Living Lab Radio: Finding Heart And Brain Diseases Sooner

Concern is mounting about chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a form of brain damage from repeated head trauma, among football players.

Heather Goldstone is the science editor at WCAI, the Cape and Islands NPR Station. She holds a Ph.D. in ocean science from M.I.T. and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and spent a decade as an active researcher before leaving the lab to become a writer.

October 02, 2017

Updated July 03, 2023

Diagnosing CTE – Concern is mounting about chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a form of brain damage from repeated head trauma, among football players. At the moment, CTE can only be diagnosed definitively after death. But researchers at Boston University have discovered a molecule that might be useful as an indicator of CTE during life. (Guest: Jonathan Cherry, Boston University)

Celebrity Spiders – Researchers at University of Vermont recently discovered that what was thought to be one species of Caribbean smiley-faced spider is actually 15 species. And they’ve named several of them after famous climate activists and human rights advocates. (Guests: Ingi Agnarsson, University of Vermont)

Dirt is Good – For more than a century, we’ve been told that clean is good and microbes are bad. Microbiologist Jack Gilbert is on a mission to flip that message and share the growing body of research showing that, in fact, we need microbes and we’d be healthier if we got just a bit dirtier. His new book is "Dirt is Good: The Advantage of Germs for Your Child's Developing Immune System." (Guest: Jack Gilbert, University of Chicago)

One Brave Idea – Each year, heart disease claims the lives of more people that live in Massachusetts. A new Boston-based initiative is asking how early we might be able to find signs of heart disease if doctors had access to as much data as online advertisers do. (Guest: Calum MacRae, Brigham and Women's Hospital)