The Pulse

Hosted by WHYY

Technology Science Health Fitness

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Episodes

214

Latest episode

Aug 2026

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EN-US

About the show

Go on an adventure into unexpected corners of the health and science world each week with award-winning host Maiken Scott. The Pulse takes you behind the doors of operating rooms, into the lab with some of the world's foremost scientists, and back in time to explore life-changing innovations. The Pulse delivers stories in ways that matter to you, and answers questions you never knew you had. ]]>

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60 recent

October 1, 202649 min

The Fight to Save Rural Hospitals — and Access to Healthcare

It’s a story that’s unfolding across America, from Texas to Tennessee, Kansas to the Rust Belt — rural hospitals are struggling or closing, leaving residents, towns, and entire regions without access to important healthcare services, from cancer screenings to maternity care. For some people, it can even mean a several-hour drive to the nearest emergency room — and in life-or-death situations, those extra miles can make a big difference. On this episode, we explore the rural healthcare crisis, and emerging solutions aimed at increasing — or at least preserving — access to care. We visit communities in rural Pennsylvania where residents are fighting to save their hospitals. We find out how other systemic pressures, like prior authorization, are squeezing rural healthcare systems. And we hear about potential solutions, ranging from state-funded reimbursement programs, to sophisticated “hospitals on wheels” aimed at bringing healthcare to the people. SHOW NOTES: Reporters Nicole Leonard and Alan Yu take us on a journey to two towns in rural Pennsylvania facing similar pressures — Bradford, a once-booming oil town now in decline, and Honesdale, a former railway hub nestled in the Pocono Mountains. For years, both locales have dealt with shrinking populations and a loss of businesses. We hear about the residents’ efforts and struggles to save their hospitals. Many states, including Pennsylvania, have been working to prevent hospital closures in rural areas through experimental initiatives aimed at shoring up their finances. The Pulse's Alan Yu explains how one such initiative — the Pennsylvania Rural Health Model — aimed to combat these financial pressures by replacing the traditional fee-for-service model with a value-based model, which shifts the focus to preventative care in exchange for fixed, predictable funding. We explore how the five-year experiment played out — and why economists say it didn’t ultimately work for some hospitals. We talk with Miranda Yaver , an assistant professor of health policy at the University of Pittsburgh, about another challenge squeezing rural hospitals — prior authorization. Her new book is “Coverage Denied: How Health Insurers Drive Inequality in the United States.” In some parts of rural America, patients have to travel hours in order to access care — but what if medical care could come to them? That's the idea behind a new, federally funded program called PARADIGM , which deploys AI-enabled mobile health units to patients who don’t have access to healthcare. We talk with PARADIGM’s director, emergency medicine physician Bon Ku , about how these mobile clinics work, and hear from reporter Grant Hill about one of the program's latest creations — MARCUS, a futuristic hospital on wheels that contains an exam room, scanning machines, and even a laboratory.

September 24, 202649 min

The Strange Science of Color — And Our Quest to Understand It

On this encore episode, we explore the world of color — from how we perceive it, to our efforts to describe and differentiate its many shades. We talk with a lexicographer about efforts to standardize synthetic colors, and how we describe them, and investigate how we know that the colors we see are the same as the ones everyone else sees. The Pulse host Maiken Scott adds some pops of color to her all-black wardrobe with help from Jill Rafter , a color consultant with House of Colour, who breaks down seasonal palettes and how to choose your ideal hues based on your skin’s undertones. We talk with lexicographer Kory Stamper about her deep dive into the origins of ultra-specific color definitions, and the fascinating history of how major global changes, ranging from industrialization to international warfare, led to a government effort to standardize not just the production of synthetic colors, but also how we talk about them. Stamper’s new book is “ True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color – from Azure to Zinc Pink .” How do we know that the colors we see are the same as the colors other people see? Pulse reporter Liz Tung talks with University of Pennsylvania researcher David Brainard about the science of how we perceive color, what we know — and don’t know — about our shared perceptions, and the philosophical questions this raises about the nature of subjective experience. Pulse producer Nichole Currie talks with Cricket Matthews, who experiences grapheme-colors synesthesia, a unique neurological trait in which letters, numbers, and words trigger specific colors in your mind.

September 23, 202628 min

How the Cereal Industry Won Breakfast

Cereal was born as a health food — but quickly, sweet, crunchy flavor, bright colors, and fun shapes became more important than the nutritional value. That didn’t stop cereal companies from leaning into health claims, though. From Cheerios to Frosted Flakes and Wheaties, brands made bold promises to lower cholesterol, promote weight loss, boost fiber and even help prevent cancer. These healthy messages were also paired with eye-catching designs and beloved mascots. It was all a powerful marketing formula, one that sold a dream to buyers — that indulging in sugary cereal could also be a healthy choice. But, over the years, the healthy veneer has chipped off the cereal box. On this episode, public health nutritionist Marion Nestle and former Vice President of Nutrition at Kellogg Company Lisa Sutherland discuss their new book, “Sugar Coated: Unboxing the Hidden Forces Shaping America’s Favorite Breakfast Food.”

