This Podcast Will Kill You
Exactly Right and iHeartPodcasts
This podcast might not actually kill you, but Erin Welsh and Erin Allmann Updyke cover so many things that can. In each episode, they tackle a different topic, teaching listeners about the biology, history, and epidemiology of a different disease or medical mystery. They do the scientific research, so you don’t have to.
Since 2017, Erin and Erin have explored chronic and infectious diseases, medications, poisons, viruses, bacteria and scientific discoveries. They’ve researched public health subjects including plague, Zika, COVID-19, lupus, asbestos, endometriosis and more.
Each episode is accompanied by a creative quarantini cocktail recipe and a non-alcoholic placeborita.
Erin Welsh, Ph.D. is a co-host of the This Podcast Will Kill You. She is a disease ecologist and epidemiologist and works full-time as a science communicator through her work on the podcast. Erin Allmann Updyke, MD, Ph.D. is a co-host of This Podcast Will Kill You. She’s an epidemiologist and disease ecologist currently in the final stretch of her family medicine residency program.
This Podcast Will Kill You is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including science, true crime, comedic interviews, news, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, Buried Bones, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast and more.
Since 2017, Erin and Erin have explored chronic and infectious diseases, medications, poisons, viruses, bacteria and scientific discoveries. They’ve researched public health subjects including plague, Zika, COVID-19, lupus, asbestos, endometriosis and more.
Each episode is accompanied by a creative quarantini cocktail recipe and a non-alcoholic placeborita.
Erin Welsh, Ph.D. is a co-host of the This Podcast Will Kill You. She is a disease ecologist and epidemiologist and works full-time as a science communicator through her work on the podcast. Erin Allmann Updyke, MD, Ph.D. is a co-host of This Podcast Will Kill You. She’s an epidemiologist and disease ecologist currently in the final stretch of her family medicine residency program.
This Podcast Will Kill You is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including science, true crime, comedic interviews, news, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, Buried Bones, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast and more.
Episodes
Mentioned books
15 snips
Dec 9, 2025 • 56min
Special Episode: Dr. Homer Venters & Outbreak Behind Bars
Dr. Homer Venters, a correctional health physician and former chief medical officer of NYC jails, dives deep into the dire state of healthcare in prisons. He discusses how architectural flaws and staff biases lead to unchecked disease spread. Addressing the pervasive mistrust between healthcare staff and inmates, he highlights how this reticence harms public health. Venters also shares alarming insights on infections like TB and MRSA, detailing how failures in care can ripple into communities. His evidence-based solutions emphasize the urgent need for accountability and reform.
26 snips
Dec 2, 2025 • 53min
Ep 195 Salt Part 2: The Substance
Dive into the salty debate as the hosts explore whether salt is truly detrimental to our health. Learn about its biological importance, how it regulates our body's sodium and potassium balance, and why we have a craving for this flavor enhancer. Discover compelling evidence that links sodium intake to blood pressure and various health outcomes, including cardiovascular risks. You'll also uncover tips for reducing sodium intake while boosting potassium-rich foods in your diet. Salt lovers, this one's for you!
9 snips
Nov 25, 2025 • 56min
Ep 194 Salt Part 1: The Seasoning
Explore the fascinating history of salt and its cultural significance, from ancient preservation methods to modern dietary shifts. Discover how salt has influenced language, trade, and even political movements, with stories like Gandhi's Salt March. Uncover the origins of salt-related place names and the environmental impacts of salt production. The discussion brings to light salt's roles in symbolism and hospitality, alongside its biological necessity for human health.
9 snips
Nov 18, 2025 • 50min
Special Episode: Gabriel Weston & Alive
Gabriel Weston, a surgeon and award-winning writer, captivates listeners with insights from her book Alive: Our Bodies and the Richness and Brevity of Existence. She discusses the personal connections we have with our anatomy, challenging the lifeless way anatomy is often taught. Weston shares her unique journey from English and philosophy to surgery, and reflects on the entwined experiences of being a doctor and a mother during challenging times. She emphasizes the importance of authentic communication in healthcare, urging listeners to embrace the stories behind our bodies.
