Eric Topol

Ground Truths

A Life Sciences , Science and Health & Fitness podcast

#8 in Life Sciences · 🇮🇳 #8 in Life Sciences · 🇮🇹

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About the show

Facts, data, and analytics about biomedical matters. erictopol.substack.com

Newest episodes

Ethan Mollick on AI: Where Are We Now and Where Are We Headed

Nov 10, 2026 56 min

Ethan Mollick is an Associate Professor at Wharton, University of Pennsylvania, head of their Generative AI Lab, and author of the new book CO-EXISTENCE, just released, and on the NY Times bestseller list right away. His prior book CO-INTELLIGENCE was also huge hit, NYT bestseller. He writes ONE USEFUL THING on Substack, which is one of the most insightful and popular series of essays on AI on the platform. Let me highlight that Ethan evaluates all of the new models independently and is not funded by any of the AI companies, which puts him in a singular or rarified group of experts. Here are some of the topics we discussed: * The Jagged Frontier (the term Ethan came up with that has been adopted by all) * The end of Prompting * The Next-Token Train * The Bitter Lesson * Deskilling and Never Skilling * Hyperscaling and Recursive Self-Improvement (RSI) * Data Centers * Claude Table 5.2 (his new essay with a mind blowing video not to miss) * Safety of AI and Existential Threats * Personal AI Agents (Muse and Dot) * Education * Science, Authorship, Peer Review * Medical AI—Doctors out of the loop, AI potentially better than doctors with AI * Ethan’s use of Agents (from his new essay) About Ground Truths This substack has more than 217,000 subscribers from every US state and 215 countries. There are over 320,000 followers of Ground Truths so more than 100,000 folks who can easily convert to be free subscribers. If you’re one of them, please consider doing so. Your subscription to these free essays and podcasts makes my work in putting them together worthwhile. If you’re not a subscriber, please join! If you found this interesting PLEASE share it! * The proceeds from all voluntary paid subscriptions go to support our summer internship program. It enabled us to accept and support a record number of 62 summer interns that joined us in 2026! These are high school, college and medical students selected from thousands of applicants. We couldn’t do this expanded program wi...

Vadim Gladyshev and the Science of Aging

Oct 27, 2026 50 min

Vadim Gladyshev, PhD, Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, elected to the National Academy of Science, is a prolific science of aging researcher. We covered many topics including: —The nature of aging, and how it is different from biological aging (with glossary below) —The clocks of biological aging, which he considers biomarkers proteomic organ clock paper transcriptomic clock paper mAge (multimodal) clock with wearable preprint facial clock (and others to come such as voice, videos) metabolomic clock paper (from a different group) —Transplant of heart from old to young and young to old (preprint) and Rejuvenation Nature News and Views on that study by Chris Simms And how this could markedly expand transplant donor organs Parabiosis studies in mice —Effect of drugs on biological aging —slowing of biological aging with anti-fibrotic drug by proteomic clocks —studies of semaglutide in 5 randomized trials vs placebo, organ proteomic clocks —AI and aging biology —Future of aging Ground Truths has 217,000 subscribers from every US state and 214 countries. There are over 320,000 followers of Ground Truths so more than 100,000 folks who can easily convert to be free subscribers. If you’re one of them, please consider doing so. Your subscription to these free essays and podcasts makes my work in putting them together worthwhile. If you’re not a subscriber, please join! If you found this interesting PLEASE share it! The proceeds from all voluntary paid subscriptions go to support our summer internship program. It enabled us to accept and support a record number of 62 summer interns that joined us in 2026! These are high school, college and medical students selected from thousands of applicants. We couldn’t do this expanded program without the funds coming in through Ground Truths. Thank you! And big thanks to jojofinance, VivoSage, Burak Yedek, Vau Geha, José Pedro Castro, and 800 others for tuning into my live video wit...

