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Joanna Stern was the Wall Street Journal technology journalist for 12 years. She’s an Emmy award winner for her documentary E-Ternal , and recently started her own company New Things , with added advice from ChatGPT! Over the years at WSJ, I relied on Joanna’s reviews of technology for many purchases (and things I avoided) reflecting her keen and brutal assessments. I also had fun working with her on some of her video assessments of health technologies. Her book I AM NOT A ROBOT is both hilariou...
Roxanne Khamsi discusses her new book, "Beyond Inheritance," revealing that our bodies are constantly mutating genetic mosaics, undergoing an internal "endoevolution." She highlights how daily somatic mutations are not always harmful, playing crucial roles in immune defense and even self-correction, while also contributing to diseases like cancer, Alzheimer's, and autoimmune conditions. The conversation covers groundbreaking single-cell sequencing, historical foresight, and future implications for disease prevention and personalized medicine.
Sebastian Mallaby discusses his book "The Infinity Machine," offering a deep dive into DeepMind's ambitious quest for superintelligence led by Demis Hassabis. The conversation covers Hassabis's early prescience, his unique background shaping DeepMind's innovations like AlphaGo and AlphaFold, and the strategic "miss" regarding transformer models that propelled OpenAI. It also explores the intense "AI arms race," the complex personalities driving the field, and the pressing need for international cooperation to address the inherent dangers and ensure AI safety, drawing parallels to the Manhattan Project.
Dr. Trisha Pasricha is a gastroenterologist, Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School, and the Ask a Doctor columnist for The Washington Post. Her new book gets deep into the stigmatized, taboo, rarely discussed topics of our bowel movements and farts, no less the science that backs that up, with lucid explainers for the mechanisms (such as the gut-brain axis). Her research is on the gut origin of Parkinson’s disease. Here’s a quote from Trisha early in the book: “I’m not a wellness guru. I...
Adrian is a molecular biologist and co-founder and CEO of Genyro, a synthetic biology company. He has published 2 previous books on life science (Life Without Genes and An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Genetics). In this conversation we discussed his new book, cover below and the title of this post. ABI. As Adrian puts it, a monumental shift, a second genesis, the “artivolution,” ability to use a molecular Gutenberg press, it’s post-Darwinian. I made an infographic about the book and our convers...
Yo-El Ju is the Barbara Burton and Reuben Morris Professor of Neurology at Washington University, St. Louis. She got her AB from Harvard and MD from Columbia and actively practices sleep medicine and is a prolific researcher, one of the top sleep scientists in the country. Here are some of the topics we discussed and a few related hyperlinked citations: —Importance of Deep Sleep (and her paper on what happens when deep sleep is purposely disrupted , how it is modulated, effect of alcohol — The O...
Dr. Kevin Tracey, pioneer in vagus nerve research, shares insights from his book "The Great Nerve," detailing how vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) has been approved by the FDA for refractory rheumatoid arthritis. He explains the device's mechanism, discusses compelling patient success stories, and explores the potential for VNS in other autoimmune and metabolic conditions. The conversation also touches on the complexities of external VNS devices, cold plunges, heart rate variability, and the challenges of advancing device-based therapies against pharmaceutical dominance.
Back in 2005 Dan Buettner patented Blue Zones. He’s written 9 books, of which 5 were NY Times bestsellers, and has another one in the works. His 2023 Netflix documentary series “Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones” won Emmy awards and was widely viewed. Many of the main points that Dan has emphasized over the years—healthy diet (he highlighted whole grains, beans, nuts, greens, and “peasant food” here), physical activity, social engagement, and sense of purpose—are backed up by randomized tri...
Jonathan Kipnis is a neuroscientist, the Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Immunology at Washington University, St. Louis, who discovered meningeal lymphatics and has been a prolific researcher in brain drainage and the continuous immune system surveillance of the brain. I made this infographic with the help of Notebook LM to summarize many of the concepts we discussed. (Notebook LM is free and worth trying) We went over his new review with 24 co-author leading ...
A recording from my enthralling conversation with Prof Matthew Cobb about the life and science contributions of Francis Crick, regarded as one of the most influential biologists of all times, along with Darwin and Mendel. As you’ll see, there’s so much more to Crick’s story than cracking DNA’s double helix structure in a matter of weeks with James Watson. Matthew Cobb, Emeritus Professor of the University of Manchester, has written several award-winning books on life science, but I think this is...
A couple of weeks ago, the FDA Commissioner published a WSJ oped “ The FDA Liberates Women’s Hormone Replacement Therapy” (←gift link) and, with other FDA colleagues, a JAMA essay entitled “Updated Labeling for Menopausal Hormone Therapy” (open-access). That change, and the data cited, led to a series of articles in the days that followed, such as at STAT News “FDA reverses decades-old warning on hormone therapy products for menopause. Agency says the treatments o!fer heart, brain, and bone heal...
Dr. Susan Monarez was the first CDC Director to be confirmed by the Senate and served from July 31, 2025 – August 27, 2025. Because she refused to give approval to new vaccine recommendations without ever seeing them or their evidence and firing scientists without cause, she was fired. In my view, she’s a hero for standing up for science and speaking truth to power. In her first live interview since leaving the CDC, we review her background. That includes growing up in rural Wisconsin and gettin...
Prof Shana Kelley is the Neena Schwartz Professor of Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University and President of the CZI Chicago Biohub, which brings together life scientists at Northwestern, University of Chicago, and U. Illinois Urbana Champaign. Her lab’s website provides recent publications in the 3 major areas of biomolecular sensors, rare and single cell analysis, and intracellular molecular delivery. You are undoubtedly familiar with wearable biosensors on the wrist a...
