Ground Truths
Episodes
The Story of Francis Crick, a new masterpiece biography by Matthew Cobb
07 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A recording from my enthralling conversation with Prof Matthew Cobb about the life and science contributions of Francis Crick, regarded as one of the ...
Jennifer Gunter & Eric Topol - Discuss Women’s Health and Recent Changes by FDA for MHT
28 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A couple of weeks ago, the FDA Commissioner published a WSJ oped “The FDA Liberates Women’s Hormone Replacement Therapy” (←gift link) and, wit...
Dr. Susan Monarez—Former CDC Director, First Live Interview
08 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Susan Monarez was the first CDC Director to be confirmed by the Senate and served from July 31, 2025 – August 27, 2025. Because she refused to g...
Seth Berkley & Eric Topol - Discuss Fair Doses Book
05 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Get full access to Ground Truths at erictopol.substack.com/subscribe
Tom Frieden & Eric Topol - Discuss the Formula for Better Health Book
01 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Get full access to Ground Truths at erictopol.substack.com/subscribe
Shana Kelley: Biosensors to Track Proteins and Inflammation in Our Blood in Real Time
14 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Prof Shana Kelley is the Neena Schwartz Professor of Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University and President of the CZI Chicago ...
Charlotte Blease: Is A.I. Going to Remedy Medicine’s Problems?
12 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Thank you Bruce Lanphear, Clyde Wilson, Tracy Dennis-Tiwary, Diego Pereyra, Dr Mike Hunter, and many others for tuning into my live video with Charlot...
Peter Hotez & Eric Topol - Discuss “Science Under Siege” book
08 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Thank you Sara Garcia, Andrew O'Malley BSc PhD, Sam Hester, Julie, Stephen B. Thomas, PhD, and so many others for tuning into my live video with Peter...
Sanjay Gupta & Eric Topol - Discuss “It Doesn’t Have to Hurt” book
05 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Thank you Jose Bolanos MD, Dr. Zeest Khan, Lawrence Toole, Julie, Stephen B. Thomas, PhD, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dr. Sanja...
Mike Osterholm & Eric Topol - Discuss “The Big One” book
03 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Get full access to Ground Truths at erictopol.substack.com/subscribe
Bruce Lanphear: Chronic Lead Exposure, a Risk Factor for Heart Disease
17 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a hybrid heart disease risk factor post of a podcast with Prof Bruce Lanphear on lead and a piece I was asked to write for the Washington Post...
Owen Tripp: Why Can't I Find and Get to the Right Doctor?
13 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Eric Topol (00:06):Hello, this is Eric Topol from Ground Truths, and I'm delighted to welcome Owen Tripp, who is a CEO of Included Health. And Owen, I...
Priscilla Chan & Jennifer Doudna: New Center for Pediatric CRISPR Cures
08 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Eric Topol (00:05):Hello, it's Eric Topol from Ground Truths, and I've got some really exciting stuff to talk to you about today. And it's about the a...
Adam Kucharski: The Uncertain Science of Certainty
29 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“To navigate proof, we must reach into a thicket of errors and biases. We must confront monsters and embrace uncertainty, balancing — and rebalanc...
Eric Topol With Devi Sridhar on her new book- How Not to Die (Too Soon)
17 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Thanks to so many of you who joined our live conversation with Devi Sridhar! Professor Devi Sridhar is the Chair of Global Public Health at the Univer...
Matthew Walker: Promoting Our Sleep Health
14 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
My conversation with Matthew Walker, PhD on faculty at UC Berkeley where he is a professor of neuroscience and psychology, the founder and director of...
Katie Couric and Eric Topol: On the State of US Life Science and Extending Healthspan
12 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Thank you Richard DeWald, Michael Mann, Dr Avneesh Khare, Maud Pasturaud, Lower Dementia Risk, and many others for tuning into my live video with Kati...
Sir John Bell: Transforming Life Science and Medicine's Future
26 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Audio FileGround Truths can also be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.The UK is the world leader in human genomics, and laid the foundation...
Tyler Cowen: The Prototypic Polymath
10 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Audio file, also on Apple and SpotifyTyler Cowen, Ph.D, is the Holbert L. Harris Professor of Economics at George Mason University. He is the author ...
