Ep 127 Bhopal: The 1984 Union Carbide Disaster

Ep 127 Bhopal: The 1984 Union Carbide Disaster

On the night of December 2, 1984, a deadly gas leak at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India led to what has been described as the world’s worst industrial disaster. In the immediate aftermath of the gas leak, thousands of people died and hundreds of thousands were injured from exposure to the toxic gas methyl isocyanate. But long after the international headlines and news reports dwindled to silence, long after Union Carbide paid a paltry settlement to survivors, long after the disaster faded from much of the world’s memory, the gas leak continues to haunt the residents of Bhopal. In this episode, we trace the path of methyl isocyanate from initial discovery to the night of the disaster and the years that followed. We then explore what about this gas makes it so very deadly before assessing how the contamination still present at the site is causing health problems for residents decades after the gas leak.

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Ep 205 Cancer Part 4: Where do things stand today?

Ep 205 Cancer Part 4: Where do things stand today?

For the entirety of our species’ history, our approach to cancer has largely been to react, to design new therapies and better combinations of treatments. This energy has certainly been well-spent, bu...

31 Maalis 1h 19min

Ep 204 Cancer Part 3: How do we treat it?

Ep 204 Cancer Part 3: How do we treat it?

A century and a half ago, the list of effective cancer treatments was essentially a single entry: surgery. Today, in 2026, you’d need pages to contain the number of treatments available, and multiple ...

24 Maalis 1h 32min

Special Episode: Lawrence Ingrassia & A Fatal Inheritance

Special Episode: Lawrence Ingrassia & A Fatal Inheritance

For centuries, physicians noticed that cancer sometimes ran in families, but until the 1960s, an answer to this mystery remained out of reach. Only then were scientists beginning to unlock the cellula...

17 Maalis 45min

Ep 203 Cancer Part 2: Why does it happen?

Ep 203 Cancer Part 2: Why does it happen?

Each of our cells can become cancerous. It’s an uncomfortable, yet unavoidable truth. Nor is it a truth restricted to our species - cancer is a consequence of complex life. The features that make a ce...

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Ep 202 Cancer Part 1: What is it?

Ep 202 Cancer Part 1: What is it?

Cancer has touched every one of us in some capacity, and learning of a diagnosis inspires many more questions than it answers. In this four-part series on cancer, we aim to lay a foundation of knowled...

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Special Episode: Jon Adams and Edmund Ramsden & Rat City

Special Episode: Jon Adams and Edmund Ramsden & Rat City

What happens if you put a bunch of rats in an enclosure and provision them with unlimited food and water? Researcher John B. Calhoun was committed to finding out. Results from Calhoun’s “rat utopia” e...

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Ep 201 Poop Part 2: Flushed away

Ep 201 Poop Part 2: Flushed away

Poop is an incredibly valuable and massively underutilized resource. However, most of us don’t see it that way because of our evolutionarily ingrained disgust towards poop. Flush toilets and intricate...

17 Helmi 1h 21min

Ep 200 Poop Part 1: How the sausage gets made

Ep 200 Poop Part 1: How the sausage gets made

It might be stinky and it might be unpleasant to behold, but we all do it. For many of us, our poop is out of sight, out of mind once we flush it away. But for the next hour and fifteen minutes or so,...

10 Helmi 1h 11min

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