Mini-Episode: Cool Facts Friday #11

Is aging an inevitable decline, or just a "repair backlog" your body hasn't cleared yet?. In this episode, Dave breaks down the 2016 Nobel Prize-winning science of autophagy—the body's internal recycling system discovered by Dr. Yoshinori Ohsumi.Most people are stuck in a state o ...  Show more

This week’s stories: Smartphone App Catches What Sleep Trackers Miss A 2026 trial found that suvorexant, a popular prescription sleep drug, improves sleep quality scores — but worsens morning alertness and cognitive function while improving afternoon and evening performance. The ...  Show more

Neglected and ignored by the medical establishment throughout most of its history, sickle cell disease remains one of the most common (and commonly misunderstood) genetic conditions in the world. In this episode, we break down the myriad effects that one nucleotide substitutio ...

This episode is so good that we’re putting it out a full day early. Pour yourself a quarantini and cozy up with us as we tell you a story of a bacterium that slowly strangles children to death, a scientific quest that helped shape the understanding of infectious diseases, and a g ...  Show more

Today we explore how scientists are trying to find a way to make an “aging clock” that can determine your age and health by looking at your DNA, how looking at our gut could help us treat mental health disorders, and how there may be a new treatment option in the form of a vaccin ...  Show more

This week we pay tribute to one of the gnarliest diseases of all time, and the only human disease that's ever been eradicated (thus far). That's right, people- we're talking smallpox! It's gonna get grody. Smallpox has a depressing history, a fascinating biology, a moderately upl ...  Show more