September 17, 202649 min

The Science of Eating: What We Get Wrong About Diet and Nutrition

We all know we’re supposed to eat healthy — but what exactly does that mean? On this episode, what’s on your plate, why it matters, and how to make sense of conflicting nutrition advice. We talk with paleoanthropologist Daniel Lieberman about what human evolution can teach us about how we should eat, look at a typical teen’s sugar intake, and explore barriers to serving healthy and fresh school lunches. We all know we’re supposed to limit our sugar intake — but tracking how much we’re actually eating can be hard, especially given how many products, ranging from pasta sauce to salad dressing, contain added sugars. We talk with recent high school grads Joe Faranda and Jay Lopez about what they discovered after tracking their sugar intake for a week. It's a question we ask ourselves every day, multiple times a day: What should I eat? The answer has gotten increasingly complicated over the years, as our food options have ballooned, and dietary advice shifts. We talk with evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman about why humans are poorly adapted to decide what to eat, how our diets — and the way we think about them — have changed, and why nutrition labels don't give the full story. Lieberman’s new book is “ Fed Up: What Evolution Reveals About Food, Diet, Health and Eating Well .” Growing research on the negative health effects of ultra-processed foods has led to a call for healthier school lunches — but what does that really mean, and what would it require? Reporter Megan Myscofski visits a California school district that provides nutritious, locally sourced meals that are mostly made from scratch — and finds out why similar efforts are out of reach for many districts.

September 10, 202649 min

Under Pressure: How Weather Affects our Health

As summer winds down, some people are celebrating the approach of fall, while others are dreading the shorter, colder days. We know that weather can affect our mood — maybe we're extra irritable when it's hot, or gloomy when it's gray — but it can also influence our overall health. On this episode, a look at how weather affects well-being and health, from its impact on menstrual cycles to chronic conditions like asthma and pain. Can extreme heat affect your menstrual cycle? The internet thinks so. In June, , a strange phenomenon went viral on social media — thousands of women experienced unexpected changes to their periods as temperatures soared. For some, it came early; for others, late. Still others missed it entirely, or reported having a second period shortly after their first. Pulse producer Nichole Currie investigates the potential connection. Writer Alison Espach was taking a dip in the ocean one summer when something strange happened — she emerged covered head-to-toe in hives. She dismissed it as a fluke, but then it happened again when she swam in a lake, and again in a river. We talk with Espach about the bizarre culprit: her sudden allergy to cold . Heat waves don't just make for uncomfortable temperatures — they often lead to poor air quality, which, in many places, has been exacerbated by wildfires. Pulse reporter Alan Yu talks with patients affected by air pollution, why it's dangerous to our health, and the people working to better track air quality. We talk with writer Lorraine Boissoneault about her new book of essays, " Body Weather: Notes on Chronic Illness in the Anthropocene ," which explores the ways in which her own chronic illnesses mirror the weather changes wrought by climate change. Psychologist Trevor Harley explains the science of how the weather affects our mental and physical health, the evolutionary roots of our sensitivity to the weather, and how we can use that knowledge to improve how we feel. His new book is “ Head in the Clouds: How the Weather Affects Our Minds and Mental Health .”

September 4, 202640 min

'I Could Have Been Lindsay Clancy’

A judge declared a mistrial in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy after jurors said they were deadlocked over whether she should be held criminally responsible for strangling her three children in January 2023: Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, who was just 8 months old. The shocking case touched a nerve with millions of people who have been following the trial and asking: How could a mother kill her three young children? British journalist Katinka Blackford Newman also followed the trial closely, but she has a different perspective. She says her own story could have ended up like Clancy’s. Newman describes how she became completely delusional after experiencing adverse effects to psychiatric medications. Quickly, her perfectly ordinary life went completely off the rails and teetered on the edge of catastrophe. Later, we’ll discuss postpartum psychosis, a condition Clancy’s defense team said she was experiencing at the time of the murders. Susan Hatters-Friedman, a psychiatrist specializing in maternal mental health, weighs in on diagnosis and treatment of postpartum psychosis and the conversations happening around the trial.

