Podcasts about Gina Kolata

Not only has President-elect Donald Trump chosen prominent vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Trump also has said he will nominate controversial TV host Mehmet Oz to run the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which oversees coverage for nearly half of Americans. Meanwhile, the lame-duck Congress is back in Washington with just a few weeks to figure out how to wrap up work for the year.Rachel Cohrs Zhang of Stat, Sandhya Raman of CQ Roll Call, and Riley Griffin of Bloomberg News join KFF Health News' Julie Rovner to discuss these stories and more.Also this week, Rovner interviews Sarah Varney, who has been covering a trial in Idaho challenging the lack of medical exceptions in that state's abortion ban. Plus, for “extra credit” the panelists suggest health policy stories they read this week that they think you should read, too: Julie Rovner: ProPublica's “How Lincare Became a Multibillion-Dollar Medicare Scofflaw,” by Peter Elkind. Sandhya Raman: ProPublica's “How UnitedHealth's Playbook for Limiting Mental Health Coverage Puts Countless Americans' Treatment at Risk,” by Annie Waldman. Riley Ray Griffin: The New York Times' “A.I. Chatbots Defeated Doctors at Diagnosing Illness,” by Gina Kolata. Rachel Cohrs Zhang: CNBC's “Dental Supply Stock Surges on RFK's Anti-Fluoride Stance, Activist Involvement,” by Alex Harring. Click here for a transcript of the episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Many of you reached out to me about two articles. One in the New York Times by Gina Kolata about so-called “Ob*sity First Medicine” - OFM (you may remember Kolata from a different article I wrote about that essentially lobbied for insurance coverage for weight loss drugs and failed to disclose that each person interviewed was on the payroll of the drug companies.) Another an opinion piece in the Washington Post by Leana S. Wen. We'll discuss the NYT article in part 1, along with some general issues and the WaPo article in Part 2.  Get full access to Weight and Healthcare at weightandhealthcare.substack.com/subscribe

New Guest Expert! On this week's Aftermath, Rebecca speaks with author and NYTimes health journalist Gina Kolata about the devastating 1918 flu pandemic and its lasting legacy. Gina draws parallels from our recent experience with Covid-19 and reminds us that viruses truly never go away, people often just choose to forget about them. Afterward, Patreon subscribers can listen as Rebecca and Producer Clayton Early revisit the board and decide if anything Gina mentioned altered the verdict. Not on Patreon? Click below and join us!Join our Patreon!We have merch!Join our Discord!Tell us who you think is to blame at http://thealarmistpodcast.comEmail us at thealarmistpodcast@gmail.comFollow us on Instagram @thealarmistpodcastFollow us on Twitter @alarmistThe Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/alarmist. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sickle cell disease is a chronic, debilitating condition that affects nearly 100,000 Americans, most of them with African ancestry. Now, the FDA has approved a groundbreaking treatment for it that uses the gene-editing tool CRISPR. John Yang speaks with Yale School of Medicine assistant professor Dr. Cece Calhoun and New York Times reporter Gina Kolata to learn more. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Sickle cell disease is a chronic, debilitating condition that affects nearly 100,000 Americans, most of them with African ancestry. Now, the FDA has approved a groundbreaking treatment for it that uses the gene-editing tool CRISPR. John Yang speaks with Yale School of Medicine assistant professor Dr. Cece Calhoun and New York Times reporter Gina Kolata to learn more. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Last week, the FDA approved a medication said to be the most potent yet in the treatment of chronic obesity, a condition that affects more than 100 million American adults. Developed by Eli Lilly, Zepbound is the latest in a new class of drugs doctors now have to help patients lose weight. Others include Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro. “It's like this total new world for weight control,” says Gina Kolata, a health reporter for the New York Times. She has written about this issue of obesity for decades and adds that after years with very little progress “these medications are really changing things.” Kolata joins Diane on the latest episode of On My Mind to break down how these drugs work, possible side effects, and what's next in the development of obesity medications.

The House finally has a new speaker: Mike Johnson (R-La). He's a relative newcomer who's been a lower-level member of the House GOP leadership. And while he's an outspoken opponent of abortion and same-sex marriage, his record on other health issues is scant. Meanwhile, the National Institutes of Health appears on track to be getting a new director, and Georgia's Medicaid work requirement experiment is off to a very slow start. Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico and Rachel Cohrs of Stat join KFF Health News' Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.Plus, for “extra credit,” the panelists suggest health policy stories they read this week they think you should read, too: Julie Rovner: The Washington Post's “The Pandemic Has Faded in This Michigan County. The Mistrust Never Ended,” by Greg Jaffe and Patrick Marley. Alice Miranda Ollstein: Politico's “Dozens of States Sue Meta Over Addictive Features Harming Kids,” by Rebecca Kern, Josh Sisco, and Alfred Ng. Rachel Cohrs: The New York Times' “Ozempic and Wegovy Don't Cost What You Think They Do,” by Gina Kolata. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The news is out and the headlines are clear - drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy DO help people lose weight and they have become "the next big thing" for weight loss.But, questions remain: How do they work? What long-term impacts will these have on health? Are they really helping the underlying cause of obesity and disease? Is it enough just to lose the weight? Will these drugs actually improve our health in the same way that a whole food plant-based diet can?Rip welcomes evolutionary psychologist, Dr. Doug Lisle, back to the podcast to discuss his thoughts on these new weight loss drugs and why they may or may not be a panacea for improved health. They discuss:The correlation between obesity and disease processesThe underlying cause of obesityPros and Cons of weight loss drugsWhy people struggle to change their behavior even when they know betterThe importance of making your environment look like your goalsListener Question: recovering from medical cannabis withdrawalListener Question: Can a whole food plant-based diet cure schizophrenia?Dr. Doug's thoughts on screen time and social media influenceVisit PLANTSTRONG Foods and stock up on all of our latest products:https://plantstrongfoods.com/ Join our PLANTSTRONG Sedona Retreat - October 9-14, 2023:https://plantstrongfoods.com/pages/2023-sedona-retreat Purchase Tickets to our 12th Annual Plant-Stock - September 22-24, 2023https://plantstrongfoods.com/pages/plant-stock-landing-page-2023 Follow PLANTSTRONG on Facebook for tips, recipes, and the chance to see Rip live each weekhttps://www.facebook.com/GoPlantstrong PLANTSTRONG Instagram - Check us out and share your favorite PLANTSTRONG products and why you love it! Don't forget to tag us using #goplantstrong

Can smart cities truly deliver on their promises of innovation and sustainability? On Deep Dish, author and winner of the Pattis Family Foundation Global Cities Book Award, John Lorinc joins host Brian Hanson to navigate the intersection of urban planning technology and ethical concerns in his book Dream States: Smart Cities, Technology, and the Pursuit of Urban Utopias.  Related Content:  Dream States: Smart Cities, Technology, and the Pursuit of Urban Utopia, John Lorinc, Coach House Books, August 23, 2022  Meet the Pattis Family Foundation Global Cities Book Award winner and finalists and submit books for the 2024 award!  2023 Pritzker Forum on Global Cities: Harnessing AI: Tools for Urban Leaders, Event, November 13-15, 2023  Your Data Were ‘Anonymized'? These Scientists Can Still Identify You, Gina Kolata, New York Times, July 23, 2019    This episode is brought to you by UL Solutions. 

In this pivotal episode, Dr. Moss and his son, Ben, shed light on new insights into Vitamin D's role in cancer prevention, based on data from a study published in 2019. While the original research concluded that Vitamin D had no significant impact on cancer incidence, a meticulous reevaluation of the same data has revealed something crucial: Body Mass Index (BMI) plays a significant role in the effectiveness of Vitamin D supplementation for cancer prevention. Specifically, those with a 'normal' BMI showed a significant reduction in the incidence of advanced and metastatic cancers. Dr. Moss and Ben explore why these game-changing results haven't received the media attention they deserve and what this could mean for natural cancer prevention strategies. Tune in to this eye-opening discussion that presents the science you can't afford to ignore! Program Notes: Primary authors of cited paper: Walter C. Willett Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/profile/walter-c-willett/ Edward L. Giovannucci, D.Sc., M.D. Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health https://connects.catalyst.harvard.edu/Profiles/display/Person/31785 Articles cited in this podcast: Vitamin D Supplements and Prevention of Cancer and Cardiovascular Disease https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30415629/ [Cited 501 times by other papers.] Roni Caryn Rabin. Vitamin D and Fish Oils Are Ineffective for Preventing Cancer and Heart Disease. New York Times, Nov. 10, 2018. VITAL study: an incomplete picture? Eur Rev Med Pharmacol https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31002167/ [Cited 8 times.] Gina Kolata. Study Finds Another Condition That Vitamin D Pills Do Not Help New York Times, July 7, 2022: “The first part of VITAL, previously published, found that vitamin D did not prevent cancer or cardiovascular disease in trial participants.” The VITAL Research Group. Effect of Vitamin D3 Supplements on Development of Advanced Cancer: A Secondary Analysis of the VITAL Randomized Clinical Trial.  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33206192/ [Cited 72 times.] Vitamin D and Cancer: An Historical Overview of the Epidemiology and Mechanisms. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35406059/ [Cited 31 times.] “A comprehensive self-help plan for cancer includes medicinal mushrooms. They are indispensable”. – Ralph W. Moss, PhD Recommended Product: 5 Defenders Mushroom Blend https://shop.realmushrooms.com/products/organic-mushroom-blend-capsules?ref=391 Life Extension Vitamin D3 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0019LPCNO/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=mosshyh20-20 For more information on cancer-fighting foods and supplements, please visit our website: https://www.themossreport.com Thanks for listening!

