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, we’re going to bring it back into mind as we delve into the rich world of poop. This episode, the first of a two-part miniseries on poop, features a wide cast of characters all with some role in the production or management of poo, like our intestinal tract with its sphincters and microbiota, dung beetles that perform the duties so crucial for ecosystem function, and the sperm whale that produces a revered substance used in perfumes. We’re going behind the scenes to understand how the sausage really gets made (in a manner of speaking) and why we need a big perspective shift to stop seeing poop as waste and start seeing it as a resource.

Correction: EW says that elephants poop 15 pounds a day, but in reality it’s more like 10x that - 150-200 pounds! Sorry for the mistake - we noticed it while listening through.

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For much of the world, refrigeration is such a commonplace technology that we rarely stop to wonder at the many ways it has transformed our lives. From the foods we grow to where we grow them, from how they taste to what we eat, refrigeration has dramatically - and quite recently - changed our relationship to food, our health, and the environment. As Nicola Twilley describes in Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves, progress, as it so often does, comes at a cost. Twilley, who also cohosts the award-winning food podcast Gastropod, joins us in this week’s TPWKY book club episode to discuss the surprising history and tenuous future of refrigeration. You’ll never look at your fridge the same way again.

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Now that we know just how critical sleep is, we’re all making sure we get the amount we need, right? Unfortunately no. One-third to one-half of Americans are not getting enough sleep, according to public health guidelines. Why is that? Hypotheses abound, but many point the finger of blame at different aspects of modern society such as screen time, artificial light, a sedentary lifestyle. These narratives suggest that sleep in industrialized societies today is not just different but worse than in centuries past. Is that the truth? How did humans sleep in yesteryear, and what can that tell us about sleep today? In the conclusion to our sleep two-parter, we explore the many ways that humans sleep and the wide array of consequences when we don’t get enough (or too much) of it.

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