and what promises future research may hold for protection against this deadly disease.

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Oh, to taste the food of the past. Strawberry jam made from farm-fresh strawberries. Milk straight from the cow. Cookies baked with freshly churned butter and brown sugar. Because that’s how it was, right? Everything used to be fresher, more pure, unadulterated by preservatives or additives, right? Our latest TPWKY book club pick shows us just how wrong that notion is. Science journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Deborah Blum joins us this week to chat about her book, The Poison Squad, which tells the story of the fight for food safety regulation in the United States at the turn of the 20th century. In our conversation, Blum rips off those rose-tinted nostalgia glasses and reveals that strawberry jam rarely contained strawberries, milk could include a mix of formaldehyde and pond water, butter had borax, and brown sugar was mostly ground up insects. Until one man, chemist Harvey Wiley, stepped up and spearheaded the campaign for food safety legislation, all of these horrific practices of food adulteration were entirely legal. Tune in to learn what Wiley was up against and some of the tactics used in his struggle, including the wild story of the experiment that gave this book its title.

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