In this episode, Neil, Niki, and Natalia discuss the history of children's story hour.  Support Past Present on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/pastpresentpodcast On this week's Past Present episode, Nicole Hemmer, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, and Neil J. Young discuss the history of children's story hour.   Here are some links and references mentioned during this week's show:   ·         “Drag queen story hours” have become the latest arena in the culture wars. Niki drew on this Slate piece about children's librarian Anne Carroll Moore. Neil referenced this New York Times piece on the history of drag queen story hours. Natalia referred to historian Julia Mickenberg's book Learning from the Left: Children's Literature, the Cold War, and Radical Politics in the United States.     In our regular closing feature, What's Making History: ·         Natalia discussed historian Ava Purkiss' new book, Fit Citizens: A History of Black Women's Exercise from Post Reconstruction to Postwar America. ·         Neil recommended Gina Kolata's New York Times article, “DNA From Beethoven's Hair Unlocks Medical and Family Secrets.” ·         Niki shared Maham Javaid's Washington Post article, “After a 1935 Tragedy, a Priest Vowed to Teach Kids About Menstruation.”

A recent trial for a cancer drug yielded some amazing results for those that participated.  Complete remission for every patient.  It was a very small trial with only 18 patients with rectal cancer, so caution is encouraged as much work needs to be done to replicate the results, but there has been no other study in which a treatment completely removed cancer in every patient.  Gina Kolata, medical reporter at the NY Times, joins us for what we know about the latest study.   Next, we have seen what has been going on in the housing market and with sky high rents, but all these increases are also hitting one of the country's most affordable housing options… mobile homes.  Costs of manufactured homes are on the rise, but so is the rent for the land that they sit on.  In some cases, those costs are doubling or tripling.  Abha Bhattarai, economics correspondent at the Washington Post, joins us for how high demand, low inventory and corporate owners are impacting it all.   Finally, vaccine experts advising the FDA have endorsed a new Covid vaccine made by Novavax saying that the shot's benefits outweigh any risks associated with it.  The vaccine will still need full approval before coming on the market, but it will be the first one available using a more traditional, protein-based technology.  Liz Essley Whyte, reporter at the WSJ, joins us for what to know about its effectiveness and concerns. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode is my response to an article reprinted in The Denver Post written by Gina Kolata (whose articles I love!) from the NY Times. Scientists are baffled by an apparent correlation between taking anti-inflammatory medication and developing chronic back pain. I think this illustrates medicine/science's lack of understanding of what causes chronic back pain.  Here's a link to the article: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/11/health/medications-back-pain-overuse.html Visit www.rickolderman.com for my home programs, patient stories, free ebook, blog, or my online course teaching this approach to health and wellness practitioners.

How old are you really?  There is a growing interest in biological age vs. your chronological age.  The idea behind it is that your cells and organs age differently and knowing your biological age can help you postpone or avoid age related illnesses.  There is currently no standard way to measure it, but scientists and start-ups are developing ways through blood tests or saliva tests.  Betsy Morris, senior writer at the WSJ, joins us for what to know.   Next, there is a lot of frustration when kids are misbehaving or acting out.  So how do you discipline when it happens, especially if you might be in a public place.  Is a timeout in order or a time-in?  It also helps to explain why their actions are a problem, many times we assume kids know better, but sometimes they don't.  Deborah Farmer Kris, education journalist and founder of Parenthood365, joins us for how to discipline in the heat of the moment.   Finally, for all you fans of intermittent fasting, a new study concludes that it might not be all it's cracked up to be.  Time restricted eating goes like this… eat anything you want as long as it's only between a 6–8-hour time period.  The new study let one group of participants eat a set number of calories between 8a-4p and the other group the same number of calories at whatever time they wanted.  What they found was there was no difference.  Gina Kolata, medical reporter at the NY Times, joins us for what is all means. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on Health Care Today with Dr. Louis Meyers, he talks about Viruses. He speaks with Dr. Mohammad Sajadi from the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland, as well as Gina Kolata- senior science reporter for the N.Y. Times.

This week on Health Care Today with Dr. Louis Meyers, he talks about Viruses. He speaks with Dr. Mohammad Sajadi from the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland, as well as Gina Kolata- senior science reporter for the N.Y. Times.

In this episode, Niki, Neil, and Natalia discuss the debate over school reopening. Support Past Present on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/pastpresentpodcast Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show:  When – and how – public schools should reopen has become a topic of intense controversy. Neil cited this Los Angeles Times piece about the “intractable learning loss” suffered by English Language Learners this year. Natalia referred to this New York Times article about whether “learning loss” should be assessed and to this Politico article about the demand by United Teachers of Los Angeles for free childcare as a condition of their return to the classroom. She also drew on this History Channel article about the trust in public schools that existed during the 1918 influenza pandemic. Niki cited historian Daniel Rodgers’ Age of Fracture, and each of our books: Classroom Wars, We Gather Together, and Messengers of the Right.    In our regular closing feature, What’s Making History: Natalia discussed the latest policing of Dr. Jill Biden’s self-presentation: her stockings. Neil discussed the HBO documentary Tina. Niki shared Gina Kolata’s New York Times article, “Kati Kariko Helped Shield the World From the Coronavirus.”

According to a recent study published in Nature, scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel were able to grow mouse embryos in an artificial womb for several days.  Though the mice have yet to be fully gestated in a robotic womb, this research has some interesting potential applications. According to the New York Times, this experimentation could lead to a great understanding of early development and could have applications in fertility as well. And though it may seem far off in the sci-fi future, this also opens the door for the potential for human embryos to be carried to term outside a human body.  We sit down with New York Times medical reporter Gina Kolata and developmental biologist Paul Tesar to discuss the research and its potential implications.  Guests:  Gina Kolata, medical reporter at the New York Times, where her recent piece is “Scientists Grow Mouse Embryos in a Mechanical Womb”; she tweets @ginakolata  Paul Tesar, professor of genetics and developmental biologist at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine; he tweets @TesarLab

New York Times-- the PC Wellness rag had to publish on February 10th an article about a drug that researchers called a "game changer " in the fat biz. What will the Times' GANG of Four: Jane Brody; Gina Kolata; Gretchen Reynolds; Tara Parker Pope do now?? No more Wellness tales. Again, everything is hormones now . But nothing will change. We are too PC & Woke and Cancel Culture to face the music. We obsess about Covid while the real illness will end our dominance.

We take a step back in time to 2007 when PCR testing misled the Profs at  Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center of a Whooping Cough outbreak. What can we learn from their mistakes? Read from a New York Times Article by Gina Kolata. You can find it here: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/22/health/22whoop.htmlSEND US AN EMAIL: therealnormalpodcast@gmail.comFOLLOW US ON TWITTER: http://www.twitter.com/realnormalpod

An adventuring Swedish doctor takes on a decades-long medical mystery: What exactly was the 1918 flu? We talk to Dr. Johan Hultin, Eileen Hultin, Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger, Ann Reid, Rita Olanna and Annie Conger.  Here’s a link to our transcript: https://bit.ly/30mnvt6 Check out Radiolab’s episode on the 1918 flu here: https://bit.ly/3n9cxkm And the book Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused it by Gina Kolata: https://bit.ly/3ipCeJU This episode was produced by Rose Rimler with help from Wendy Zukerman, along with Michelle Dang, Hannah Harris Green and Nicholas DelRose. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact checking by Eva Dasher. Mix and sound design by Peter Leonard. Music written by Peter Leonard, Bobby Lord, Emma Munger, and Marcus Thorne Bagala. Special thanks to: Abbie Ruzicka, Abigail Collins, Davis Hovey, John White, Robyn Russell, Rachel Cohen, Warren Kakoona, Brian Crockett, Trefon Angasan, Brad Angasan, Matt Ganley, Dr. Adam Lauring, Dr. Matt Memoli, Prof. Susan Jones, and everyone else we spoke to for this episode. Plus a big thanks to Brendan Klinkenberg, Walter Rimler, the Zukerman family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson.

The fascinating, true story of the world's deadliest disease. In 1918, the Great Flu Epidemic felled the young and healthy virtually overnight. An estimated forty million people died as the epidemic raged. Children were left orphaned and families were devastated. As many American soldiers were killed by the 1918 flu as were killed in battle during World War I. And no area of the globe was safe. Eskimos living in remote outposts in the frozen tundra were sickened and killed by the flu in such numbers that entire villages were wiped out. Scientists have recently rediscovered shards of the flu virus frozen in Alaska and preserved in scraps of tissue in a government warehouse. Gina Kolata, an acclaimed reporter for The New York Times, unravels the mystery of this lethal virus with the high drama of a great adventure story. Delving into the history of the flu and previous epidemics, detailing the science and the latest understanding of this mortal disease, Kolata addresses the prospects for a great epidemic recurring, and, most important, what can be done to prevent it.

