A User's Guide to Cheating Death

Timothy Caulfield explores the cultural shift surrounding how we view sleep in an era that glorifies being busy, meet those changing the narrative, explore the sleep-aid industry to figure out what actually helps, discuss novel therapies for insomnia, and talk about the stark affect that prolonged sleep deprivation on has on our health and longevity.

Timothy delves into the history of vitamins and supplements and meets the thought leaders who are pushing the envelope within the industry, from Silicon Valley start-ups, to MIT’s Aging Center. Can you cheat death by popping a pill?

Relationships and sex are a crucial part of a vital life: people in relationships live longer, sex reduces stress and promotes exercise, and loneliness can have a huge negative impact on health. We’ll also be examining the impact of technology on the eld --dating apps make making connections easier than ever, but the developing realm of AI companionship and burgeoning sex tech industry over the same experience without human interaction--is a synthetic relationship experience as beneficial as the real thing?

Are we too clean? Germ theory and hand washing saved millions of lives, but has the pendulum swung too far in the opposite direction? We talk about everything from regular soap versus anti-bacterial, our microbiome and the role of probiotics, the hygiene hypothesis and the rise of auto-immune diseases, and explore both fecal transplants and helminthic therapy.

Timothy starts with FitBits, and ends with home-implantation, and meeting the scientists, futurists, and aspiring cyborgs in between as we discover how technology is merging with our bodies, and what that could mean for our health.

It used to be that spirituality didn’t have a place in the research laboratories of the world. However, more than ever before, the spheres of spirituality and science are overlapping. We talk to researchers studying pain and acupuncture in the wake of the opiate crisis, the role of meditation in mediating stress-related disease, and explore the ancient roots behind some of today’s modern treatments.