Bob Bordone and Joel Salinas: How to Deal With Conflict
05 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In our divided world we face or avoid conflicts on a frequent basis. I turned to Bob Bordone and Joel Salinas to find out the best strategies to deal ...
Steve Quake and Charlotte Bunne: The Holy Grail of Biology
18 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“Eventually, my dream would be to simulate a virtual cell.”—Demis HassabisThe aspiration to build the virtual cell is considered to be equivalen...
Katelyn Jetelina: Public health in the US
14 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Thank you Katelyn Jetelina, Andy Meyers, Tracy Paeschke, MD, FACC, Bruce Lanphear, Tay MacIntyre, and many others for tuning into my live video with K...
Anna Greka: Molecular Sleuthing for Rare Diseases
09 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Funding for the NIH and US biomedical research is imperiled at a momentous time of progress. Exemplifying this is the work of Dr. Anna Greka, a leadin...
Carl Zimmer: Air-Borne and the Big Miss With Covid
28 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Before getting into this new podcast, have you checked out the recent newsletter editions and podcasts of Ground Truths?—the first diagnostic immuno...
Emily Silverman: Storytelling, Uncertainty, and Humanity in Medicine
09 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Before getting into this new podcast, have you checked out the recent newsletter editions of Ground Truths?—how are gut microbiome drives sugar crav...
Lotte Bjerre Knudsen: The Scientist Who Drove GLP-1 Drugs For Obesity and Alzheimer's
04 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Chief Scientific Advisor at Novo Nordisk, Lotte Bjerre Knudsen, was the key force who pushed hard to develop GLP-1 drugs for treating obesity and ...
Ardem Patapoutian: The Pervasive PIEZO Channels
29 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Piezo touch and pressure-sensing ion channels are showing up everywhere as the explanation for physiologic phenomena, both at the macro and micro leve...
Mark Cuban: A Master Disrupter for American Healthcare
20 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
American healthcare is well known for its extreme cost and worst outcomes among industrialized (such as the 38 OECD member) countries, and beyond that...
Kevin Hall: What Should We Eat?
30 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A leader for conducting rigorous randomized trials of humans along with animal models for understanding nutrition and metabolism, Dr. Kevin Hall is a ...
The Glaucomfleckens: The Best in Medical Comedy
16 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Below is a brief video snippet from our conversation. Full videos of all Ground Truths podcasts can be seen on YouTube here. The current one is here. ...
Rachael Bedard: A Geriatric Physician and Champion for Patients Without a Voice
02 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Above is a brief video snippet from our conversation. Full videos of all Ground Truths podcasts can be seen on YouTube here. The audios are also avail...
Katerina Akassoglou: Blood Clots, Brain Inflammation, and Covid
19 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Superimposed on an impressive body of work on the blood-brain-barrier and immune system, Prof Akassoglou and her collaborators just published an elega...
Patrick Hsu: A Trailblazer in Digital Biology
13 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When I think of digital biology, I think of Patrick Hsu—he’s the prototype, a rarified talent in both life and computer science, who recently led ...
AI Snake Oil—A New Book by 2 Princeton University Computer Scientists
24 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor are well regarded computer scientists at Princeton University and have just published a book with a provocative tit...
Francis Collins: On Truth, Science, Faith and Trust
11 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Francis Collins is a veritable national treasure. He directed the National Institutes of Health from 2009 to 2021. Prior to that he led the National H...
Joseph Allen: The Pivotal Importance of Air Quality, Ventilation and Exposures (Such as "Forever Chemicals") For Our Health
05 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Joseph Allen directs the Healthy Buildings Program at Harvard Chan School of Public Health. His expertise extends far beyond what makes buil...
Steve Horvath: Our Epigenetic Age Clocks
23 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Steve Horvath made the seminal discovery of the—Horvath Clock— an epigenetic clock based on DNA methylation, which is now being used extensively i...
Pradeep Natarajan: Preventing Heart Disease
13 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Pradeep is a brilliant geneticist and Director of Preventive Cardiology, holds the Paul & Phyllis Fireman Endowed Chair in Vascular Medicine at Mass G...