Chris, Bryan, and Melanie talk about the Interim Report issued by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence last week. What kinds of expectations should we have about AI being used for national security purposes? What kind of investments should be made in this technology, and where will the money come from? What about concerns that AI developed by American companies or the United States government might be used by authoritarian regimes to violate their citizens' human rights? Can we continue to reap the benefits of research collaboration with people from other countries, particularly China, and still protect national security secrets? Finally, Bryan tells us of his exploits in Italy, Chris gives a heartfelt appreciation to a friend and colleague, and Melanie looks forward to some long-awaited playtime with her nephews.   Links National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, Interim Report, November 2019 Jacey Fortin, “Uber C.E.O. Backtracks After Comparing Khashoggi’s Killing to an Accident,” New York Times, November 11, 2019 Andrew Bacevich, “The Berlin Wall Fell and the U.S. learned the Wrong Lessons. It Got Us Donald Trump,” Los Angeles Times, November 8, 2019 Christopher Preble, John Glaser, and A. Trevor Thrall, Fuel to the Fire: How Trump Made America's Broken Foreign Policy Even Worse, (Cato Institute, 2019) Robert Work and Eric Schmidt, "In Search of Ideas: The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence Wants You," War on the Rocks, July 18, 2019 Ilanit Chernick, "Holocaust Survivors Reunite with Rescuer at Yad Vashem," November 3, 2019, Jerusalem Post "Holocaust Survivor Reunited with a Baby He Saved During World War II," BBC, November 8, 2019 Gina Kolata, "Vast Dragnet Targets Theft of Biomedical Secrets for China," New York Times, November 4, 2019 Melanie Marlow, Tweets, November 11, 2019 “Puffs,” Heritage Pride Productions, November 14-15-16, and 21-22-23