12 snips
Nov 11, 2025 • 1h 7min
Ep 193 Necrotizing Fasciitis: A strange beast
Dive into the chilling world of necrotizing fasciitis, known as flesh-eating bacteria. Discover how this rare yet deadly infection spreads through the body and the challenges doctors face in treating it. Hear a personal account of a patient's rapid decline from the illness and the scars of its grisly history, from naval misadventures to battlefield wounds. Explore modern trends, including alarming increases linked to climate change and the necessity of early surgical intervention to save lives.
Nov 4, 2025 • 1h 10min
Ep 192 New World Screwworm: Oh-oh here they come
It’s the stuff nightmares are made of. A fly lands on an open wound and lays hundreds of eggs, from which hatch countless ravenous maggots. There they writhe, devouring flesh, insatiable and relentless. Every minute they dig deeper and deeper until flesh gives way to bone. Even the species name of these maggots inspires a shiver of fear: Cochliomyia hominivorax - “man eater”. This nightmare of a fly is the horrifying reality for many mammals in South America and some Caribbean islands, particularly cattle. And it seems to be making a comeback in the places it was previously eradicated - Central and North America. What exactly this fly does, why it’s such a problem, and how we came to defeat it (temporarily) all feature in this week’s episode. Sterile flies? Archival footage? Gnarly descriptions? This episode has it all. Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/3WwtIAuSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Oct 28, 2025 • 55min
Special Episode: Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris and Adrian Teal & Dead Ends!
Science doesn’t always get it right the first time (or the second, or the third, or even the ninety-ninth!). And while we may chuckle at the outlandish things people believed or the goofy experiments they tried, we forget two things: 1) those failures helped us get where we are today and 2) a hundred years from now, people will probably be laughing at the “cutting edge” medical knowledge of today! In this week’s book club episode, Erin and I chat with two of our all-time favorite science communicators, Dr. Lindsey Fithzarris and Adrian Teal to discuss their newest book Dead Ends!: Flukes, Flops & Failures That Sparked Medical Marvels. This hilarious and insightful book, geared towards middle-school readers (but enjoyable for all ages!), frolicks through some of the strangest stories in the history of medicine, accompanied by delightfully grotesque illustrations. There’s learning, there’s laughter, but most importantly, there’s a lesson: failure is okay. Not just okay but a necessary part of science. Tune in for all this and more! Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/3WwtIAuSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Oct 21, 2025 • 1h 10min
Ep 191 Famine: More than starvation
As we learned last week, starvation extends far beyond hunger and what a lack of food does to the human body. Similarly, famine is much more than a food shortage and starvation on a population-level scale. This week, we’re picking up where we left off last episode to explore the definitions, drivers, and many dimensions of famine. We trace famines throughout human history, asking how they have changed either in their incidence, severity, or cause. No two famines are exactly alike, but taking a bird’s eye view of patterns in famine over time gives us insight, especially into the famines of the past 100 years. We conclude the episode with a discussion of the ongoing famine in Gaza and other food insecurity crises in other regions of the world. Tune in for a broad overview of this heavy but incredibly important topic. Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/3WwtIAuSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Oct 14, 2025 • 1h 4min
Ep 190 Starvation: More than hunger
The discussion delves into how starvation affects the body, from metabolic shifts to psychological impacts. It highlights the notable Minnesota Starvation Experiment and its insights into human behavior under extreme hunger. Listeners learn about the severe effects of malnutrition, such as muscle breakdown and immune system compromise, while contrasting disorders like marasmus and kwashiorkor. There's also a focus on the psychological challenges, including anxiety and cognitive consequences, alongside treatment strategies and the global state of child malnutrition.
Oct 7, 2025 • 57min
Special Episode: Antonia Hylton & Madness
The United States is in the midst of a monumental mental health crisis, with one in four people predicted to experience mental illness at some point in their lives. Adequate mental health care remains out of reach of so many due to a myriad of factors: unaffordability, stigma, shame, and racism, to name a few, leaving enormous gaps in mental health equity. The roots of these inequities can be traced back decades, to the earliest psychiatric hospitals founded on harmful racist notions of mental illness. In Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum, author and award-winning journalist Antonia Hylton explores the story of Crownsville Hospital, a segregated asylum in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, built in 1911 by its first patients: twelve Black men. Over the course of the 20th century, the shifting perspectives of race and mental illness played out in the overcrowded and understaffed Crownsville Hospital, with powerful implications for understanding our current failing to deliver adequate care to all in need. Madness is a powerful and necessary book that sheds much-needed light on the intersections between race, racism, and mental illness. Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/3WwtIAuSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
