🪐 What happens to a person who spends a year sealed inside NASA's simulated Mars habitat? Dr. Nathan Jones lived it for 378 days as medical officer on NASA's CHAPEA mission at Johnson Space Center in Houston. We talk about how NASA picks a crew, the love notes he hid around his house, missing a year of his kids' lives, and why having the option to leave can be its own kind of hard. ABOUT DR. NATHAN JONES: Dr. Nathan Jones is an emergency medicine physician who served as medical officer on NAS

Patricia Knight Meyer grew up knowing she was adopted — but not that her adoptive parents never received her birth certificate, never saw adoption papers, and never legally adopted her at all. In this episode, Patricia — a writer, adoptee-rights advocate, and board member of the National Association of Adoptees and Parents — shares her story of growing up in a "black market adoption" during the Baby Scoop Era, discovering as an adult that no adoption had ever been filed, and later reuniting wit

Former NASCAR Cup Series mechanic Keith Barton takes us inside the garage — from Monday teardown to Sunday's checkered flag — to reveal how teams bent the rules, hand-built race cars, and survived 36 races a year on the road.Keith spent 20 years (1997–2017) working for teams like Bill Elliott, PPI Motorsports, Ricky Rudd, Jack Roush, Hall of Fame Racing, and JR Motorsports, where he earned a championship ring. Today he builds hot rods and classic cars with his son at Skin and Bones Inc. in Salis

⚓️ 🌊 What's it like to spend most of your life at sea—far from land, cities, and normal life—for decades at a time? In this episode, veteran mariner Vernon Adkison takes us inside a world most people never experience: the merchant marine. Over a 56-year career, he worked aboard cargo ships crossing global shipping routes, endured violent storms, lived through long stretches of isolation, and learned how massive ships are actually operated day-to-day. We explore the hidden structure of ship lif

🚀 🪐 Dr. Ekaterina Kostioukhina joins me for a fascinating conversation on one of the most ambitious frontiers in science: human hibernation. Could humans one day enter suspended animation to survive long-duration space travel? Could hibernation help us reach Mars? And could the same science transform trauma care, organ preservation, and emergency medicine here on Earth? We explore the biology of torpor, hypometabolism, cryogenics, vitrification, adenosine, metabolism regulation, and space medi

What can dying children teach us about life, death, parenting, and human connection? Dr. Jared Rubenstein is a pediatric palliative care physician, educator, and medical leader who has spent his career helping children and families navigate serious illness, grief, and end-of-life care with compassion and honesty. In this conversation, we explore what pediatric palliative care really is, the biggest misconceptions surrounding hospice and palliative medicine, how children think about death, and