LIVE on the Sport Physiotherapy Canada Facebook Page, I welcome Alex Hutchinson on the show to discuss sports journalism.  Alex Hutchinson is National Magazine Award-winning journalist who writes about the science of endurance for Runner’s World and Outside, and frequently contributes to other publications such as the New York Times and the New Yorker. A former long-distance runner for the Canadian national team, he holds a master’s in journalism from Columbia and a Ph.D. in physics from Cambridge, and he did his post-doctoral research with the National Security Agency. In this episode, we discuss: -How to disseminate findings from complex research studies to a layman audience -Attention grabbing headlines that commit to a point of view -Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance -What Alex is looking forward to from the Third World Congress of Sports Physical Therapy -And so much more! Resources: Third World Congress of Sports Physical Therapy Alex Hutchinson Twitter Endure Range Alex Hutchinson Website   For more information on Alex: I’m an author and journalist in Toronto. My primary focus these days is the science of endurance and fitness, which I cover for Outside (where I’m a contributing editor and write the Sweat Science column), The Globe and Mail (where I write the Jockology column), and Canadian Running magazine. I’ve also covered technology for Popular Mechanics (where I earned a National Magazine Award for my energy reporting) and adventure travel for the New York Times, and was a Runner’s World columnist from 2012 to 2017. My latest book, published in February 2018, is an exploration of the science (and mysteries) of endurance. It’s called ENDURE: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance. Before that, I wrote a practical guide to the science of fitness, called Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights? Fitness Myths, Training Truths, and Other Surprising Discoveries from the Science of Exercise, which was published in 2011. I also wrote Big Ideas: 100 Modern Inventions That Have Transformed Our World, in 2009. I actually started out as a physicist, with a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge then a few years as a postdoctoral researcher with the U.S. National Security Agency, working on quantum computing and nanomechanics. During that time, I competed as a middle- and long-distance runner for the Canadian national team, mostly as a miler but also dabbling in cross-country and even a bit of mountain running. I still run most days, enjoy the rigors of hard training, and occasionally race. But I hate to think how I’d do on an undergraduate physics exam.   Read the full transcript below: Karen Litzy:                   00:00                Hey everybody. Welcome to the Third World Congress of sports physical therapy Facebook page. And I am your host, Karen Litzy. And we have been doing several of these interviews over the past couple of months in support of the Third World Congress of sports physical therapy. And today we have writer, journalist, author, athlete, Alex Hutchinson who is part of the Third World Congress. He's going to be a part of an informal Q and A and also doing a talk with Greg Lehman, who's already been on. So Alex, welcome to Facebook live. Alex Hutchinson:           00:37                Thanks very much, Karen. It's great to be here. Karen Litzy:                   00:39                All right, so for those people who maybe aren't as familiar with you, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself? Alex Hutchinson:           00:46                Yeah, I mean, I guess when people ask what I do, I say I'm a freelance journalist, but if you kind of drill down a little bit, my subspecialty is like, I'm a sports science journalist or even an endurance sports science journalist, which isn't really a job, but it's effectively what I do. So I write for, for outside magazine and a few other places. There's Canadian running magazine and a newspaper in Canada called the globe and Mail, but mainly outside magazine about the science of Endurance sports, sports more generally, adventure, fitness, health, all those sorts of things. A fairly, fairly broad stuff that interests me, I try and look at the science angle of it. And so that means talking to a lot of athletes and sometimes I talk to coaches, but mostly I talk to researchers who are trying to use, you know, research studies, peer reviewed, you know, placebo-controlled, blinded studies to answer questions that a lot of us have when we exercise, you know, what workout should I do or how should I refuel or these sorts of things. Karen Litzy:                   01:48                Alright, so you're taking, which I think is great. You're taking the research and you're able to disseminate that out into, if you will, the layman's audience. Alex Hutchinson:           01:57                Yeah, that's the goal. Yeah. And, it's interesting cause I come from a running background. I was a competitive runner. And I was a, a guy interested in science, but there wasn't no, when I was competing in the sort of nineties and early two thousands, it to me at least, it seemed, it wasn't very easy, I didn't even know that there were, you know, thousands of researchers around the world trying to answer these sorts of questions. And I think for me it was in the middle two thousands I started seeing some columns in the New York Times from Gina Kolata. And then from Gretchen Reynolds.  Gina Kolata had a column called personal best where she was like looking into the myth that lactic acid causes fatigue. And this was maybe around 2005 and I was like, Holy Mackerel. Alex Hutchinson:           02:37                And she was interviewing scientists who are asking these questions. And I thought there are scientists who care about lactic acid so that kind of started me on the path of thinking that, realizing there's a body of research out there that wasn't reaching interested lay people like myself. So I started pursuing that. And I think today there's a lot more. Like there were a lot of avenues through which exercise science reaches the lay people. I feel like I'm one of those channels, but it's definitely, there's a lot more options for people now, including directly from scientists themselves in places like Twitter. Karen Litzy:                   03:13                Exactly. And I think that's where I, you know, in the late nineties, mid two thousands, social media certainly wasn't as robust as it is now. And now you have scientists and researchers being encouraged to get onto these platforms and disseminate some of their information, whether it be through tweets or infographics, podcasts, Facebook lives, things like this. So I think the leap from relatively nothing, you know, meaning researchers kind of doing their research but not having perhaps the means to get it out to a wider audience outside of a journal that not every lay person who reads, you know, having such great avenues to disseminate this information. Do you feel like it's made a difference in the general public? Alex Hutchinson:           04:00                I think it has. It's hard to really evaluate this stuff, but my sense is there's a higher level of literacy or sort of awareness of issues, you know, things like how to fuel that's maybe not just drawn from, I heard it from a guy at the gym or I heard it from my coach who heard it from his coach who is taught by, you know, some guy in 1830 that this is how it works. I mean, I would almost say that we've gone from a place of scarcity to a place of excess that now it's not like you can't find information. Now there's these fire hoses of information just drenching you with 20 different theories. All of which seemed to be supported by scientists about how you should eat, how you should exercise, how you should move, and all these sorts of things. Alex Hutchinson:           04:45                So I started writing about sports science, let's say 15 years ago or a little less than that. And at that point it was like, let's get the information out there. People don't realize that there's information now. It's like there's all this information, let's curate the information. Let's try and provide people with some judgements about what's reliable and what's not. Why we think that some sources of information are better than others. How each person can evaluate for themselves, whether this is trustworthy. You know, and this is obviously not an easy or there's not like one answer to this study's right and this study's wrong, but, yeah, I feel like my role has shifted a little bit from get the information out there to, okay, maybe I can be a trustworthy source of curation where I'm giving people the information, not necessarily telling them what to think, but saying, here's the evidence. Now you may choose to think this evidence isn't convincing enough for you to switch to the, you know, the Aldana Diet or you may not, but here's, here's what the evidence says it exists. Karen Litzy:                   05:45                Yeah, and that's a great lead into my next question is when we look at quote unquote fake news and we can categorize that as misinformation or disinformation. So misinformation being like you're putting something out there and you think it's good, but you just don't know that the information is bad versus disinformation, which is, I guess we can categorize more as propaganda. So you know, the information's not correct, but you're pushing it out there anyway. So I think it's important to me. Both of those are fake news, but it's important to make that distinction. So as a journalist, how do you navigate this and how important is it for you to get that right? Alex Hutchinson:           06:27                Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, getting it right is important to me and I'm glad you made that distinction because I think that's an important one because you know, fake news in the politicized sense is another way of saying propaganda. And I think that's mostly not what we're dealing with in the exercise or the health space. I mean there, there is actually, I mean, you know, let me take that back a little bit there. There are people who are just selling things to make money who are just, they don't really care whether it's true. They're putting steroids into their stimulants, into their strength supplements because they just want people to feel a boost and they're just flat out lying so those people are bad and they're also not that hard to spot if truth be told, if you're critical, what's tougher is the, you know, what you call misinformation rather than disinformation, which is people honestly believe this. Alex Hutchinson:           07:20                Like, I tried this diet, it works for me, and therefore everyone should be doing it. And I read this study that shows that people who do this diet, you know, increase their levels of some inflammatory marker and that proves, that confirms my belief. And therefore I'm going to become an evangelist for this. And I'm going to say that everyone who disagrees with me has been paid off by big industry and blah, blah, blah. And sometimes it's not quite that. I mean, I'm caricaturing it, but people don't have strong beliefs that don't have as strong beliefs about, you know, controversies in particle physics cause we don't have personal experience in particle physics when you're talking about health and exercise and eating and things like that. We all have our, we have our experiences. And so we map that on top of whatever evidence we're experiencing, and I include myself in this, you know, my experiences play into what science, scientific research finds plausible. Alex Hutchinson:           08:12                So that creates a different dynamic. So to answer your actual question, how do I navigate this? Imperfectly like every other human, but my goal in what I write, what I try and do is if I'm writing about a study, this article from my perspective as the one in which I'm able to serve, take the key graph from that study, cut and paste it into my article and then describe what the study was. Here's what they did, here's what they found. Alex Hutchinson:           08:46                I'll take it a step further than that because my role is to interpret. I'll say, here's what I think this means, but I want to make sure I can give enough information to someone who doesn't think that's what it means is also can also see, well that's what the evidence was. And it's like, well no, I don't agree that that should change my behavior or whatever, but I'm giving them, I want to give people enough information so they understand what the study did and what it found. And then the meaning, if I've given people enough information, they don't have to rely on me telling them that this is what it means even though I am going to tell them what I think it means. Karen Litzy:                   09:16                If you were to give tips to let's say the layman person, say it's like my mom or you know, your friend who knows nothing about science, he doesn't have a phd in physics, and we'll get back to that with you in a second. But what tips can you give to the lay person on how to spot this misinformation, because the thing is when you look at a lot of articles, they're always citing this study, that study, this study. Alex Hutchinson:           09:47                Yeah. It used to be like, show me the peer reviewed evidence. But yeah, I've slowly realized, you know, and understood that there is a peer reviewed study for everything. And you know, 10 years ago I used to get, I'd see a study saying, you know, hey the, you know, the fruit of this plant, if you take it's going to increase your endurance by 2%. It's like, well if they have a placebo controlled, double blinded study published in a peer reviewed journal, it must be true. I'll write about it. And then, you know, I never did hear about that extractive of such and such a plant. Again, like no one, it never turned out to be a thing. And I sort of finally understand, you know, started to understood the bigger systemic problems, which is that if you have, you know, thousands of Grad students across the country looking for a master's thesis that can be done in six months or an experiment, they can be done in six months. Alex Hutchinson:           10:33                They're testing all sorts of things. And if it's not interesting, they don't publish it. And if it happens by chance to produce a positive result, then they publish it in a journal. So we get this sort of, there's always public positive studies about everything. What I was saying, which is that just the mere presence of a study isn't enough. So there is no simple template. But I would say there are some guidelines like follow the money. If someone's trying to sell you something, it’s obvious, but it's surprising what a good rule of thumb that is. And it's why we see so much information about pills and technology. Alex Hutchinson:           11:20                And so little information about, you know, another study showing that sleep is good for you, getting some exercise is good for you because it's very hard to monetize that. And so there's lessons. I don't mean to sound like a patsy or like someone who's, you know, pump promoting my own way of seeing things. But I think there are some sources that are more sort of authoritative than others. And frankly, the mainstream media still does a pretty good job relative to the average blog. Now there are some great blogs out there and you know, and I will say, I started out in this, I set up my own blog on wordpress and I blogged there for five years, just analyzing studies. And then runner's world asked me to bring the blog onto their site and then it got moved outside. Alex Hutchinson:           12:08                So it's not that there aren't good blogs and you can maybe get a sense of what people's agendas are and what their backgrounds are. But, you know, if I knew that, I know in this highly politicized world, I know that this may be a controversial thing to say, but if I see something in New York Times, I'm more likely to believe it than if I see it on, you know, Joe's whole health blog and I read the New York Times and I get frustrated frequently and I say that now they're getting this wrong. And this is not a full picture of this. Nobody's perfect. But I think that people with credentials and getting through some of those gatekeepers is one way of filtering out some of the absolute crap that you see out there. Karen Litzy:                   12:53                Perfect. Yeah, I think those are very easy tips that people can kind of follow. So sort of follow the money, see who's commissioned said RCT, systematic review. And, oftentimes, especially on blogs, it can be a little tricky because some of them may write a blog and be like, oh, this is really good. But then when you look down, it's like the blog is sponsored by so-and-so, Alex Hutchinson:           13:18                And that's the reputable people who are acknowledging who's sponsoring them. Then there's the people who are getting free gear, free product or money straight up, but they're not, you know, like there's levels of influence and the people who are disclosing that at least they're disclosing it. But nonetheless, it's, you know, one of the things that I think people often kind of misjudge is when, when someone says that follow, you know, follow the money and the financial influences, finances can influence someone. That doesn't mean that the people who are passing on this message or corrupted or that it's disinformation as you would say that they're deliberately, yeah. I mean, lots of researchers who I really highly respect do excellent research funded by industry. And I think that there's any important information that comes from that research, but I also think that the questions that get asked in industry funded research are different than the questions that you might ask if you just had you know, a free pot of money that wasn't tied to any strings. Alex Hutchinson:           14:16                If you want to, you know, not to pick on anybody, but if you want to know which proteins are best for building strength and if the dairy industry is going to fund a whole bunch of studies on dairy protein, then you're going to have this excellent body of research that shows that dairy protein is good for building muscle. That doesn't mean it's wrong, it just means that we haven't studied what, you know, vegetable proteins or other forms of meat. There's been less emphasis on those proteins so you get a distorted view of what's good or bad without anybody doing anything wrong. It's just that money does influence the way we ask questions and the answers we get. Karen Litzy:                   14:53                Great. Thank you. Now I had just mentioned about having a phd in physics. That is obviously not me. How did you end up doing your phd in physics and how does this help you when it comes to writing your articles or writing these reviews of RCTs or systematic reviews? Alex Hutchinson:           15:14                Well, I should first say that if anyone's interested in becoming a science journalist, I wouldn't necessarily recommend doing a phd in physics. It's not the linear path or you know, the path of least resistance. I honestly didn't know what I wanted to do when I grew up. Some advice I got, which I think was good advice to some extent was, you know, if you don't know what you want to do, do something hard because at least you'll prove to people that you can, you know, solve problems and there'll be some transferability of that training. And I think that was true to some extent. And I, you know, so I did physics in Undergrad. I still didn't know what the heck I wanted to do. And I had an opportunity to go do a phd in England, which seemed like a big adventure. Alex Hutchinson:           15:50                So I went and did a phd there, PhDs there are actually a lot shorter than they are in North America. It's just over three years for my phd. So it wasn't, it wasn't like this sort of, you know, spent my entire twenties on this. Physics was fun, but it just, I could see that the other people in my lab were more passionate about it than I was, that they were, they were just interested. They were passionate about it. And I thought, man, I want to, I want to find something that I'm passionate about. So I ended up in my late twenties saying, okay, well it's been a slice, but I'm going to try something else. And, you know, fortunately I guessed right. And journalism turned out to be fun. Fun for me. I don't write, you know, especially these days if I'm writing about exercise and it's not like I need to know Newton's laws or anything like that or you know, apply the principle of general relativity to exercise. Alex Hutchinson:           16:35                So there's not a lot of like direct pay off. But I would say that having a scientific training has helped me be willing to speak to scientists and not be intimidated by paper. You know, Journal articles that look very complex and you know, I have the confidence to know that, okay, I don't have a clue what this journal article is saying, but I know if I slow down, if I read it a few times and if I call it the scientist and say, can you explain this to me? I'm not worried. Well, I mean, I don't like looking stupid, but I'm over the idea is like, it's okay. I can call up the scientist. I know enough about scientific papers to know that probably the guy in the office next door to whoever wrote this paper doesn't understand this paper. You know, science is very specialized and so it's okay to just say, explain to me, explain it to me again. Okay. This time, pretend I'm, you know, your 90 year old grandfather and explain it again. And so that allows me, or has helped me write about areas even when I'm not familiar with them and not be intimidated by numbers and graphs and things like that. Karen Litzy:                   17:36                All right. And I would also imagine that going through Phd training yourself, you understand how articles are written, you kind of can look at the design, and you can look at the methods and have a little bit more, I guess confidence in how this study was maybe put together. Versus no training at all. Alex Hutchinson:           18:03                You've seen how the sausage is made and so you understand the compromise that get made. I will say that it was surprising to me how different the physics processes to the sort of the sports science world in terms of just the factors that are there that are relevant in physics. You’re never dealing with people. And with the sample recruitment and things like that. An Electron is an electron, you know, for the most part. You know, and this is an important to understand is physics aside by looking a lot of studies, I started to see the patterns and started to understand what the functions were, started to understand how to read a paper relatively quickly. How did you know it? For me to find stories, I ended up looking at a lot of journal articles and I can't read every one of them in depth in order to find the ones I wanna write about. Alex Hutchinson:           18:52                So I have to find ways of, you know, everyone knows you. Yeah, you can read the abstract, but you're not going to get the full picture. You know, you start to learn just by experience, by doing it. That, okay, if I read the introduction, that's where the first three paragraphs are where they're going to give me the context. Because often a study seems very specific and you're like, I don't know what you're talking about. And then they'll give two paragraphs where they're just like, since the 1950s, scientists have been wondering about x, Y, and zed. And then you can go to the conclusions and then, you know, depending on how deep you want to get, you understand where, which part of every paper is written with a specific format and you can figure out where to go with a little experience. And it doesn't require a physics phd or it requires just getting, getting familiar with that particular, you know, subject area. Karen Litzy:                   19:35                Nice. And now, you know, we talked earlier about how, you know, information from researchers went from like a little drip to a fire hose and as far as getting information out to the general public, so because there is so much information available, how do you approach designing your article titles and headlines to ensure you grab attention for the reader. So I think that's a great question directed at the researchers who are maybe thinking of doing a press release or things like that to help promote their article. Alex Hutchinson:           20:10                Yeah. This is a really interesting question. This isn't one where my thinking has shifted over the last, let's say, decade. So I started out, you know, in print journalism, writing for newspapers and magazines. I still do that, but one of the things in from when you're writing for a newspaper magazine is you don't have control over your headlines. You write the article, the editor writes the headline. And so my experience in that world was always one of frustration being like, I wrote this very carefully nuanced, balanced article. And then the headline is, you know, do this and you'll live till you're a hundred or whatever. It's like, no, that's not what I was saying. It's terrible. And so I got into this sort of reflects of habit you know, just apologizing for the headlines. Like, Oh, you know, when I talked to researchers, I'm so sorry about the headline. Alex Hutchinson:           20:59                You know, I'm very sophisticated, but you know, that this silly editor wrote the headline and a couple of things help to sort of shift my views a little bit on that. One is the shift to online meant that newspapers and journalists now have a very, very clear idea of who clicks on what. So you understand what it is that gets people's attention. And the second thing is that, you know, when I started my own blog, and then even now, when I blog, I don't have full control of my headlines, but when I was on wordpress, I wrote my own headlines. And when I now as a blogger, I suggest headlines. And so I don't have control, but I am given more input than I used to be on how this article should be conveyed. Alex Hutchinson:           21:40                And one thing that's really clear is that, what people say they want and what people will do is different. And so I remember looking at when the global mail is the Big News newspaper in Canada. I remember when it first started showing its top 10 most clicked articles. You know, in the transition to digital on its website. And of course, everyone says, I hate clickbait. I want to have sophisticated, nuanced conversations. And then the top 10 articles clicked would all be something