Michael Lewis: The NIH “Murder Mystery,” DOGE, and Our Government Immune System

Oct 6, 2026 1 hr 3 min

Michael Lewis is one of the best storytellers of our era. You know and likely have read his books Moneyball, The Big Short, The Blind Side, Flash Boys, Liar’s Poker, and The Undoing Project, to name a few. He has long been one of my favorite authors. This was the first interview that Michael did on his new book, BLOCKERS, published on October 6th, streamed live on Substack Sept 29th. It’s his 21st book and 4 of the last 5 have been about the US government: The Fifth Risk (2019), Premonition (2021), and Who Is Government? (2025). His ability to talk with the silent civil servant heroes of multiple government agencies (the Blockers), members of the DOGE destruction team, and much more from the current US government administration. Here’s a gift link to the exclusive excerpt at WSJ I won’t review all the things we discussed here, but the chapter on the NIH reads like an Agatha Christie murder mystery. We learned a whole different version of what happened that differed from what was previously reported. Thank you jojofinance, Andrew Bowdle, Tracy Paeschke, MD, FACC, Bob Fleischman, Sean Stevenson, and many nearly 500 others for tuning into my live video with Michael Lewis! Join me for my next live video in the app. Ground Truths has 217,000 subscribers from every US state and 214 countries. There are over 300,000 followers of Ground Truths so more than 100,000 folks who can easily convert to be free subscribers. Your subscription to these free essays and podcasts makes my work in putting them together worthwhile. If you’re not a subscriber, please join! If you found this interesting PLEASE share it! The proceeds from all voluntary paid subscriptions go to support our summer internship program. It enabled us to accept and support a record number of 62 summer interns that joined us in 2026! These are high school, college and medical students selected from thousands of applicants. We couldn’t do this expanded program without the funds coming in through Ground Truths. Th...

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All episodes

Ethan Mollick on AI: Where Are We Now and Where Are We Headed

Nov 10, 2026 56 min

Vadim Gladyshev and the Science of Aging

Oct 27, 2026 50 min

Michael Lewis: The NIH “Murder Mystery,” DOGE, and Our Government Immune System

Oct 6, 2026 1 hr 3 min

Marios Georgakis: Why Did Two Major Clinical Trials for Heart Disease Fail?

Sep 14, 2026 1 hr 8 min

In recent weeks the results (announced by press release) of 2 major placebo-controlled randomized trials—ZEUS, testing an interleukin-6 (IL-6) blocker vs inflammation, and HORIZON, testing a drug to lower Lp(a), indicated failure to achieve their primary endpoint. Are we maxxed out for new treatments vs heart disease, as this article in the WSJ (←gift link) today asserts? “Cardiovascular drug development is starting to look a bit like the modern oil industry. The easy wells have been tapped. What’s left is in deep water: expensive, technically perilous and less likely to strike oil.” Or is it more complicated? Are the trial results and reasons for failure different? I wrote a recent Ground Truths —The Coronary Artery Inflammation Controversy— on the data (what has been released to date) and my take. But I wanted to vet this with another physician-scientist who is studying atherosclerosis and turned to Prof Marios Georgakis, from the University of Munich, who as I mentioned in the previous piece, wrote a brilliant analysis of ZEUS and is also doing writing about HORIZON. Many years ago we went through a “CV winter” when the biopharma companies largely shunned doing clinical trials for heart disease. They thought the field had been maxxed out. After a lapse of several years, there have many trials undertaken with positive results and substantial progress for better treatments vs heart disease. Both Marios and I remain optimistic that we are a long way from maxing out, as you’ll learn from the podcast. Heart disease is the number one global killer, for both men and women. That’s despite all the progress that has been made to date. Thanks for your support of Ground Truths and to Dr. Julie Kellogg, Vau Geha, Ralph Horwitz, Jessica Coffman, Michael G. Levin, MD, and mopre than 400 others for tuning into my live video with Marios Georgakis! ********************************** Ground Truths has 215,000 subscribers from every US state and 214 countries. There are over 310...