Shane Crotty: A Landmark Study on Upper Airway Mucosal Immunity
31 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A video snippet of our conversation. Full videos of all Ground Truths podcasts can be seen on YouTube here. The audios are also available on Apple and...
Faisal Mahmood: A.I.'s Transformation of Pathology
28 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Full videos of all Ground Truths podcasts can be seen on YouTube here. The audios are also available on Apple and Spotify.Thank you for reading Ground...
Euan Ashley: Exercise may be the single most potent medical intervention ever known
05 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Recently, a series of papers were published in Nature and Nature journals illuminating the physiologic effects of exercise from an NIH initiative call...
Christopher Labos: Debunking Myths About What We Eat and Drink
26 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A book that reads like a novel; it’s humorous, it’s a love story. Dr. Christopher Labos, an imaginative cardiologist and epidemiologist at McGill ...
Charlie Swanton: A Master Class on Cancer
14 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The most enthralling conversation I’ve ever had with anyone on cancer. It’s with Charlie Swanton who is a senior group leader at the Francis Crick...
Tom Cech: RNA Takes Center Stage
05 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this podcast, Thomas Czech, Distinguished Professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, with a lineage of remarkable contributions on RNA, ribo...
Venki Ramakrishnan: The New Science of Aging
28 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Venki Ramakrishnan, a Nobel laureate for his work on unraveling the structure of function of the ribosome, has written a new book WHY WE DIE...
Svetlana Blitshteyn: On the Front Line With Long Covid and POTS
20 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
After finishing her training in neurology at Mayo Clinic, Dr. Svetlana Blitshteyn started a Dysautonomia Clinic in 2009. Little did she know what was ...
Kate Crawford: A Leading Scholar and Conscience for A.I.
12 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“We haven't invested this much money into an infrastructure like this really until you go back to the pyramids”—Kate CrawfordTranscript with lin...
Akiko Iwasaki: The Immunology of Covid and the Future
04 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If there’s one person you’d want to talk to about immunology, the immune system and Covid, holes in our knowledge base about the complex immune sy...
Aviv Regev: The Revolution in Digital Biology
28 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“Where do I think the next amazing revolution is going to come? … There’s no question that digital biology is going to be it. For the very first...
Jennifer Doudna: The Exciting Future of Genome Editing
14 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Doudna was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Professor Emmanuelle Charpentier for their pioneering work in CRISPR genome editin...
Daniel Drucker: Illuminating the GLP-1 Drug's Break Out
06 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Note: This podcast is a companion to the Ground Truths newsletter “A Big Week for GLP-1 Drugs”Eric Topol (00:06):It is Eric Topol with Ground Trut...
Sid Mukherjee: On A.I., Longevity and Being A Digital Human
29 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Siddhartha Mukherjee is a Professor at Columbia University, oncologist, and extraordinary author of Emperor of All Maladies (which was awarded a Pulit...
Holden Thorp: Straight Talk from the Editor-in-Chief of the Science family of journals
17 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There was so much to talk about—this is the longest Ground Truths podcast yet. Hope you’ll find it as thought-provoking as I did!Transcript, with ...
Daphne Koller: The Convergence of A.I. and Digital Biology
10 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Transcript Eric Topol (00:06):Well, hello, this is Eric Topol with Ground Truths and I am absolutely thrilled to welcome Daphne Koller, the founder an...
Coleen Murphy: The Science of Aging and Longevity
03 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“A few years ago, I might have chuckled at the naiveté of this question, but now it's not so crazy to think that we will be able to take some sort ...
Michelle Monje: The Brain in Long Covid and Cancer
25 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Transcript with audio and relevant external links, recorded on 6 Feb 2024Eric Topol (00:05):Hello, this is Eric Topol with Ground Truths, and I have a...
Jim Collins: Discovery of the First New Structural Class of Antibiotics in Decades, Using A.I.
13 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jim Collins is one of the leading biomedical engineers in the world. He’s been elected to all 3 National Academies (Engineering, Science, and Medici...
Katalin Karikó: The unimaginable, obstacle-laden, multi-decade journey to discover the mRNA platform and win the 2023 Nobel Prize
02 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“The history of science, it turns out, is filled with stories of very smart people laughing at good ideas.”—Katalin Karikó ...