to do with Brittany Spears or whatever. You know, this was 10 years ago. And it's like, so people click on, people do respond to clickbait and click bait it's bad. But you know, I sometimes I want like sometimes give talks to scientists about science communication and I'll give some contrast between here's the journal article, you know, here's my headline and the journal article will be something that's so careful that you're not even, it definitely doesn't tell you what the article's going to say. Alex Hutchinson:           22:36                You're not even entirely sure what the subject is. You know, like an investigation of factors contributing to potentially mitigating the effects of certain exercise modalities. And you're like, I don't know. I don't know what that's about. No one clicks on it. And so it's like that sort of, if a tree falls in the forest, if you write a perfectly balanced nuanced article and nobody reads it, have you actually contributed to science communication? And so one of the things that I found in with headlines that I'd complain about is I would complain about a headline that someone had written for my article and then, and I try to think why am I complaining about this? And it's like, well it's sort of coming out and saying what I was hinting at, I was hinting at, I didn't want to come out and say, you know, overweight people should exercise more or whatever. Alex Hutchinson:           23:22                Cause that's horrible. No one would say that. But if you sort of read what the evidence that I was shaping my article to be, it'd be like, if you're not getting results from your exercise, maybe you're just not exercising hard enough. I was like, well maybe I need to own the messages. You know, if the headlines to me seems objectionable, maybe it's my article is objectionable and I've tiptoed around it, but I need to think carefully. And if someone reads my article, you know, an intelligent person reads my article and says this in sum it up in seven words, this is what it is, then I need to maybe be comfortable with having that as the headline, even if it's an oversimplification, because the headline is never going to convey everything, all the nuances. There's always caveats, there's always subtleties. Alex Hutchinson:           24:04                You can't convey those in seven words. That's what the article is for. So I've become much more of a defender, not of clickbait, not of like leading people in with misleading things. But if ultimately the bottom line of your article is whether it's a academic article or a press article is, you know, this kind of weight workout doesn't work and you should be okay with a headline that says that. And yes, people will say, but you forgot this. And then you can say, well, no, that's in the article, but I can't convey all the caveats in the headline. So anyway, that's my, that's my sort of halfhearted defense of attention grabbing headlines in a way. Karen Litzy:                   24:37                Yeah. And if you don't have the attention grabbing headline, like you said, then people aren't going to want to dive into the article. So I was, you know, looking up some of the headlines from outsideonline.com and the first one that pops up is how heat therapy could boost your performance. And you read that and you're like I would want to find out what that means. Alex Hutchinson:           25:02                And they put some weasel words in there. It's not like heat therapy will change your life. It's how it could boost your performance. And so, and I'm there, it's interesting, I've got conversations with my editor and they, you know, they don't like question headlines. They don't want to be as like, is this the next, you know, a miracle drugs? And then it turns out the answer is no. It's like they feel that's deceptive to the reader. They want declarative headlines that say something. It’s an interesting balance but outside has been, they've had some headlines which were a little, you know, there was one a while ago about trail maintenance and it was like the headline was trail runners are lazy parasites or something like that. And that was basically, that was what the article said. It was an opinion piece by a mountain biker. They got a ton of flack for that and they got a bunch of people who are very, very, you know, I'm never gonna read outside again. It's like, dude, relax. But I understand, but I understand, you know, cause it is a balance there. They want to be noticed and I want my articles to be noticed, but I don't want to do it in a deceptive way. Karen Litzy:                   26:07                Yeah. And I think that headline, how heat therapy could boost. It's the could. Alex Hutchinson:           26:12                Exactly the weasel word that it's like, it's, I'm not saying it will, but there's certainly some evidence that I described in the article, but it's possible this is something that people are paying or researching and that athletes are trying, so it's, you know, check it out if you're interested. Karen Litzy:                   26:25                Yeah, I mean, I think it's hard to write those attention grabbing headlines because like you said, you can have the best article giving great information, but if it's not enough in the headline for the average person to say, hmm, Nah, Nah, nevermind, or Ooh, I really want to read this now the, I think when you're talking about an online publication, like you said, you now have a very good idea as to who is reading by going into the analytics of your website. So I think that must make it a little bit easier, particularly on things that they're going to catch attention. Alex Hutchinson:           26:59                And so since I'm working for outside, I don't have access to their analytics though. I can ask them what my top articles were or whatever. And I actually am careful not to ask too much because I think there's a risk of you start writing to the algorithm. I start with, you know, you're like, oh, so if people like clicking on this, I'm going to write another article that has a very similar headlines. So, when I had my wordpress site, I had much more direct access to the analytics and it's a bit of a path to, it forces you to start asking yourself, what am I writing for? Am I writing to try and get the most clicks possible or to do the best article possible? So I actually tell him when I talked to my editor, I'm like I don't want too much information. Alex Hutchinson:           27:43                I want to know. Sometimes I kind of want to get a sense of what people are reacting to and what aren't. And I can see it on Twitter, which things get more response. But I don't want that to be foremost in my mind because otherwise you end up writing you know, if not clickbait headlines, you write clickbait stories, you know, cause you do get the most attention. Yeah. So I try not to follow it too much and let someone else do that worrying for me. Karen Litzy:                   28:09                Yeah. So instead, I think that's a great tip for anyone who is putting out content and who's disseminating content, whether it be a blog or a podcast, that you want to kind of stay true to the story and not try and manipulate the story. Whether that be consciously or maybe sometimes subconsciously manipulating the story to fit who you think the person who's going to be digesting that information wants. Alex Hutchinson:           28:34                Yeah. And I know that happens to me subconsciously. You know, it's unavoidable. You're thinking, well, if I write it this way, I bet more people are going to be interested, it happens a little bit, but you want to be aware of it. And especially, I guess if you're, let's say you're someone who's, you know, starting a blog or starting some form of podcast or whatever it is, clicks aren't the only relevant metric and you can get a lot of people to click on something, but if they're left feeling that it wasn't all that great, then you're not gonna, you know, it's better to have half as many people all read something and think that was really substantive and thoughtful and useful than to get a bunch of clicks. But no one had any particular desire to come back to your site. Karen Litzy:                   29:15                Like you don't want to leave people feeling unfulfilled. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not Good. Well great information for both the researchers and for clinicians who are maybe trying to get some of that research out there. So great tips. Now, we talked a little bit about this before we went on air, but in 2018 you've published your book, endure mind body and the curiously elastic limits of human performance. So talk a little bit about the book, if you will, and what inspired you to write it? Alex Hutchinson:           29:50                Sure. The book is basically, it tries to answer the question, what defines our limits. Like when you push as hard as you can, whether you know you're on the treadmill or out for a run or in, in other contexts, what defines that moment when you're like, ah, I can't maintain, I have to slow down. I have to stop. I have reached my absolute limit. And it's a direct, you know, it's easy to understand where the book came from. I was a runner and so every race I ran, I was like, why didn't I run faster? Like I'm still alive. I crossed the finish line. I've got energy left. Why didn't I, why surely I could have run a little bit faster. And so basically I, you know, I started out with an understanding of a basic understanding of exercise physiology. Alex Hutchinson:           30:32                And, you know, 15 years ago I thought if I can learn more about VO2 Max and lactate threshold and all these sorts of things, I'll understand the nature of limits and maybe what I could have done to push them back. And about 10 years ago, I started to realize that there was this whole bunch of research on the brain's role in limits. And there've been a whole bunch of different theories and actually some very vigorous arguments about this idea. But this idea that when you reach your limits is not that your legs can't go anymore. It's that in a sense, your brain thinks you shouldn't go anymore than that. Your limits are self-protective rather than reflecting that you're actually out of gas, like a car runs out of gas. And so then I thought I was gonna write a book about how your brain limits you. Alex Hutchinson:           31:12                And in the end, as you can probably guess, it ended up being a sort of combination of these sorts of things. Like there's the brain, there's the body, they interact in different ways, in different contexts. So I ended up exploring like, you know, we were talking about this before, what is it that limits you when you're free diving? If you're trying to hold your breath for as long as possible, is it that you run out of oxygen after a minute and then how come some people hold their breaths for 11 minutes? And how does that translate to mountain climbing or to running or to riding a bike or to being in a really hot environment or all these sorts of things. So that is what the book is about is, is where are your limits? And the final simple answer is, man, it's complicated and you have to read the whole book. Karen Litzy:                   31:51                Yeah. And we were talking beforehand and I said, I listened to the book as I was, you know, commuting around New York City, which one it would got me really motivated and to want to learn more. And then it also, I'm like, man, I am lazy. There are so many different parts of the book from the breath holding, like we were talking about. And things that I was always interested me are altitude trainings and the how that makes a difference, whether you're training up in the mountains or sea level or in those kind of altitude chambers. Which is wild stuff. And is that, I don't know, is that why people break more records now versus where they were before? Is it a result of the training? Is it, and then, like you said, the brain is involved and so are you just by pushing the limits of yourself physically, but then does the brain adapt to that and say, okay, well we did this, so I'm pretty sure, and we lived, so can we do it again? Alex Hutchinson:           33:08                And that's actually a pretty good segway to the World Congress of sports therapy. Because the session that I'm talking about it that I'm talking with Greg Leyman is on pain. And, one of the things that I find a topic that I find really interesting is pain tolerance. Do we learn to tolerate more. And so, you know, one of the classic questions that people argue about on long runs is like who suffers more during a marathon, you know, a two and a half hour marathoner or a three and a half hour marathoner. It's like, one school of thought is like, well, it's a three and a half hour marathoner is out there pushing to the same degree as the two and a half hour marathoner, but is out there for longer for almost 50% longer so that that person is suffering longer. Alex Hutchinson:           33:56                And the counter point, which sounds a little bit maybe elitist or something to say on average, the two and a half marathoner has learned two and half hour marathoner has learned to suffer more as his learning to push closer to his or her limits. Now that's a total generalization because it's not really about how fast you are. It's about how well you've trained, how long you've trained. So there are four marathoners who are pushing absolutely as hard as any two and half hour marathoner. And there are some very lucky two and a half hour marathoners who aren't pushing particularly hard because they were capable of doing it, you know, at two 20 marathon or something. But the general point that I would make and that I think that the reason that I think the research makes is that one of the things that happens when you train, so we all know that you go for that first run and it feels terrible, Eh, you feel like you're gonna die when you keep training, all sorts of changes happen. Alex Hutchinson:           34:52                Your heart gets stronger. You build new Capillaries, your muscles get stronger. Of course, that's super important. It's dominant. But I think another factor that's on pretend times under appreciated is you learned to tolerate discomfort. You learn to suffer. You learn that feeling when your lungs are bursting and you're panting and your legs are burning, that doesn't mean you're gonna die. It just means you can't sustain that forever, but you can sustain it for a little bit longer. You can choose to keep holding your finger in that candle flame for a little longer. And there's actually quite a bit of evidence showing that as training progresses, you learn not just in the context of whatever exercise you're doing, but in the context of totally unrelated pain challenges like dipping your hand in an ice bucket or having a blood pressure cuff squeezed around your arm. Alex Hutchinson:           35:35                You learn to tolerate more pain by going through the process of training. And I think it's an interesting area of, I think it tells us something interesting about physical limits cause it tells us that part of the process of pushing back physical limits is pushing back mental limits. But it also tells us something about how we cope with pain and why. For example, why exercise training might be helpful for people dealing with chronic pain, for example, that it's not just endorphins block the pain, it's that you learn psychological coping strategies for reframing the pain and for dealing with it. Karen Litzy:                   36:10                Yeah. As a quick example, two and a half weeks ago, I tore my calf muscle the medial gastric tear, nothing crazy. It was a small tear and it happens to middle age people. Normally the ultimate insult or worse, at any rate, you know, very painful. I was on crutches for a week. I had to use a cane for a little while, but I was being so protective around it. And then I read, I got a great email from NOI group from David Butler and they were talking about kind of babying your injury and trying to take a step back and looking at it, looking at the bigger picture. And I thought to myself, well, this was the perfect time to actually get this email because I was like afraid to put my heel down. I was afraid to kind of go into Dorsiflexion and once I saw that, I was like, oh, for God's sakes. And that moment I was able to kind of put the heel down to do a little stretching. And, so it wasn't that all of a sudden my physicality changed so much, but it was, I felt from a brain perspective, from a mental perspective that I could push my limits more than I was without injuring. Alex Hutchinson:           37:35                Absolutely. And it's all a question of how we have the mistaken assumption that pain is some objective thing that there's, you know, you have it damaged somewhere and that's giving you a seven out of 10 pain. But it's all about how you frame it and if you were interpreting that pain as a sign that you weren't fully healed and therefore you're going to delay your recovery, if you're feeling that pain, then you're going to shy away from it. And if you're just interpreting it, if you read that email and it reframes it as this pain is a part of healing, it's a part of the process of, and it's like, oh well I can tolerate that. If it's not doing damage, then I don't mind the pain and all of a sudden it's become something that's a signal rather than a sort of terrible, it's just information. Karen Litzy:                   38:15                Yeah. Information versus danger, danger, danger. I just reflected on that and thought, yeah, this is pain. It's being protected at the moment. It doesn't mean I'm going to go run a marathon given my injury but it certainly means I can put my heel down and start equalizing my gait pattern and things like that. And so it's been a real learning experience to say the least. And the other thing I wanted to touch on was that idea of pain and suffering. And I know this can probably be out for debate, but that because you have pain, does it mean you're suffering? So if you have a two hour 30 versus a three hour 30 or whatever, the person who runs it in six hours, right? Because you have pain, are you suffering through it or are you just moving through the pain without the suffering attached to it? And I don't know the answer to that, but I think it opens up to an interesting, to a wider discussion on does pain equals suffering? Alex Hutchinson:           39:20                Now we're getting philosophical, but I think it's an interesting one cause I mean I've heard a number of sports scientists make the argument that one of the sort of underappreciated keys for success in endurance sports is basically benign masochism that on some level you kind of enjoy pushing yourself into discomfort. And I think there's some truth to that. And I think it's an entirely open question. Like are people just born, some people just born liking to hurt or is it something in their upbringing? Moving outside of a competitive context and just talking about health, it's like what a gift it is to enjoy going out and pushing your body in some way because that makes it easy to exercise. And so I think one, you know, this is changing topic a little bit, but one of the big challenges in the sort of health information space is that a large fraction of the people who write about it are people like me who come from a sports background that on some level enjoy, I go out and do interval workouts. Alex Hutchinson:           40:16                Not because I'm worried about my insulin, but because I like it. I like pushing, finding out where my limits are on being on that red line. And so when I'm like, come on, just go out and do the workout, then others and some people find it very, very, very unpleasant to be near that line. And so I think we have to be respectful of differences in outlook. But I also think that’s what the evidence shows is you can learn to, you know, like fine line or whatever. You can learn to appreciate some of what seems bitter initially. And if you can then it totally changes then that pain is no longer suffering. Then it’s the pain of like eating an old cheese or whatever. It's like oh that's a rich flavor of pain I'm getting today in my workout as opposed to this sucks and I want to stop. Karen Litzy:                   41:06                Yeah. So again, I guess it goes back to is there danger, is there not danger? And if he can reach that point of feeling pain or discomfort or whatever within your workouts and then you make it through the workout and you're like, I can't believe I did that. And all of a sudden next time it's easier. You pushed the bar. Yeah. You've pushed them further to the peak a little bit. So I think it's fun when that happens. Alex Hutchinson:           41:35                And I think it's important what you said, a understanding the difference between pain as a danger signal. Cause I mean as an endurance athlete I may glorify the pushing through the pain. Well that's stupid if you have Shin splints or you know, if you have Achilles tendon problems or whatever. Yeah. You have to understand that some pain really is a signal to stop or at least to understand where that pain is coming from and to do something to address it. There are different contexts in which it's appropriate or inappropriate to push through pain. Karen Litzy:                   42:03                Yeah. And I would assume for everyone watching or listening, if you go to the Third World Congress of sports physical therapy, there will be discussion on those topics. Given the list of people there, there will be discussions on those topics. There are panels on those topics. Alex Hutchinson:           42:22                Yeah, I was gonna say, like Greg and I are talking about pain, but looking at the list of speakers, there's a bunch of people who have expertise in this understanding of the different forms of pain, trying to find that line, understanding the brain's role in creating what feels like physical pain. So I think there's gonna be a ton of great discussion on that. Karen Litzy:                   42:39                Yeah. All right, so we're going to start wrapping things up. So if you could recommend one must read book or article aside from your own which would it be? Alex Hutchinson:           42:50                I'll go with my present bias, which is so, you know, casting my mind all the way back over the past like two months or whatever. The book that I've been most interested in lately is a book called range. I think the subtitle is why generalists triumphant a specialist world by David Epstein. So David Epstein, his previous book was like six years ago, he wrote the sports gene, which I consider basically the best sports spine science book that I've read. And so it was kind of what I modeled my book endure on, but his most recent book just came out a couple months ago at the end of May. And it's a broader look at this whole role of expertise and practice, a sort of counterpoint to the idea that you need 10,000 hours of practice if you want to be any good at anything. Alex Hutchinson:           43:33                So as soon as you're out of the crib, you should be practicing your jump shot or whatever it is. And instead, marshaling the arguments that actually having breadth of experience, is good for a variety of reasons, including that you have a better chance of finding a good match for your talents. So for someone like me had, I just had too much quote unquote grit and decided that I needed to stick with physics cause that's what I started with. And I'm not a quitter. I’d be a physicist and I might be an okay physicist, but I'm positive that I wouldn't be as happy as I am now having been willing to sort of switch career tracks. And so it has a lot of sort of relevance for personal development, for parenting and for understanding expertise also in a sports realm as well. So range by David epstein is my pick on that front. Karen Litzy:                   44:22                Great. And we already spoke about what you're going to be talking about at the Sports congress, but are there any things that you're particularly looking forward to? Alex Hutchinson:           44:29                Yeah, there's a whole bunch of speakers, but I guess the one that caught my eye that I would definitely not sleep through is, I saw that Keith Barr is speaking on a panel and that over the last three, four years, maybe, maybe more than that, I've just been really blown away by the work that he's been doing on understanding the differences between what it takes to train for, you know, your strength, your muscles or your heart versus what it takes to train tendons and ligaments. And so I'm really looking forward to seeing what the latest updates are from his lab and from his results. Karen Litzy:                   45:04                Yeah. He gave the opening talk at Sports Congress, not 2019 but 2018. And he was just so good. I mean, I was just trying to live tweet and take some notes. I'm really looking forward to that as well. I feel great. Yeah, absolutely. All right, so is there anything that we missed? Anything that you want the viewers or listeners to know? Oh wait, where can they get your book from? Alex Hutchinson:           45:35                Fine booksellers everywhere. I mean include Amazon but it's definitely put it in a plug for your local independent bookstore. It should be, it should be available anywhere. And if you can find my latest stuff on Twitter @sweatscience, all one word and there might be a link to the book that there, but yeah, really, if you Google Hutchinson and endure for any bookseller, they should be able to get a copy of it. Karen Litzy:                   45:59                Perfect. And anything we missed? Anything that we want to hit on that maybe we didn't get to? I feel like we got a good amount. Alex Hutchinson:           46:06                I think we covered some good basis. I guess the only thing is, you know, for anyone listening, I hope I'll see you in Vancouver and cause I think there's all of these things are ongoing discussions and there's lots more to learn. So I'm looking forward to the conference Karen Litzy:                   46:20                As am I. Everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in. Thanks so much for listening again, the third world congress of sports physical therapy will take place in Vancouver, Canada, British Columbia, October 4th through the fifth of 2019 and so we hope to see you all there.   Thanks for listening and subscribing to the podcast! Make sure to connect with me on twitter, instagram  and facebook to stay updated on all of the latest!  Show your support for the show by leaving a rating and review on iTunes!

