Most people will take a pill, receive an injection, or otherwise take some kind of medicine during their lives. But most of us don't know anything about how these substances actually work. How can various compounds impact the way we...

You might have noticed that lots of drugs have special children’s formulas, and you might think that’s because smaller people need smaller doses. But you’d be wrong! Because kids aren’t just tiny adults.

We continue our tour of the nervous system with a look at synapses and the crazy stuff cocaine does to your body.


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Electrical Synapses Use Ion Currents Over Gap Junctions to...

When under anesthesia, you can't move, form memories, or -- hopefully -- feel pain. And while it might just seem like you are asleep for that time, you actually aren't. What's going on? Steven Zheng explains what we know about the...

It's relatively easy to imagine a new medicine -- the hard part is testing it, and that can delay promising new cures for years. In this well-explained talk, Geraldine Hamilton shows how her lab creates organs and body parts on a chip,...

We need to change how we prescribe drugs, says physician Daniel Kraft: too often, medications are dosed incorrectly, cause toxic side effects or just don't work. In a talk and concept demo, Kraft shares his vision for a future of...

Medicine has made leaps and bounds in treating illnesses in the last century, but are they ever going to get around to curing the common cold? We might be closer than you think.

You've probably heard how some drugs and treatments make people feel better, even when they turn out to be fake. That's the placebo effect, but how does it work? And could the same effect backfire, causing your brain to make you feel...

You might have heard that you should use a back-up method of protection if you’re taking birth control pills and antibiotics at the same time. Turns out, you might not have to worry about it.

In 1960, Frances Kelsey was one of the Food and Drug Administration's newest recruits. Before the year was out, she would begin a fight that would save thousands of lives - though no one knew it at the time. Andrea Tone explains how...

Our immune systems aren't just critical to our physical health. It turns out they may play a big role in our mental health, as well. And learning more about how these two aspects of our health are interconnected can help us develop...

Organ transplants aren’t new, but scientists are still making breakthroughs in transplant success rates and the sources of the organs.

The world is getting closer to achieving one of the most important public health goals of our time: eradicating HIV. And to do this, we won't even have to cure the disease. We simply have to stop HIV from being transmitted until...

Hank gives you the facts on stem cells - what they are, what they're good for, where they come from, and how they're used in medicine.

Coming up with brand new drugs is all about pinpointing and exploiting a disease’s weakness. A big part of perfecting drug design will be learning to predict how proteins get their shapes because that has everything to do with how both...

Hank makes it all better by explaining the biochemistry of pain -- how it works, why we have it, and how painkillers, whether they're over the counter or heavy-duty prescription bad boys, make the pain go away. Chapters View all...

The human body has a few built-in methods for getting rid of toxins. Sweating seems like it should be one of them, but it isn't doing as much as you think.

Thousands of years ago, ancient Nubians drew pictures on tomb walls of a terrible disease that turns the eyelids inside out and causes blindness. This disease, trachoma, is still a scourge in many parts of the world today -- but it's...

Dr. Genevieve Lind explains how she uses frog eggs to learn how drugs affect receptors in the brain and Jessi's chicken Goldie shows us one use for the cloaca.

After decades of research and billions spent in clinical trials, we still have a problem with cancer drug delivery, says biomedical engineer Elizabeth Wayne. Chemotherapy kills cancer -- but it kills the rest of your body, too. Instead...

It might sound like a concept from science fiction, but artificial intelligence is already facilitating the development process behind some pharmaceuticals.

You might have heard that we found a cure for the COVID-19, and that it comes from a drug we've used for centuries. But let's take a breath and look at the facts.

Ever wonder what happens after you flush? You should, because your pee is causing problems! Hank talks about how, and why, human waste is having weird effects on the natural world. We're talking homicidal fish and hermaphroditic frogs...

Scientists have once again used big, complex math equations to help us understand more about the universe we inhabit, this time about the origins of life on earth.