EPTRadiolab is a talk show that takes you into fascinating issues surrounding all sorts of science, many of which focus on serious topics like mortality to sleep deprivation. Radiolab has several seasons of which contain many episodes dedicated to those singular topics. Each episode is an hour long with many stories involving the topic at hand.
One episode that I can recall is “Stress” whereupon an experiment was conducted to examine the stress level of a rat that is electrocuted several times when a noise is sounded. The electrocuted rat will clinch its muscles to reduce the intensity of being shocked. Whereas the other rat did not have the same indicator which resulted to the rat’s body to deteriorate because it couldn't dictate when the shock will occur.
Another episode (one of my favorites) was “Diagnosis” amongst the several stories in that episode was babies dying from an unknown cause. When they examined the autopsy they found that the babies had enormous thymus. Which they believed was the cause of babies dying since they had other cadavers to compare them with. But the truth behind the cadavers (dead bodies) was that they were from poor people. At that time the poor class were so stressed out from financial struggle to finding food to feed their families that their thymus had shrinked due to stress involvement. Since most of the cadavers were from the poor class they observed it as “normal” when in reality the babies had died from normal cause of death and not from their regular sized thymus.
There are many fascinating stories like these in each episode so please take your time to view them all and just speculate their discussions. I must admit at first it takes some accustom to listen, but you’ll eventually acquire their unique direction.