Emily tells Jennifer about the most exciting story of her life: Spanish Influenza! They also terrorize Clint with allergy voice! And her asshole dog whines! Sources: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3291398/ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jul/12/flu-pandemic-economic-impact https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ten-myths-about-1918-flu-pandemic-180967810/ https://thispodcastwillkillyou.podbean.com/e/ep-1-influenza-will-kill-you/ The delightful Get Well Soon by Jennifer Wright https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781627797467 Flu by Gina Kolata https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781429979351 Media that depicts the 1918 flu: -Downton Abby -Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Jane Ferguson:                Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode six of our podcast. I'm Jane Ferguson, the current chair of the Professional Education and Publications Committee of the Functional Genomics and Translational Biology Council of the American Heart Association. It's July as we're recording this, so hopefully all you listeners in the Northern Hemisphere are enjoying the summer and taking a break to catch up on your podcast queue, maybe while relaxing at the beach or while navigating the twists and turns of the airport security line.                                            In honor of summer, we're doing something a little different this month and featuring a bite-sized podcast with some research about how your vacation plans might be affecting your heart disease risk. For all our friends in the Southern Hemisphere, I'm sorry that this may be less relevant to you right now, but hopefully you're having a nice winter and enjoying the ability to go outside without sweating. On to our topic, let's talk about the defining feature of summer, sunlight.                                            Humans synthesize vitamin D in response to sun exposure, and vitamin D deficiency can be associated with multiple adverse health consequences, particularly on bone health. However, there have also been reports of association between vitamin D and cardiovascular health. Prompted by observations that cardiovascular events peak during winter months and follow a geographical gradient with higher event rates at higher latitudes, the hypothesis was put forward in the early 1980s that CVD events are mediated by UV exposure through modulation of vitamin D status.                                            This has been supported by a number of different strands of evidence. Large-scale meta-analyses of population data have found that low levels of circulating vitamin D, as estimated from measurements of serum 25-hydroxy vitamin D, are associated with increased risk of all-cause mortality and with increased risk of cardiovascular events and mortality.                                            As summarized in an article from earlier this month in PLOS ONE, by Lars Rejnmark and Rolph Jorde, meta-analyses of randomized clinical trials have found a beneficial effect of vitamin D supplementation on blood pressure, depression, respiratory tract infections, and mortality. However, most find no beneficial effects, including no effects on CVD or diabetes. Some key limitations of these studies were that they often included a relatively small number of subjects, were conducted in individuals who were not vitamin D deficient, or used relatively low levels of vitamin D supplementation.                                            What was lacking in the field until recently was a large-scale, randomized trial to definitively address whether increasing vitamin D levels in the general population would have a protective effect on cardiovascular health. The results of such a large-scale clinical trial of vitamin D supplementation were recently published in the June 2017 issue of JAMA Cardiology. The first and last authors were Robert Scraggs from the University of Auckland and Carlos Camargo from Harvard Medical School.                                            They recruited over 5,000 individuals aged 50 to 84 for monthly supplementation with a hundred thousand international units of vitamin D compared with placebo control. This dose is sufficient to maintain serum 25-hydroxy vitamin D above 35 nanograms per mil. The study was continued for around three years, and events were ascertained from ICD-10 codes. While baseline 25-hydroxy vitamin D levels were inversely associated with CVD risk during follow-up, there was no significant difference in CVD events between the supplementation and placebo group.                                            There were some limitations to this study, including a lower than expected event rate, a median follow-up time of only 3.3 years, and the study was not powered to analyze effects in subgroups of individuals with vitamin D deficiency. However, overall, this study adds to the evidence against a benefit for large-scale vitamin D supplementation.                                            Another recent clinical trial of vitamin D and calcium supplementation published in JAMA in March of this year by Joan Lappe and Sharon McDonnell found no statistically significant effect on cancer incidents in a four-year, double-blind, placebo-controlled, population-based, randomized clinical trial in over 2,000 healthy, post-menopausal women, although there did appear to be a nonsignificant trend towards lower incidents of cancers in the supplemented group.                                            Gina Kolata of The New York Times wrote a feature on vitamin D back in April of this year highlighting the recommendation to use a cutoff of 30 nanograms per mil to define low vitamin D status has resulted in large numbers of individuals being designated as vitamin D deficient. While levels below 30 nanograms per mil have previously been shown to be associated with diverse adverse health outcomes, causal inference, or evidence for a protective effect of supplementation, remains lacking. Particularly in light of the recent clinical trials showing null effects of vitamin D supplementation, the benefits of increasing serum 25-hydroxy vitamin D through supplementation remain unclear.                                            There may be an important role for genetics in dissecting the link between vitamin D and outcomes. As reviewed in the British Journal of Cancer in March of this year by Peter Vaughan-Shaw and Lina Zgaga, genetic polymorphisms affecting vitamin D metabolism are associated with cancer outcomes. It is possible that vitamin D supplementation may have a protective effect only in individuals with a particular genotype. However, this remains to be tested.                                            However, what none of these studies manages to resolve is whether sun exposure itself has any benefits. Perhaps there is something specific about the process of making vitamin D directly from UV exposure that confers protection. Or, perhaps there are other benefits of direct exposure to sunlight independent of the vitamin D synthetic pathway that we do not yet fully understand. Either way, enjoying a little time in the sun this summer may have some benefits, unless you get sunburned. So, please take advice from the dermatologists and avoid prolonged exposure, seek shade from the midday sun, cover up, and use sunscreen.               Thanks for listening to this bite-sized episode. As always, the links to the papers featured in this episode are posted on fgtbcouncil.wordpress.com. We'll be back with more next month.

