Neurologist, author and science communicator Dr Sarah Holper explores the fascinating science behind the human body's strangest features, flaws and quirks. Using medicine, history and curious case studies, she explains why we work the way we do, one wonderfully weird question at a time. From sweating blood to voice transplants, each episode explores a curious corner of medicine and biology. Learn more at drsarahholper.com.
Your blood is always red. So why the bruise rainbow? This episode explores the colourful chemistry of bruises, from love bites and cupping to creatures with blue, green and yellow blood - and what Tiffany & Co.'s famous turquoise packaging has to do with it.
This episode explores the history hidden inside your belly button, from Renaissance arguments over whether Adam had a navel, to the doctor who classified sixty different types of belly button, to the German students who deliberately collected facial scars to improve their marriage prospects. Classify your own belly button using Thomas Cullen's 1916 guide.
The marathon wasn't designed by sports scientists. It was shaped by an ancient legend, a royal whim, and one spectacularly bad Olympic experiment involving purposeful dehydration, brandy, and rat poison.
A famous biology textbook diagram. A Harvard psychologist called Edwin Boring. And somehow... netball. This episode explores the mad history of the tongue map, and why taste exists in the first place.
If you thought doing sit-ups would give you a six-pack, think again. This episode explores the gruelling reality of competitive bodybuilding, and how a 19th century circus strongman used a tape measure, Greek statues, and a little mathematics to define the ‘perfect’ physique. (Do you measure up?)
In one experiment, a man who didn't sleep for a week ended up sobbing about an imaginary gorilla. This episode explores what science has uncovered about the effects of sleep deprivation, from hallucinations to frank psychosis – and whether the brain recovers afterwards.
The inventor of Corn Flakes believed cinnamon was morally suspicious and flavour was a threat to virtue. This episode explores the strange story of John Harvey Kellogg, his wellness empire, his obsession with chewing, vibrating chairs for constipation, and why evolution made flavour far too appealing for his crusade to succeed.
In 1980, flight attendants began apparently sweating blood on flights between New York and Florida. The CDC investigated. The explanation was not what anyone expected. Also featuring blue sweat, pink sweat, and the only diagnostic dilemma ever solved by a dermatologist ringing a snack-food manufacturer.
This episode explores the biology of itching. Including NASA’s emergency Velcro patches, exploding lice in World War I trenches, contagious scratching, "amphetamites", mosquito mouth-javelins, and the imaginary insects produced by the human brain itself.
This episode explores what urine can reveal about you — from pregnancy and diabetes to drugs, disease, and genetic disorders. Including ancient Egyptian pregnancy tests, beetroot-induced panic, blue urine pranks, and why IKEA once asked women to wee on their catalogue.
This episode examines the odd biology and even odder rituals surrounding sneezing. Including sunlight sneezes, chocolate sneezes, and why on earth we feel compelled to bless them.
For thousands of years, doctors believed urine revealed the hidden workings of the body. By peering at a patient’s wee, they diagnosed everything from epilepsy to death — sometimes without even meeting the patient. This episode explores the strange history of uroscopy, the rise of the “piss prophets”, and why modern doctors still occasionally ask you for a wee sample today.
If you were feeling sickly 100 years ago, your doctor might have prescribed a loincloth, a bed, and a sun-drenched balcony in the Swiss Alps. No blood tests or scans — your degree of tan would determine your prognosis. From sun worship to sun-gazing to Coco Chanel accidentally making bronzed skin chic, this episode explores the many ways medicine and mankind have misunderstood the sun.
Your DNA can build a body, grow a tumour, or implicate you in a crime. This episode explores what happens when DNA evidence meets identical twins, and why one of Europe’s most feared serial killers turned out to be much stranger than anyone expected.
If you’ve ever heard a recording of your own voice, you may have wished for a voice transplant. But would it be possible? This episode explores why your voice is more than your voice box — and what it would actually take to sound like Elvis.
Your oesophagus was never designed to handle acid splashes — and yet, sometimes it has to. This episode looks at heartburn — why it happens, the neat trick emergency doctors use to distinguish it from a heart attack, and what spaceflight reveals about reflux.
Over the centuries, doctors have tried everything to cure hiccups — from sugar to shock to what modern medicine would classify as controlled drugs and poisons. This episode looks at what hiccups actually are, why they happen, and which cures have at least some chance of working.
Many animals use chemical signals — pheromones — to find mates, mark territory, and warn of danger. Humans, despite popular belief, can’t detect them. This episode examines these signals — including the anatomical relic of our pheromone-sniffing past, still sitting in the middle of your face.
A strange accident in 1822 left a man with a window through his chest into his stomach. What followed was one of the most unusual series of experiments in medical history — revealing how digestion really works, and why your stomach doesn’t digest itself.
Can stress really make someone sweat blood? In rare cases, yes. This episode explores the strange condition known as hematidrosis — and why hippos seem to have it too.