Jonathan Howard, author of We Want Them Infected
25 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jonathan Howard is a neurologist and psychiatrist who practices at NYU-Bellevue and posts frequently on Science Based Medicine.Transcript, unedited, w...
An exhilarating conversation with Azeem Azhar on medical A.I., science of aging, genome editing and the GLP-1 drugs
18 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Azeem Azharis an award-wining entrepreneur and innovator in technology, especially A.I., a member of the editorial board of Harvard Business Review, a...
Liv Boeree: On Competition, Moloch Traps, and the A.I. Arms Race
13 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A snippet of our conversation belowTranscript of our conversation 8 January 2023, edited for accuracy, with external linksEric TopolIt’s a pleasure ...
Tony Wyss-Coray: The Science of Aging
26 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The science to advance our understanding of the aging process—and to potentially slow it down—has made important strides. One of the leading scie...
David Liu: A Master Class on the Future of Genome Editing
10 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
David Liu is an gifted molecular biologist and chemist who has pioneered major refinements in how we are and will be doing genome editing in the futur...
Geoffrey Hinton: Large Language Models in Medicine. They Understand and Have Empathy
08 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This is one of the most enthralling and fun interviews I’ve ever done (in 2 decades of doing them) and I hope that you’ll find it stimulating and ...
Andrew Ng: On OpenAI's stormy times, AI regulation, education, and where we are headed for healthcare and beyond
21 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
“A.I. is not the problem; it’s the solution.”—Andrew Ng at TED, 17 October 2023Recorded 21 November 2023Transcript with relevant links and lin...
The Science Behind Food and Dangers of Ultra-Processed, Artificial, Non-Food with Dr. Chris Van Tulleken
24 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
If you care about what you eat, you won’t want to miss this conversation! Chris Van Tulleken is an infectious disease physician-scientist in the UK’...
Peter Attia: Our conversation about his hit book OUTLIVE, Medicine 3.0, promoting healthspan, GLP-1 drugs and more
19 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In July, I reviewed Peter’s Outlive book here in Ground Truths and hoped I’d be able to interview him about my concerns. Here’s that conversatio...
On Genome Editing With Fyodor Urnov, A Pioneer
12 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Recorded 11 October 2023Beyond being a brilliant scientist, Fyodor is an extraordinary communicator as you will hear/see with his automotive metaphors...
Straight Talk with Peter Hotez
19 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Peter Hotez is a veritable force. He has been the tip of the spear among physicians and scientists for taking on anti-science and has put himself ...
Ziyad Al-Aly: Illuminating Long Covid
11 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Few, if any, physician researchers have done more to understand the long-term impact of Covid than Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, a professor, nephrologist, and ep...
Straight talk with Magdalena Skipper, the Editor-in-Chief at Nature
19 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Eric Topol (00:00):Hello, this is Eric Topol, and I'm thrilled to have a chance to have a conversation with Magdalena Skipper, who is the Editor-in-Ch...
John Halamka: How Mayo Clinic is Transforming Healthcare with A.I.
11 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Transcript Eric Topol (00:00):This is a real great opportunity to speak to one of the most impressive medical informaticists and leaders in AI in the ...
Melanie Mitchell: Straight Talk on A.I. Large Language Models
04 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Transcript with LinksEric Topol (00:00):This is Eric Topol, and I'm so excited to have the chance to speak to Melanie Mitchell. Melanie is the Davis P...
Al Gore: The Intersection of A.I. and Climate Change
21 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Transcript with some hyperlinksEric Topol (00:00):Hello, Eric Topol here. And what a privilege to have as my guest Al Gore, as we discuss things that ...
Hannah Davis: A 360° on Long Covid
06 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
TRANSCRIPTEric Topol (00:00):Hello, this is Eric Topol, and it's really a delight for me to welcome Hannah Davis who was the primary author of our rec...
Peter Lee and the Impact of GPT-4 + Large Language AI Models in Medicine
22 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Link to the book: The AI Revolution in MedicineLink to my review of the bookLink to the Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence preprint we discusse...
Straight talk with Michael Osterholm
05 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Transcript Eric (00:00):Okay. Hello, this is Eric Topol and this is a rare privilege for me to interview my favorite epidemiologist, Dr. Michael Oster...