Worsening conditions in Venezuela with Laura Gamboa-Gutierrez of Utah State Univ. Giant language databases tracking language on the internet, says Mark Davies of BYU. Boston University's Michael Alosco discusses the link between football and brain disease. One family faces a fatal genetic disease, with Gina Kolata of the New York Times. Mark Looney of Univ of California discusses how lungs contribute to making healthy blood.

EB010 - Healthy Relationships to Food and Stop Binge Eating with Judith Matz  Judith Matz realized the work she wanted to pursue after seeing the connections between her personal experience with losing weight, her professional experience with people going through Optifast, and the book she read titled Overcoming Overeating. It was made clear that her purpose is to help individuals stop dieting and she made this her mission ever since.  With over 25 years of experience as a therapist, speaker, and author, Judith is a licensed clinical social worker with a Master's degree from the University of Michigan. She is the author of The Diet Survivors Handbook, Beyond a Shadow of a Diet, and Amanda's Big Dream.  She joins me today to discuss binge eating disorders, weight bullying, and how we feed our children. She explains how binge eating gets passed on from generation to generation, and the role of sugar addiction in our society. She also shares the Health At Every Size paradigm, and the social justice aspect of the movement that tries to end discrimination on people based on shape and size.  “We need to acknowledge size diversity - that people come in different shapes and sizes.” - Judith Matz    This Week on the Every Body Podcast:  Where the “thin ideal” in children lead to and examples of fat-shaming messages  Approximate age that children start to diet and be conscious about their weight and body size  How the diet-binge cycle changes the body’s physiology  Damaging effects of weight bullying and how people tend to put the blame on the victims  Child obesity and preconceived notions about it  Why access is important in improving healthcare and healthful behavior  How to teach children to be healthy eaters  The significance of talking about restriction in sugar addiction research  Advantages of having Binge Eating Disorders added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)  Manifestations that show how deep the weight stereotypes are embedded in people      Resources Mentioned:  Overcoming Overeating book by Jane R. Hirschmann  Your Child’s Weight book by Ellyn Satter  Rethinking Thin book by Gina Kolata  Relationship Between Weight and Health Quiz    3 Common Myths About HAES Handout     Connect with Judith Matz:  Amanda’s Big Dream book by Judith Matz  The Diet Survivor’s Handbook book by Judith Matz  Beyond a Shadow of a Diet book by Judith Matz  The Relationship Between Health and Weight Quiz  3 Common Myths About HAES    Rate, Share, & Inspire   Thank you for joining me this week on the Every Body podcast. If you enjoyed this week’s episode, head over to iTunes, subscribe to the show and leave a review to help us spread the word to Every Body!     Don’t forget to  visit our website, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and join our mailing list so you never miss an episode!   