Thank you Bruce Lanphear , Clyde Wilson , Tracy Dennis-Tiwary , Diego Pereyra , Dr Mike Hunter , and many others for tuning into my live video with Charlotte Blease ! Join me for my next live video in the app. Whether A.I. will transform the practice of medicine in a positive way remains controversial. Health researcher Prof Charlotte Blease, on faculty at Uppsala University in Sweden and researcher at Harvard University, has written a new book —Dr. Bot—that critically assesses the unmet needs i...
Thank you Sara Garcia , Andrew O'Malley BSc PhD , Sam Hester , Julie , Stephen B. Thomas, PhD , and so many others for tuning into my live video with Peter Hotez ! Join me for my next live video in the app. Peter Hotez and I discuss his new book, co-authored with Michael Mann, SCIENCE UNDER SEIGE, on the anti-science superstorm culminating from the climate crisis, the Covid pandemic, and a vast interconnected network that has waged a direct assault on scientific truth. During our conversation we...
Thank you Jose Bolanos MD , Dr. Zeest Khan , Lawrence Toole , Julie , Stephen B. Thomas, PhD , and many others for tuning into my live video with Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Join me for my next live video in the app. A Brief Summary of Our Conservation We discussed the new understanding and approach to chronic pain, which affects nearly 1 in 4 adults. Dr. Gupta gets personal telling the story of his wife, Rebecca, who has an autoimmune disease and at one point he had to carry her up stairs. He also tells ...
This is a hybrid heart disease risk factor post of a podcast with Prof Bruce Lanphear on lead and a piece I was asked to write for the Washington Post on risk factors for heart disease. First, the podcast. You may have thought the problem with lead exposure was circumscribed to children, but it’s a much bigger issue than that. I’ll concentrate on the exposure risk to adults in this interview, including the lead-estrogen hypothesis. Bruce has been working on the subject of lead exposure for more ...
Eric Topol ( 00:06 ): Hello, this is Eric Topol from Ground Truths, and I'm delighted to welcome Owen Tripp, who is a CEO of Included Health . And Owen, I'd like to start off if you would, with the story from 2016, because really what I'm interested in is patients and how to get the right doctor. So can you tell us about when you lost your hearing in your right ear back, what, nine years ago or so? Owen Tripp ( 00:38 ): Yeah, it's amazing to say nine years, Eric, but obviously as your listeners ...
Eric Topol ( 00:05 ): Hello, it's Eric Topol from Ground Truths, and I've got some really exciting stuff to talk to you about today. And it's about the announcement for a new Center for pediatric CRISPR Cures. And I'm delight to introduce doctors Jennifer Doudna and Priscilla Chan. And so, first let me say this is amazing to see this thing going forward. It's an outgrowth of a New England Journal paper and monumental report on CRISPR in May . [See the below post for more context] Let me introduc...
“To navigate proof, we must reach into a thicket of errors and biases. We must confront monsters and embrace uncertainty, balancing — and rebalancing —our beliefs. We must seek out every useful fragment of data, gather every relevant tool, searching wider and climbing further. Finding the good foundations among the bad. Dodging dogma and falsehoods. Questioning. Measuring. Triangulating. Convincing. Then perhaps, just perhaps, we'll reach the truth in time.” —Adam Kucharski My conversation with ...
Thanks to so many of you who joined our live conversation with Devi Sridhar! Professor Devi Sridhar is the Chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh. Over the past 2 decades she has become one of the world’s leading authorities and advisors for promoting global health. Her new book —How No to Die Too Soon—provides a unique outlook for extending healthspan with a global perspective admixed with many personal stories. We talked about lifestyle factors with lessons from Japan (on...
My conversation with Matthew Walker, PhD on faculty at UC Berkeley where he is a professor of neuroscience and psychology , the founder and director of the Center for Human Sleep Science, and has a long history of seminal contributions on sleep science and health. Audio File (also downloadable at Apple Podcast and Spotify) “Sleep is a non-negotiable biological state required for the maintenance of human life . . . our needs for sleep parallel those for air, food, and water.”— Grandner and Fernan...
Thank you Richard DeWald , Michael Mann , Dr Avneesh Khare , Maud Pasturaud , Lower Dementia Risk , and many others for tuning into my live video with Katie Couric ! Join me for my next live video in the app. Get full access to Ground Truths at erictopol.substack.com/subscribe...
Audio File Ground Truths can also be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube. The UK is the world leader in human genomics, and laid the foundation for advancing medicine with the UK Biobank, Genomes England and now Our Future Health (w/ 5 million participants). Sir John Bell is a major force in driving and advising these and many other initiatives. After 22 years as the Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford he left in 2024 to be President of the Ellison Institute of Tech...
Audio file, also on Apple and Spotify Tyler Cowen, Ph.D, is the Holbert L. Harris Professor of Economics at George Mason University. He is the author of 17 books, most recently Talent . : How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World . Tyler has been recognized as one of the most influential economists of the past decade. He initiated and directs the philanthropic project Emergent Ventures , writes a blog Marginal Revolution , and a podcast Conversations With Tyler , and al...
In our divided world we face or avoid conflicts on a frequent basis. I turned to Bob Bordone and Joel Salinas to find out the best strategies to deal with these, including having them take on a mock conflict between each other on the merits of Covid research. Audio file You can also find this on Spotify and Apple podcasts with Ground Truths. The video is also posted on YouTube Transcript with Audio Links Eric Topol ( 00:06 ): Well, hello. It's Eric Topol with Ground Truths, and we're going to ge...