September 3, 202649 min

The Search for Life on Mars: From Mars Mania to NASA’s Rovers

On this episode, a look back at our search for life on Mars. We hear about the Viking mission to Mars — the first to land a craft on the Red Planet — and the controversy over what it discovered, what drove a national obsession with the “Martian civilization” in the early 1900s, and how NASA repairs its rovers from millions of miles away. Back in the early 1900s, a strange phenomenon was sweeping the nation — “Mars Mania,” a belief shared by scientists and the public alike that Mars was home to a sophisticated civilization poised to guide us into the future. We talk with science writer David Baron about what was behind these beliefs, why it became a nationwide obsession, and what happened when scientists discovered the truth. Baron’s book is “ The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze that Captured Turn-of-the-Century America .”

August 30, 202649 min

Jon Ronson, 101 Princesses, and a World of Unraveling Men

Journalist Jon Ronson's new book starts with a series of panicked text messages from his son — who had been lured to a massive, gothic-looking castle in Connecticut. A female friend had been invited to a party by a wealthy older man from Tinder. But there was no party. Instead, they were asked to join a reality show that was going to be called "101 Princesses" where women compete for the castle owner’s affection. Ronson tracked down the castle's owner and found a much bigger story waiting inside. He joins us to talk about "The Castle" and men searching for purpose in all the wrong places. He also tells us about the millions of men who've quietly dropped out of work and life altogether and profiles influencers who chase clicks and purpose online to disastrous consequences.

August 27, 202649 min

The Search for Wilderness

Sometimes, modern life can feel like an endless cacophony of distractions. We spend our days being inundated with noise and traffic, news and emails, obligations and hectic schedules. Many of us long to escape to nature or the wilderness — someplace simpler, quieter — where we can find peace and reconnect with what's really important. But can we ever truly get away? We tend to think of the wilderness as land that's untouched by human hands — vast, and pristine. But the more you seek out that version of nature, the blurrier the idea seems to become. Even the most remote landscapes on Earth carry traces of human history and human borders. And preserving the wilderness, and having access to it, also means managing it. On this episode, the paradox of the wilderness — how we try to protect and control the wild. We talk with writer Cal Flyn about the myth of untouched nature, and what drives us to experience it. She talks about how our views of the wilderness have changed over time, from fearsome and untamed lands to places of spiritual escape; what she discovered about the human histories of supposedly wild spaces; and what the paradox presented by our desire to both preserve and interact with nature means for how we think of the wild. Flyn’s new book is “The Savage Landscape: How We Made the Wilderness.” It started with a tip received by a dutiful New Hampshire Fish and Game warden — and quickly turned into a twisted tale of illegal baiting and hunting, one-upmanship, digital trophy rooms, and one of the biggest poaching cases in recent state history. New Hampshire Public Radio reporter Nate Hegyi tells the story in the podcast “Operation Night Cat.” We’ll hear an excerpt and talk to Hegyi about the case.

August 20, 202649 min

What's Really Going On Inside Animals' Heads?

Do animals feel love, anger, or empathy? Researchers have long dismissed such ideas as anthropomorphism, arguing that attributing human emotions to animals was unscientific. But as we learn more about animal sentience, that’s starting to change — and, in the process, we’re learning more than ever about the complex inner lives of animals, including why we may be more alike than we once thought. On this encore episode, we explore what researchers have discovered about what’s really going on inside other species’ heads. We talk with a primatologist about why she believes baboons and other animals possess a theory of mind; investigate whether crabs, lobsters, and shrimp are capable of experiencing pain; and hear about one beagle’s journey from lab subject to pet. Host Maiken Scott and reporter Alan Yu visit the Chamounix Equestrian Center in Philadelphia to test an app that claims to detect pain in horses. When primatologist Christine Webb was in college, she was taught that it was “unscientific” to investigate animal emotions — but that attitude has started to change. We talk with Webb about what’s causing that shift, what she learned from her mentor, the famed primatologist Frans de Waal, and the challenges involved with stepping outside our human biases to understand the inner lives of animals. Webb is an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at New York University, and her new book is “The Arrogant Ape: The Myth of Human Exceptionalism and Why it Matters.” Reporter Sophia Schmidt pays a visit to the Elmwood Park Zoo in Norristown, Pennsylvania to meet an unlikely pair of besties : Hunter, the red-tailed hawk, and Stan, the turkey vulture. We hear about why Hunter and Stan’s relationship is so rare, how they became friends (and, sometimes, more than friends), and what biological factors could be driving their behavior. It’s easy enough to believe that animals like cats and dogs have feelings — but what about less cuddly creatures, like crabs, lobsters, and shrimp? Pulse reporter Liz Tung talks with researchers who’ve been investigating the question of sentience in decapod crustaceans , and whether or not they’re capable of feeling pain. We talk with journalist Melanie Kaplan about her investigation into the world of animal research, spurred by her adoption of Hammy — a beagle who spent the first four years of his life in a lab. Her book is, “Lab Dog: A Beagle and His Human Investigate the Surprising World of Animal Research.”