Strange Health

Strange Health from The Conversation dives into the science behind the most bizarre, viral, and sometimes questionable health trends dominating social media from period scooping and menstrual masking to stroboscopic light therapy, demodex mites, vagus nerve hacks and liver detox myths. Expect honest, engaging, and sometimes stomach-turning discussions. Hosted by Katie Edwards from The Conversation and Dan Baumgardt, a GP and lecturer at the University of Bristol.

Latest Episodes:

Cottage cheese: protein superfood or fitness myth? Oct 20, 2026

Show notes

Cottage cheese is a TikTok sensation. Social media creators are blending the curdy, clumpy white stuff into everything from cookie dough and chocolate brownies to flatbreads and even slapping it onto hot dogs. All in the name of protein.

Naturally high in protein and relatively low in fat, cottage cheese has been embraced by fitness influencers who claim it can help build muscle and burn fat. But does the science support these claims?

In this episode, we hear from Dominic Farsi, a researcher at King's College London and at Teagasc in Ireland, to get the facts about cottage cheese – and understand how much protein we really need.

Watch Strange Health on YouTube or follow us wherever you get your podcasts.

Strange Health is a podcast from The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation. If you've got a question about a viral trend or video you've seen and you'd like us to delve into the science behind it in a future episode, please email us at strangehealth@theconversation.com. If you like the show, please consider donating to support our work. You can sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation here.

Hosts: Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt

Executive Producer: Gemma Ware

Editing and mixing: Anouk Millet

Artwork: Alice Mason

Trailer: Strange Health is back for a new season Oct 13, 2026

Show notes

We're back with a new season of Strange Health, the podcast from The Conversation, that investigates the odd, awkward and occasionally disgusting questions raised by our bodies and the health trends surrounding them.

This season we’ll be looking at cottage cheese, which seems to have escaped from the back of the fridge and become one of the internet’s favourite foods, investigate some of the alarming claims circulating about sunscreen, and look at whether migraine hacks online really will alleviate your headache.

Hosts Katie Edwards, a health editor at The Conversation, and Dan Baumgardt, a practising GP and lecturer in health and life sciences at the University of Bristol, tackle a new batch of questions that have been fascinating them or sending them down unexpectedly strange research rabbit holes.

Episode 1 of season two arrives on October 13. Watch Strange Health on YouTube or follow us wherever you get your podcasts.

The Conversation is an independent, not-for-profit news organisation. If you like the show, please consider donating to support our work. You can sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation here.

Hosts: Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt

Executive Producer: Gemma Ware

Editing and mixing: Anouk Millet

Artwork: Alice Mason

What is period scooping? And other menstrual hacks you should think twice about Mar 10, 2026

Show notes

Period scooping sounds like something you would only hear in a biology lab, not while doom-scrolling TikTok. Yet earlier this year, videos claiming you can “scoop out” your period to avoid the mess and shorten the whole thing racked up millions of views.

In this episode, we hear from Sally King, a visiting fellow at King’s College London, about why you can't shorten your period, and why you need to be careful about upsetting the pH balance of your body. She also gives us her perspective as a menstrual physiologist on other period hacks, including menstrual blood face masks, and drinks that some influencers say can shorten your period.

Full credits for this episode available here. If you like the show, please consider donating to support our work. You can sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation here. If you've got a questeion

Hosts: Katie Edwards from The Conversation and Dan Baumgardt, University of Bristol

Executive Producer: Gemma Ware

Editing and mixing: Anouk Millet

Artwork: Alice Mason

Does light therapy work? The science of stroboscopic stimulation Mar 03, 2026

Show notes

Light therapy sounds wholesome. Sit in front of a lamp. Feel better. But nowadays, it can also mean strapping on a flashing mask and watching your own brain generate kaleidoscopic hallucinations behind closed eyelids. In this episode, host Katie Edwards tries on a stroboscopic light mask being promoted by celebrities including Jennifer Aniston and Rosamund Pike to find out what happens.

And David Schwartzman, a research fellow at the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex, explains how stroboscopic light produces hallucinations in the brain, and how it's currently being trialled to treat conditions like depression.

Strange Health is a podcast from The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation. Full credits for this episode available here. If you like the show, please consider donating to support our work. You can sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation here.

Hosts: Katie Edwards from The Conversation and Dan Baumgardt, University of Bristol

Executive Producer: Gemma Ware

Editing and mixing: Anouk Millet

Artwork: Alice Mason

What your body odour says about you Feb 24, 2026

Show notes

Body odour has a reputation problem. It is often treated as a hygiene failure or a social offence. In reality, it is biology at work, plus a big helping of culture.

And yet people online are trying chlorophyll shots to make their BO smell better. Hosts Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt discuss what evidence there is behind this, plus some of the health conditions that can affect body odour.

And we talk to Mats Olsson, a professor of experimental psychology at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, who studies how humans perceive body odour.

Strange Health is a podcast from The Conversation is an independent, not-for-profit news organisation. Full credits for this episode available here. If you like the show, please consider donating to support our work. You can sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation here.

Hosts: Katie Edwards from The Conversation and Dan Baumgardt, University of Bristol

Executive Producer: Gemma Ware

Editing and mixing: Anouk Millet

Artwork: Alice Mason

Meet the mites that live on you: from demodex to dust mites and scabies Feb 17, 2026

Show notes

You are not alone in your own skin. Millions of microscopic creatures live there too. Our skin is home to entire ecosystems of microscopic life. Bacteria and fungi get most of the attention, but mites are there too. Among the most common are demodex mites, tiny eight-legged relatives of spiders that live inside hair follicles and pores, especially on the face. Almost all adults carry them.

In this episode we explore what these microscopic housemates are actually doing on our bodies and why the idea of them can feel so unsettling. While demodex may be harmless, there are plenty of other mites that can cause problems, from dust mites, to scabies.

Hosts Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt turn this week to Alejandra Perotti, professor of invertebrate biology at the University of Reading, who studies the relationship between mites and humans.

Hosts: Katie Edwards from The Conversation and Dan Baumgardt, University of Bristol

Executive Producer: Gemma Ware

Editing and mixing: Sikander Khan

Artwork: Alice Mason

What is the vagus nerve and can you really reset it? Feb 10, 2026

Show notes

The vagus nerve has become the internet’s favourite body part. On social media, it is everywhere. People hum into their phones, gargle with theatrical enthusiasm, dunk their faces into bowls of ice water and poke at their ears in the hope of “activating” it.

So in this episode we focus our attention on the body’s longest cranial nerve and ask a simple question: what does the vagus nerve actually do, and can we really hack it?

Hosts Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt turn this week to Arshad Majid, a professor of cerebrovascular neurology at the University of Sheffield and an expert in vagus nerve stimulation.

Hosts: Katie Edwards from The Conversation and Dan Baumgardt, University of Bristol

Executive Producer: Gemma Ware

Editing and mixing: Anouk MIllet

Artwork: Alice Mason

Is cracking my neck and knuckles bad? Feb 03, 2026

Show notes

Joint cracking is one of those habits most of us acquire without thinking about it. In our third episode, we turn our attention to one of the body’s most common and least understood noises. Knuckles, backs, knees and necks all feature, along with the enduring warning many of us grew up with: “Stop cracking your joints, you’ll get arthritis.” Is there any truth in it? And why can cracking feel so strangely satisfying?

Hosts Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt turn this week to Clodagh Toomey, a specialist in musculoskeletal injury and chronic lifestyle-related diseases such as osteoarthritis, to give you the science behind the myths.

Strange Health is a podcast from The Conversation is an independent, not-for-profit news organisation. If you like the show, please consider donating to support our work. You can sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation here.

Hosts: Katie Edwards from The Conversation and Dan Baumgardt, University of Bristol

Executive Producer: Gemma Ware

Editing and mixing: Anouk MIllet

Artwork: Alice Mason

Tonsils, kidneys and gall: why your body makes stones Jan 27, 2026

Show notes

The human body, it turns out, is surprisingly good at making stone. Give it enough time and the right conditions and it will go about crystallising minerals, hardening secretions and, in rare cases, turning tragedy into rock. Gallstones. Kidney stones. Tonsil stones. Salivary stones. And, in one of the strangest and saddest corners of medical history, stone babies.

In our second episode, hosts Katie Edwards, a health editor at The Conversation, and Dan Baumgardt, a practising GP and lecturer in health and life sciences at the University of Bristol, take a tour through the stony side of human anatomy and ask why this keeps happening, where these stones form and which ones you actually need to worry about. They talk to Adam Taylor, a professor of anatomy at Lancaster University, who has spent years studying stones in both everyday and extraordinary contexts, including a rare genetic condition called alkaptonuria

Hosts: Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt

Executive Producer: Gemma Ware

Editing and mixing: Sikander Khan

Artwork: Alice Mason

Is detoxing your liver worth the hype? Jan 20, 2026

Show notes

Social media is full of green juices, charcoal supplements, foot patches and seven-day “liver resets”, all promising to purge the body of mysterious toxins and return it to a purer state. But do you really need to detox your liver?

In the first episode of Strange Health, hosts Katie Edwards, a health editor at The Conversation, and Dan Baumgardt, a practising GP and lecturer in health and life sciences at the University of Bristol wince and occasionally laugh their way through some of the internet’s most popular detox trends. They also speak to Trish Lalor, a liver expert from the University of Birmingham, whose message is refreshingly blunt: “your body is really set up to do it by itself.”

Hosts: Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt

Executive Producer: Gemma Ware

Editing and mixing: Sikander Khan

Artwork: Alice Mason