Viruses keep jumping out of nature and into humans and getting us very sick in the process. So why do zoonotic spillovers like SARS-CoV-2 happen, and why are they becoming more frequent? We asked an expert.

As the Earth warms due to human-caused climate change, billions of people in the developing world will face life-threatening heat waves, raising the demand for air conditioning. But powering all of that cooling is going to take more...

An early bird rises with the sun, springing out of bed abuzz with energy. Meanwhile, a night owl groggily rises much later, not hitting their stride until late in the day. How many people are truly night owls or early birds? And are our...

In 2021, a survey of over 1,000 Americans found that nearly two-thirds had eaten plant-based meat alternatives in the past year. Many cited potential health and environmental benefits as their motivation. But are these alternative meats...

Have we misunderstood pain? Researcher and physician Amy Baxter unravels the symphony of connections that send pain from your body to your brain, explaining practical neuroscience hacks to quickly block those signals. Her groundbreaking...

Physician-scientist Anna Greka investigates the world's rarest genetic diseases, decoding the secrets of our cells through "molecular detective work." She explains how her team is using new, advanced technology to solve decades-old...

Could the tech industry's complex algorithms support people during their darkest times, rather than just deliver targeted ads? Drawing from his own experience with depression, global mental health researcher Sandersan Onie shows how...

As a death doula, or someone who supports dying people and their loved ones, Alua Arthur spends a lot of time thinking about the end of life. In a profound talk that examines our brief, perfectly human time on this planet, she asks us to...

You've probably heard of CRISPR, the revolutionary technology that allows us to edit the DNA in living organisms. Biochemist and 2023 Audacious Project grantee Jennifer Doudna earned the Nobel Prize for her groundbreaking work in this...

When does vision loss become blindness? Writer, audio producer and editor Andrew Leland explains how his gradual loss of vision revealed a paradoxical truth about blindness -- and shows why it might have implications for how all of us...

The lab mice we use for genetic studies are not only closely related, but live out their whole lives in a sterile environment, so they don’t tell us everything we need to know about actual humans. The answer might be grabbing a wild...

It may be possible to create a needle so small it can inject a vaccine into a single cell. But it's not the product of a medical device company. It's part of something we often think of as making us sick.

As more and more are infected with COVID-19, there's a growing group of people who have what's called Long COVID, meaning they still have symptoms for weeks or months after getting sick. While we still don't know for sure the cause of...

When someone gets a PET scan to detect tumors and how far a cancer has spread, that machine is actually detecting sugar. Because cancer has a sweet tooth, and this phenomenon, called the Warburg effect, may help us develop new cancer...

The World Health organization recently added aspartame, an artificial sweetener used in diet soda and tea, to its list of possibly carcinogenic substances. But will diet soda really give you cancer? We look at the science behind the...

It's no secret that substance use disorders can wreak havoc on peoples' lives, so anything that we could do to mitigate those cravings and addictions is really important. Which is why it's such good news that research into drugs like...

Hank goes over some of the more interesting ways that doctors can use to tell what might be wrong with you.

You’re probably aware that your blood can be A, B, AB or O, but it turns out that blood types can get a lot more complicated than that! *We made a mistake in the credits of this video: The writer of this episode was Alane Lim.

Last week, the World Health Organization announced that a malaria vaccine has finally made it through all the regulatory hurdles and is being distributed in the country of Malawi. Learn how it works and why it’s taken so long to develop...

There’s a widespread belief that caffeinated drinks will make you dehydrated because the caffeine itself makes you pee. But is caffeine affecting you as much as you think?

Searching for a cure for rickets led to the discovery of vitamin D. Fortifying foods with vitamin D led to another disease, and a whole new way to view genetic disease in general.

Gluten is a sticky protein composite found in cereal grains. Hank gives us some insight into the importance of gluten in history, as well as its impact on health in our own time.

Hank shares some developments in cancer research, from new insights into the behavior of zombie cancer cells, to a new method that uses nanotechnology to kill cancer from within.

Bivalves—animals like mussels, clams and oysters—might be a more familiar sight in a restaurant than a lab. But it turns out that studying them might help us learn more about our own health.