This Podcast Will Kill You

A dull pounding headache. Body aches that come and go. Chills that set your teeth to chattering and have you reaching for the fluffiest blankets to warm up. But the thing is, you’re already warm, hot even. At least according to the thermometer. That’s right, you’ve got a fever. Throughout the years of making this podcast, we’ve begun many a disease description with “it started with a fever” but we haven’t ever explored what that really means in depth until this episode. We take you through why fevers happen, how they work, why on earth you feel cold when you’re actually running a temperature, and whether they’re helpful, harmful, or somewhere in between. We then poke around in the history of thermometers, exploring when someone first thought to measure human body temperature and how that changed the concept of Fever the disease to fever the symptom. This is a red-hot fever dream of an episode with some very fun fever facts, so make sure to tune in! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The TPWKY book club is back in action, and we’re thrilled to be starting this season’s reading journey with Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens, reproductive rights advocate, Associate Professor in the University of Connecticut history department, and award-winning author of Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology. The history of science and medicine often focuses on the achievements of wealthy, white male physicians and researchers whose names are etched on medical school buildings, libraries, and dormitories. Rarely do these stories give voice to those whose bodies or labor were exploited in the name of scientific progress. In the first book club episode of the season, Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens joins us to discuss the Black enslaved women who worked alongside the so-called “Father of Gynecology”, James Marion Sims, as both patients and caregivers in nineteenth-century America. Our conversation takes us through the inherent contradictions in the way nineteenth-century physicians wrote and thought about race, gender, and health, and how broad changes in medical practice during this time promoted the dissemination of unfounded beliefs in how white and Black bodies experienced pain, health, and disease. Tune in for a fascinating conversation that will have you immediately adding Medical Bondage to your to-read list! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In many ways, this week’s episode on myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) is a companion piece to last week’s episode on Long Covid. The two share many similarities: a wide range of debilitating symptoms lingering long after infection, an illness which can transform from day to day or week to week, dismissal and downplaying by the medical community, a big question mark under “pathophysiological cause”, and so many others. These parallels can tell us a great deal about our concepts of disease and how we deal with uncertainty in science and medicine. But the differences between these two can be equally revealing. In this episode, we dig into what we know and what we hypothesize about the biological underpinnings of ME/CFS before tracing the twisty history of this disease, as popular perception switched back and forth and back again from “real” to “imagined” disease. We wrap up the episode with a look at some of the current research and promising treatments for ME/CFS. Both ME/CFS and Long Covid demonstrate the power of patients and patient advocates in raising awareness about poorly understood diseases and the impact that sharing personal stories can have. You can find more incredible work by Katie Walters, the provider of one of our firsthands for this episode, by clicking on this link. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’re back with our season 7 premiere, and we’re kicking things off with a topic that we’ve wanted to cover for a long time, even if the topic itself hasn’t been around all that long. That’s right, we’re taking on Long Covid. When SARS-CoV-2 began making its way around the world in 2020, it was thought to cause a mild illness in most people, with complete recovery a couple of weeks after first getting infected. But just a short time into the pandemic, people began to report debilitating symptoms lingering for months after recovery was “supposed” to happen. What started out as a trickle of reports soon turned into a tsunami, and this condition, which came to be known as Long Covid, transformed our understanding of this viral infection. In this episode, we explore how the concept of Long Covid was defined by those who experience it, who also continue to advocate for better treatment, more research, and real compassion from medical professionals. We examine what we currently know about the biology of this condition, and delve into some of the most promising research avenues that may give us a greater understanding of or ability to treat Long Covid. This story is still being written, but already it can tell us so much about our concepts of infectious disease and how the medical system treats those with “invisible” illness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For our season 6 finale, we’re spending some time with menopause. How many nicknames can you think of for menstruation? Quite a few, I’m sure. “That time of the month”, “Aunt Flo”, “the red wave”, “period”, the list goes on. But what about euphemisms for menopause? We’ve got “the change” or “change of life”, “climacteric”, and… that’s it? There may be more out there, but the comparison is revealing. Despite the fact that roughly half of the global population has or will one day experience menopause, the lack of nicknames demonstrates the silence, often tinged with shame, still enveloping it. In this episode, we explore the roots of this silence and the many historical misconceptions about menopause that frame our current perspective. We also examine the effect that this silence has on our understanding of the physiological processes underlying this transition. Why do some people experience symptoms and others do not? Why do humans experience menopause? What is the grandmother effect? What’s the latest on hormone replacement therapy? These are only a sampling of the many questions we delve into in this info-packed, frustration-laden, and eye-opening episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices