Strange Health

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
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 and Dan Baumgardt
Executive Producer: Gemma Ware
Editing and mixing: Sikander Khan
Artwork: Alice Mason
Stone baby: the rare condition that produces a calcified foetus
Our bodies don’t just make gall and kidney stones – from saliva to tonsils, these are other ones to look out for
Bubble tea’s dark side: from lead contamination to kidney stones

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.”
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 and Dan Baumgardt
Executive Producer: Gemma Ware
Editing and mixing: Sikander Khan
Artwork: Alice Mason

Introducing Strange Health, a new podcast from The Conversation.
Time and again, the health stories that go viral are the ones that make people recoil slightly before clicking anyway. Worms. Smells. Leaks. Stones. Toxins. The things you Google at midnight and hope nobody ever finds in your search history.
Behind the gag reflex, there is usually a serious question. Is this normal? Is this dangerous? Has the internet just convinced me I am dying?
That is why The Conversation has launched Strange Health, a new podcast series hosted by 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.
They take the health questions people are obsessing over online, especially the weird, gross or misunderstood ones, and examine them properly with the help of academic experts who are actively researching these issues. We ask where these ideas come from, what the science really says, and why misinformation spreads so easily when bodies get involved.
Episode 1 arrives on January 20. Follow Strange Health wherever you watch or listen to podcasts to never miss an episode.
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: Sikander Khan
Artwork: Alice Mason