In keeping with last week’s theme of “bodily excretions that are kinda gross that you don’t really think about but are actually really important”, we’re devoting this episode to earwax, aka cerumen. In one hour, we somehow manage to weave together stories of earwax impaction, misadventures in ear candling, glimpses of earwax in art history, and a whale of a tale as revealed by cetacean cerumen. The biology and history of earwax proves to be surprisingly rich and revealing and will have you second-guessing yourself as you reach for that cotton swab. Armed with this week’s episode on earwax and last week’s on boogers, you’ll be ready to take on even the most daunting office icebreaker.

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Hard and crusty. Green and gloopy. Clear and watery. Boogers come in a veritable rainbow of colors and a full spectrum of textures from liquid to solid. They’re really quite impressive if you think about it. Which, of course, few of us do, besides adding tissues to our shopping list or cursing the dagger-like boogers that emerge during a trip to a particularly dry locale. But boogers deserve a lot more credit, and this episode is our attempt at righting that wrong. What are boogers, and what purpose do they serve? How long have handkerchiefs been around, and when did mucus evolve? How many of us are nose-pickers, and how do other species deal with their boogers? More stuffed with snot facts than a nose during flu season, this episode has all the best tidbits to share at your next dinner party.

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Stories of unethical medical experimentation often center around the individuals who spearheaded such atrocities or highlight how patient protection laws were changed in response to the studies. But rarely do they focus on the people who fought to bring these harms to light: the whistleblower. What does it take to blow the whistle, and what does it cost? Are we all capable of blowing the whistle or is there a “whistleblower type”? What happens when there’s no one left to hear the whistle being blown? These are just some of the questions we explore in this week’s TPWKY book club episode, where I’m joined by Dr. Carl Elliott, [Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota] to discuss his latest book The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No. In this profound and personal work, Dr. Elliott reflects on the drivers and consequences of blowing the whistle, interviewing whistleblowers in past scandals as well as drawing from his own experience. We may all think we’d do the right thing, but how many of us are prepared for the cost? Tune in for an enlightening conversation about medical ethics and human nature.

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