New York City’s mayor called them “public enemy number one.” History books say they caused the Black Death — although recent scientific evidence disputes that claim. In an updated episode from 2025, we ask: Is the rat a scapegoat? And what does our rat hatred say about us?
SOURCES:
Bethany Brookshire, author of Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains.
Kathy Corradi, senior vice president of resident services, partnerships, and initiatives at the New York City Housing Authority.
Ed Glaeser, professor of economics at Harvard University.
Nils Stenseth, professor of ecology and evolution at the University of Oslo.
RESOURCES:
"On Patrol With the Rat Czar," by Mark Chiusano (Intelligencer, 2024).
"How Rats Took Over North America," by Allison Parshall (Scientific American, 2024).
"Where Are the Rats in New York City," by Matt Yan (New York Times, 2024).
Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains by Bethany Brookshire (2022).
"Human ectoparasites and the spread of plague in Europe during the Second Pandemic," by Nils Stenseth, Katharine Dean, Fabienne Krauer, Lars Walløe, Ole Christian Lingjærde, Barbara Bramanti, and Boris Schmid (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2018).
EXTRAS:
"Freakonomics Radio Live: 'Jesus Could Have Been a Pigeon.'" by Freakonomics Radio (2018).
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The final of a three-part limited Science Podcast series that looks at the history of normal human subjects in research
In episode two, we heard what happened to the normals program after church volunteers came to the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s Clinical Center—and were surprisingly happy despite going through sometimes-painful procedures. In the decades to follow, the program got bigger as government funding expanded and started to recruit more broadly, stepping away from specific religious groups toward recruiting from colleges, universities, and unions.
In this episode, we hear about how normal human subjects experience research today and the ways the normals project influenced oversight and safety for these sometimes vulnerable people.
All episodes in this series
Appearing in this episode:
Laura Stark, history professor at the Center for Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University
Jill Fisher, professor of social medicine in the Center for Bioethics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Kaviya Manoharan, lecturer and clinical research program manager in the Centre for Clinical Pharmacology, SRM Medical College Hospital and Research Centre
Martin Enserink, deputy news editor at Science
Kevin McLean, Science multimedia managing producer
Sarah Crespi, Science Podcast senior host and producer
Additional resources:
BOOKS
The Normals: A People’s History of Modern America in Five Human Experiments by Laura Stark
Adverse Events: Race, Inequality, and the Testing of New Pharmaceuticals by Jill Fisher
NEWS STORIES
Global effort aims to protect health and safety of human ‘guinea pigs’ in drug trials by Martin Enserink
Key global bioethics guidelines get ‘dramatic’ update by Cathleen O’Grady
WEBSITES
Volrethics
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What’s the difference between being loved and feeling loved? Psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky joins us to discuss the distinction, and how we can create a stronger feeling of closeness in our relationships. Then, in our latest installment of Your Questions Answered, psychologist Greg Walton returns to answer listeners’ questions about negative thought spirals.As individuals and as a society, we often overlook a strategy that can help us to improve our lives. We discuss this tool in a new video on Hidden Brain's YouTube channel. Please check it out, and let us know what you think!
Episode illustration by Getty Images for Unsplash+ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford tabled legislation requiring high school teachers to factor attendance into final grades. Should students lose marks for missing class? This week academics, teachers and students weigh in from all sides of this debate.
As Canadians debate how to deal with students missing school today, back in 2005 Checkup was taking the country's temperature on whether secondary education is truly serving students.
Global EV sales are also rebounding with rising oil prices. Our AMA expert answers caller questions about EVs, hybrids and everything in between.
There’s something rotten in the cows of Denmark. And Minnesota. And Wisconsin. And Idaho. What could cause a previously thriving herd of majestic dairy cattle to stop drinking water and start drinking … urine? A Danish farmer calls a special investigator, who takes one look at his farm and nopes the heck out of there, refusing to return, citing “bad energy” coming from something nearby … a big building covered in Viking runes.
It’s not magic. It’s an invisible force that’s far more common. And yet deeply mysterious.
This episode plunges producers Matt Kielty and Simon Adler knee-deep in a decades-old dairy farm controversy, rooted in a fundamental suspicion of the invisible streams of electrons that keep our world humming.
Special thanks to Dr. Liz Brock
EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by - Matt Kielty and Simon Adler
with help from - Clara Grunnet and Rebecca Rand
Produced by - Matt Kielty
with help from - Maria Paz Gutierrez
Original music from - Jeremy Bloom and Matt Kielty
Sound design contributed by - Jeremy Bloom
Mixed by - Jeremy Bloom
Fact-checking by - Angely Mercado and Sophie Samiee
and Edited by - Pat Walters
EPISODE CITATIONS:
Books -
The Great Energy Transition: America from 1876 to 1929 (https://zpr.io/3PStsDgidpj5), by David Nye
Powering American Farms: The Overlooked Origins of Rural Electrification (https://zpr.io/GdQ4pMCy4DAV), by Richard Hirsch
Beyond the Barn – Dodging Cow Patties for 50 Years by a Country Vet (https://zpr.io/S8qS9HLEQBJe), by Don Sanders a memoir about his long career.
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One possibility: a leading hypothesis pursued by researchers (and funders) was built on science that now appears to be fraudulent. Stephen Dubner speaks with the scientist and the journalist who blew the whistle.
SOURCES:
Charles Piller, investigative journalist for Science, author of Doctored.
Matthew Schrag, associate professor of neurology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
RESOURCES:
Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer's, by Charles Piller (2025).
"The brain makes a lot of waste. Now scientists think they know where it goes," by Jon Hamilton (NPR, 2024).
"The history of Alzheimer’s disease," by Lisa Kiani and Richard Hodson (Nature, 2024).
EXTRAS:
"Can Marty Makary Fix the F.D.A.?" by Freakonomics Radio (2026).
"Are You Ready for the Elder Swell?" by Freakonomics Radio (2025).
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First up on the podcast, quantum computers require extremely low temperatures—less than 1°C away from absolute zero. But getting down to those temperatures has usually required dilution fridges using the extremely rare and increasingly expensive isotope helium-3. Freelance science journalist Zack Savitsky joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss up-and-coming technologies that can drive down temperatures while staying helium-3–free.
Next on the show, Nizan Packin, a professor of law at the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College, talks about prediction markets as a public health threat. Early on, prediction markets were proposed as a way to make reliable forecasts from crowdsourced wisdom. With the appearance of commercial, for-profit prediction markets linked with cryptocurrency and sports betting, Nizan and colleagues ask what studies should be done to better understand potential harms to the public.
Finally, in a Working Life column this week, recent Ph.D. graduate Filippo Dall’Armellina wrote about how his foray into science podcasting helped him regain enjoyment of research. He talks about why having a science-adjacent hobby was life changing.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
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