Épisodes

  • The Winter when People Ate Tulips
    Dec 10 2024

    It’s the 80th anniversary of the Dutch Hongerwinter during World War II, which led to widespread starvation, and an inadvertent breakthrough in treating deadly celiac disease. Podcast season finale below:



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    20 min
  • Why Keep a Diary of a Toxic Snakebite?
    Dec 3 2024

    After 40 years of studying snakes, Karl Schmidt finally suffered his first bite. And when he did, he kept a gruesome diary to document the suffering and danger—right up to the edge of death...



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    17 min
  • Machiavellian Microbes
    Nov 19 2024

    Parasites can force animals to do nefarious things by manipulating their minds—including, uncomfortably, the minds of human beings.



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    19 min
  • The Woman Who “Turned Back a Plague of Old Testament Proportions”
    Nov 12 2024

    In refusing to approve the drug thalidomide, FDA scientist Frances Oldham Kelsey spared thousands of babies from deadly birth defects and revolutionized drug research. But was her legacy all good?



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    19 min
  • The Doom Lurking inside Trees
    Nov 4 2024

    Japanese physicist Fusa Miyake has sparked a revolution in archaeology by studying radioactive tree rings—work that also terrifies astronomers, who fear it foretells doom for our civilization.



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    18 min
  • The Mona Lisa of the Seine
    Oct 29 2024

    A woman who drowned in Paris became one of the most famous faces in the world as the model for CPR dummies, saving millions of lives and inspiring artists from Pablo Picasso to Michael Jackson—all while remaining completely unknown.



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    18 min
  • Savant Idiots
    Oct 22 2024

    In the early 1800s, the first Egyptian mummies in Europe served as a crucial test for evolution—a test that, according to people then, evolution flunked.



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    18 min
  • When Mummymania Swept the World
    Oct 15 2024

    In the 1800s, mummies found their way into everything from fertilizer to food, and were especially prized as medicine. Mummymania was a strange time...



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    18 min