History & Commentary

The extraordinary story of an unjustly forgotten group of Black men in Pittsburgh who became the first paramedics in America, saving lives and changing the course of emergency medicine around the world....

A fascinating account of the world’s most famous disease - polio - told as you have never heard it before. Epidemics of paralysis began to rage in the early 1900s, seemingly out of nowhere....

Nancy Wake was a brave woman. She risked her life behind enemy lines during the Nazi occupation of France in the Second World War. The Gestapo dubbed her “The White Mouse” for her uncanny ability to evade their traps.

Over the past 50 years, rates of autoimmunity and chronic disease have exploded. In this provocative book, Dr. Thomas Cowan argues for a direct causal relationship to a corresponding increase in the number of vaccines American children typically receive....

The Great Plague is one of the most compelling events in human history—even more so now, when the notion of plague has never loomed larger as a contemporary public concern....

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is essential listening for understanding the history, philosophy, and evolution of science....

Dr. Frederick R. Appelbaum tells a sweeping biography of the visionary behind bone marrow transplantation and the story of the diseases cured by Don Thomas's discovery....

Grief Works is a compassionate guide that will inform and engage anyone who is grieving and provide clear advice for those seeking to comfort the bereaved....

Since early 2020, the world has experienced a series of catastrophic events - a global pandemic caused by a so-called novel coronavirus; international lockdowns and border closings causing widespread business closures, economic collapse, and massive unemployment....

A journey through history's most famous limbs, organs, and appendages, from TikTok medical historian Dr Suzie Edge....

What happens to consciousness during the act of dying? The most compelling answers come from people who almost die and later recall events that occurred while lifesaving resuscitation, emergency care, or surgery was performed....

An oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem....

The extraordinary story of the Nazi-era scientific genius who discovered how cancer cells eat - and what it means for how we should....

In Search of Madness is an exploration of society's changing attitudes towards and attempts to deal with its mentally ill, from the author of The Science of Happiness....

With poignant insight and humor, Frank Vertosick, Jr., MD, describes some of the greatest challenges of his career, including a six-week-old infant with a tumor in her brain and more....

Upon its first publication 20 years ago, And The Band Played On was quickly recognized as a masterpiece of investigatve reporting....

Dr. Andrew Lam, an award-winning author and retinal surgeon, distills the long arc of medical progress down to the crucial moments that were responsible for the world's greatest medical miracles....

Medical Bondage moves between southern plantations and northern urban centers to reveal how 19th-century American ideas about race, health, and status influenced doctor-patient relationships in sites of healing like slave cabins, medical colleges, and hospitals....

A journalist takes listeners into the science and history of intermittent fasting, an ancient practice in the middle of a red-hot resurgence, exploring the body's power to heal itself....

In this eyewitness story of how the anti-vaccine movement grew into a dangerous and prominent anti-science element in American politics, Dr. Peter J. Hotez describes the devastating impacts it has had on Americans’ health and lives....

Beginning with opium, the “joy plant,” which has been used for 10,000 years, Thomas Hager tells a captivating story of medicine. His subjects include the largely forgotten female pioneer who introduced smallpox inoculation to Britain, the infamous knockout drops, and much more....

Journalist Elfy Scott grew up in a household where her mother's schizophrenia was rarely, if ever, spoken about. They navigated this silence outside the family home too; for many years, this complex mental health condition was treated as an open secret....

The harrowing, dramatic and profoundly moving story of the Australian and New Zealand nurses who served in the Great War....

David Oshinsky chronicles the history of America's oldest hospital and in so doing also charts the rise of New York to the nation's preeminent city, the path of American medicine....

Lithium is the penicillin story of mental health - the first effective medication discovered for the treatment of a mental illness - and it is, without doubt, Australia's greatest mental health story....