Fresh Air

What evolution reveals about eating, dieting and fat

We have about a teaspoon and a half of glucose in our entire bloodstream. If it goes above that, that's really unhealthy. It causes all kinds of health problems.

The Origins Podcast

Physics for Everyone 5: The Unification that Changed the World

I want to lead you up to what is perhaps the most important calculation that was done in the 19th century and maybe ever that changed the world.

Radiolab

Return of Alpha Gal

It turned out Amy was not alone. And the answer to her mysterious allergy involved maps, a dancing lone star tick, and a very particular sugar called Alpha Gal.

Radiolab

The Holy Shiver

We face chilly winds, sudden frights, and moments when the world seem to shift under your feet to figure out what the little bumps on our skin might be trying to tell us.

Fresh Air

The “bullies of the tick world” are on the hunt

And all the way to some people I spoke to in Missouri and in Virginia, if they just walked by someone frying bacon in a pan, the fumes from that, they said, made their throats seize up.

Book of the Day

In 'The Jellyfish Problem,' an introverted scientist is called in to help an island

What I loved about jellyfish is they kind of resist all efforts to see ourselves in them. You look at a jellyfish and have to ask yourself, "Where is its mouth? Where are its eyes?" And I think that makes something a very good candidate for a monster, because what is a monster if something that we can't relate to and can't see ourselves in at all.

Radiolab

This is Your Brain on Hormones

each one of us is at the mercy of a crashing sea of chemicals inside of us – those things we call hormones

TED

The Human Cell Is Wildly Complex. Can AI Decode It? | Silvana Konermann | TED

Human language is generated by humans, right? So we understand it, right? We came up with it. RNA language, or the biological language, has evolved -- it was not generated by humans. So it's basically impenetrable for us.

Radiolab

Bonus: Wild Animal Dads from Terrestrials

In the animal world, fathers have long been painted as aggressive or absent. At best providers and protectors, but certainly not caregivers. And yet for every tale of a lion or chimp dad eating its own young (yikes!), there's another creature who tells a sweeter story.

Radiolab

Bonus: Wild Animal Dads from Terrestrials

Along the way, we learn that nature doesn't offer just one model of fatherhood. Alongside Mother Nature... there just might be a Father Nature, too.

Radiolab

Your Friendly Neighborhood Hookworms

For most of human history, people were infected with a variety of intestinal worms. The idea, called the 'old friends' hypothesis, is that our immune systems evolved to expect these parasites — and without them, the immune system becomes dysregulated, attacking the body itself or overreacting to harmless substances like pollen or peanuts.

How to Do Everything

Crickets and Clowns

Crickets, like all insects, are what are called exothermic, which is a more correct term than cold-blooded, which means that they get their heat from the temperature outside.

TED

The Tiny Organisms Transforming Farming | Karsten Temme | TED

Well microbes in response shut down that nitrogen-fixing function, putting those genes into hibernation. What if we could wake them back up?

Radiolab

Snail Sex Tape

Known as a "love dart," these limestone daggers aren't just a strange trick of nature—they have a deep evolutionary purpose.

Radiolab

Snail Sex Tape

There is persuasion and subterfuge, spaghetti penises and co-copulation. And this very surprising habit—erm kink—of making tiny arrows (actually!) and stabbing each other with them.