The Baxley family was cursed with a horrible disease—something like mad cow, but for human beings. The younger members of the family might have the disease, and there’s a test that would tell them definitively. But knowing for sure could screw up their whole family relationship. In her book Mercies in Disguise, author Gina Kolata explores the family’s incredibly painful decision. Kolata is a science reporter for the New York Times. Plus, we cover the downfall of Sebastian Gorka and ask why Trump supporters are willing to let some pretty dubious policies slide. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Don Chapman, BYU, looks at the Oxford Comma and the implications it can have in court. Thatcher Cardon, winner of Nasa's Space Poop Challenge, shares his design for managing human waste in space. Harvard Univeristy's Jonathan Roth explains how the travel ban could affect immigrant doctors. Gina Kolata, New York Times, shares her book "Mercies in Disguise." Stand-up comedy with John Moyer. Worlds Awaiting with Rachel Wadham.

In 1913, English mathematician G.H. Hardy received a package from an unknown accounting clerk in India, with nine pages of mathematical results that he found "scarcely possible to believe." In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast, we'll follow the unlikely friendship that sprang up between Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan, whom Hardy called "the most romantic figure in the recent history of mathematics." We'll also probe Carson McCullers' heart and puzzle over a well-proportioned amputee. Intro: W.H. Hill's signature was unchanged when inverted. Room 308 of West Java's Samudra Beach Hotel is reserved for the Indonesian goddess Nyai Loro Kidul. Sources for our feature on Srinivasa Ramanujan: Robert Kanigel, The Man Who Knew Infinity, 1991. K. Srinivasa Rao, Srinivasa Ramanujan: A Mathematical Genius, 1998. S.R. Ranganathan, Ramanujan: The Man and the Mathematician, 1967. Bruce C. Berndt and Robert A. Rankin, Ramanujan: Letters and Commentary, 1991. G.H. Hardy, "The Indian Mathematician Ramanujan," American Mathematical Monthly 44:3 (March 1937), 137-155. Gina Kolata, "Remembering a 'Magical Genius,'" Science 236:4808 (June 19, 1987), 1519-1521. E.H. Neville, "Srinivasa Ramanujan," Nature 149:3776 (March 1942), 293. Bruce C. Berndt, "Srinivasa Ramanujan," American Scholar 58:2 (Spring 1989), 234-244. B.M. Srikantia, "Srinivasa Ramanujan," American Mathematical Monthly 35:5 (May 1928), 241-245. S.G. Gindikin, "Ramanujan the Phenomenon," Quantum 8:4 (March/April 1998), 4-9. "Srinivasa Ramanujan" in Timothy Gowers, June Barrow-Green, and Imre Leader, eds., Princeton Companion to Mathematics, 2010. "Srinivasa Aiyangar Ramanujan," MacTutor History of Mathematics (accessed Jan. 22, 2017). In the photo above, Ramanujan is at center and Hardy is at far right. Listener mail: "Myth Debunked: Audrey Hepburn Did Not Work for the Resistance" [in Dutch], Dutch Broadcast Foundation, Nov. 17, 2016. "Audrey Hepburn's Son Remembers Her Life," Larry King Live, CNN, Dec. 24, 2003. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Tyler Rousseau. You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or Google Play Music or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation on the Support Us page of the Futility Closet website. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at podcast@futilitycloset.com. Thanks for listening!

Host: John J. Russell, MD 500,000 Americans died over a 6 week period; is this the latest thriller from Hollywood, or a piece of American history? Joining host Dr. John Russell to elaborate is Gina Kolata, acclaimed reporter for The New York Times and author of Flu: The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It. In Flu, Ms. Kolata unravels the mystery of this lethal virus. From Alaska to Norway, from the streets of Hong Kong to the corridors of the White House, Kolata tracks the race to recover the live pathogen and probes the fear that has impelled government policy ever since. A gripping work of science writing, Flu addresses the prospects for a great epidemic's recurrence and considers what can be done to prevent it.

Host: John J. Russell, MD 500,000 Americans died over a 6 week period; is this the latest thriller from Hollywood, or a piece of American history? Joining host Dr. John Russell to elaborate is Gina Kolata, acclaimed reporter for The New York Times and author of Flu: The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It. In Flu, Ms. Kolata unravels the mystery of this lethal virus. From Alaska to Norway, from the streets of Hong Kong to the corridors of the White House, Kolata tracks the race to recover the live pathogen and probes the fear that has impelled government policy ever since. A gripping work of science writing, Flu addresses the prospects for a great epidemic's recurrence and considers what can be done to prevent it.

Monday, September 19, 2011 Health At Every Size show on Radio Free Nashville This episode features PegE (a.k.a. Dr. Elam) & Pat (a.k.a. the Queen) discussing research finding that many fat bodies have healthy cardiovascular systems -- and many slimmer bodies don't. Recommended books include Big Fat Lies: The Truth about Your Weight and Your Health by Glenn Gaesser, Ph.D., Health At Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight by Linda Bacon, Ph.D., Fat Politics: The Real Story Behind America's Obesity Epidemic by J. Eric Oliver, Ph.D., The Obesity Myth (revised edition retitled The Diet Myth: Why America's Obsession with Weight is Hazardous to Your Health) by Paul Campos, & Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss -- and the Myths and Realities of Dieting by Gina Kolata. This episode's music: "Freedom" by Suchi Waters Benjamin, "Phenomenal Woman" by Ruthie Foster & "Fit, Fat & Fine" by Whole Lotta Love.

In episode 29 of This Week in Virology, hosts Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove and Dick Despommier talk about insect and human dengue virus host proteins, equine vaccine for WNV and EEEV, return of swine flu to humans, spread of polio in Africa, and listener email. Links for this episode: Discovery of insect and human dengue virus host proteins Immunize your horse with PreveNile Swine flu returns to California, Texas, Mexico Polio spreads from Nigeria to 15 African countries Dead Chinese woman on Russian train: no SARS or influenza Jenny McCarthy body count Ten dumbass reasons why people don’t get their flu shots Science blog of the week: Science-based medicine Science podcast pick of the week: WNYC’s Radio Lab Science book of the week: Flu by Gina Kolata

University of Pennsylvania faculty (Drs. Tom Curran, Garret FitzGerald, Pamela Sankar, M. Celeste Simon, Sarah Tishkoff) answer audience questions about personalized medicine. The first part of the event comprised talks by Drs. Curran, FitzGerald and Sankar. This event was moderated by New York Times science writer, Gina Kolata.

Dr. Tedd Mitchell, president of Cooper Clinic, discusses stretching. In 2004, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported its review of studies evaluating whether or not stretching is beneficial. The studies looked at the effect stretching had on athletic performance and injury prevention. Gina Kolata, reporting for The New York Times, recently wrote an article about stretching. It's easy to assess aerobic or strength conditioning, but much more difficult to assess flexibility.  There are lots of questions about stretching. Does it help or harm? Should we stretch before or after exercise? Should we stretch before or after a warm-up? These questions are difficult to answer. Dr. Mitchell gives his recommendation for the average person exercising.

Death and Dieting. Kate Raphael talks to Gina Kolata, sicence writer with the New York Times, about her new book, "Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss and the Myths and Realities of Dieting."  Meri Simon interviews Dr. Michelle Peticolas about her four-part documentary series "Secrets of Life and Death." All that plus the women's calendar.   The post Women's Magazine – December 24, 2007 appeared first on KPFA.