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The Dark Side of Fungi
Yeast and mold and mushrooms. Spores and gills and filaments. Fungi are everywhere, many of them invisible to the eye. They live in the soil, air, and water. They colonize our body tissues and cavities...
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How the 1918 Pandemic Revolutionized Virology
In 1918, epidemic disease and war once again embraced with all their old passion. The deadly pandemic that began that year became known as the Spanish flu because Spain was a neutral country, and its...
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Blindness Is a Strange Country
I’m going blind as I write this. It feels less dramatic than it sounds. The words aren’t disappearing as I type. I’m sitting comfortably in the sunroom. The sun is rising like it’s supposed to. I can...
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A New Way to Predict Seizures Before They Happen
Dogs have extraordinary noses. They can smell explosives and accelerants for arson, and the tiniest traces of narcotics, no matter how well masked or concealed. With a sniff, they can tell whether a...
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Why a Scientist Must Always Doubt
Francoise Barre-Sinoussi was so engrossed in her work at the Pasteur Institute on HIV in the 1980s that she almost missed her own wedding. She went on to win a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, in...
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Mice Dig Holes in the “Hygiene Hypothesis”
An empire of dirt awaits the newborn baby: dirty floors, dirty yards, dirty pets, dirty toys. In recent years, many parents have taken to letting their babies roam this scuzzy terrain freely without...
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Long COVID Leaves Clues in the Blood
More than three years after the COVID-19 pandemic began, more than three-quarters of adults in the United States, approximately 260 million people, have contracted the infectious disease. While most...
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Is Sushi a Health Hazard?
When she was researching her dissertation, Hyejeong Lee, a Ph.D. student at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, spent months buying sushi at local grocery stores. But rather than eat...
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The Stench of Death Has a Sunny Side
Although most people have not had the misfortune of smelling their own dead, we have all encountered the smell of death: the stench of roadkill, the remains of the rat in the wall, the bloated fish on...
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The Bittersweet Science
The notion of boxing as the “sweet science” is often thought to have been coined in 1956 by the great New Yorker writer A.J. Liebling. He used the term as the title of his definitive book on the sport,...
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Why I See Static Everywhere
Flickering dots and smudges of light everywhere, fuzz and static blanketing my visual field, blurring the edges of my reality. For as long as I can remember, this is what I have seen when I look out...
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Why Women Wake Up More During Surgery
Every day about 60,000 people have surgery under general anesthesia in the United States.Often casually compared to falling into a deep sleep, going under is in fact wildly different from your everyday...
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The Pitfalls of AI Health Coaches
You’re dragging a bit as you get out of bed, but you’re roused by the greeting of your AI health coach: “Ready for a healthy, happy day?” it chirps from your smartwatch.“I’ve been noticing a trend,” it...
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The Power of Physician Empathy
We all prefer a doctor who listens to our concerns and expresses compassion for our suffering. But does physician empathy actually have a lasting impact on a patient’s health? Empathy appears to...
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How Disease Really Spread in the Americas
Cramped, damp, filthy, infested with rats and disease. This was the reality aboard transoceanic ships in the 15th century. According to most historical accounts, such ships were akin to biological...
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The Anatomical Quirk That Saved Dr. No
Julius No came up tough. Abandoned by his parents, he fell in with criminals—and eventually it caught up with him. One night, an assassin aimed carefully at his chest, just left of center, and shot him...
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