Two Landmark Studies Challenge Dogma About our Brain Immune Cells and Aging

Aug 30, 2026 44 min

This podcast is meant to complement my recent Ground Truths post Why Our Memory Slips After Age 50 which has all the relevant links to the 2 papers, key graphics, and other related publications. If you haven’t had a chance to read that, it would be helpful to spend a few minutes to do so before listening to this podcast. Links to the 2 papers for those who don’t want to look back Zemke et al in Science https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adt8307 Belk et al in Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10939-0 It’s a major and fascinating discovery. We’re talking about a “hostile takeover” of blood monocyte cells that invade the brain and ultimately completely replace the brain microglia. The problem is these new microglia are pro-inflammatory. A surprising finding is about CHIP (blood stem cells with mutations known as clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential) that was shown to be protective. It’s surprising because CHIP is common with age and until now it has been linked to bad things such as cardiovascular disease, clotting, and cancer. If this pans out, it introduces the concept of immunotherapy of the blood (“brain immunotherapy”). We discussed recent studies of microglia replacement and ways to keep our brain microglia intact, such as prevention any breakdown of the blood brain barrier. The role of latent viruses and the mechanism of benefit of the Shingles vaccine were touched on. Our conversation provides far more color and perspective about why their independent, complementary, and convergent findings are so important, debunking our longstanding belief that the microglia, the immune cells in the brain, are exclusively derived from the brain. Technology driven discovery. And what are the next steps in this line of research. I hope you found this podcast illuminating and fun. If you did, plus share it with your network. Thanks for supporting Ground Truths and your help in spreading the word. And thank to jojofinance, Elisabetta Pilotti...

Deborah Cohen: The Wellness-Industrial Complex

Aug 23, 2026 58 min

Deb Cohen is an award winning investigative journalist and correspondent who trained as a physician and has worked with the BBC and BMJ. She just published BAD INFLUENCE, a book which takes us deep into the wellness-industrial complex—the confluence of the supplement, testing, tech, and pharma industries, and how they sell health anxiety to healthy people. Here are some of the points we discussed: —The big market in healthy, well people. Tests, wearables, imaging, supplements, etc —Algorithms feed the health anxiety in an amplifying, vicious loop on the social media platforms. When the algorithm knows you better than you. —The special qualities of influencers, likable, relatable, vulnerable, appearance as friends, certainty, cultivating parasocial relationships. “I understand you, I see you, I hear you.” Often with financial conflicts of interest. Plus hidden financial benefits. —The inverted pyramid of evidence and displacement of trust. Anecdotes believed and accepted as best evidence instead of rigorous randomized trials. A big flip, doctors losing trust to influencers and the sponsors of influencers. —The Nocebo effect of harm through expectations —The epidemic of neurologic tics during the pandemic traced back to TikTok, a viral contagion with 5.8 billion views (Figure made with Notebook LM) —Potential for regulation of patient/consumers/prosumer influencers —Celebrity influencers and the recent NEJM paper —Many ideas for how we can mitigate this mess (Graphic by Notebook LM) —Many illuminating patient examples: Femtech, silicon breast implant illness (BII), beta blocker experiment, a bogus bioresonance of hair test in a woman with GI symptoms, full-body MRI of brain lesions (transmitted to the patient by an automated message) that were a false positive. —The term “wellness” —Concierge physicians Thank you jojofinance, Vote Against Billionaires, Gretchen Faucett, Mary Powers, Jessica Coffman, and hundreds of others for tuning into my live video with Bad...

Sarah Urbut: Predicting Your Health Arc

Aug 4, 2026 53 min

Sarah Urbut is a physician-scientist at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Research Institute. She and her colleagues published a landmark paper in Nature on patient health journeys for 3 different cohorts—the Mass General Brigham patients, the UK Biobank, and the All of Us research program—with a cumulative 683,000 individuals, 348 diseases, and up to 52 years of follow-up. Integrating electronic medical records and polygenic risk scores (N=36). An AI model was developed and validated called ALADYNOULLI, with each individual represented latent disease signatures (N=21), mathematically and biologically driven. An example of a patient’s dynamic life journey (health arc) is provided in the Figure below (adapted from the paper, made with NotebookLM). The longitudinal story for each individual is key here. Using a Gaussian process, the risk continually shifts like a GPS navigation when you make a wrong turn and you are re-routed. Considerable effort was dedicated to addressing selection bias with inverse probability weighting. Here are 20 temporal pattern signatures for the UK Biobank cohort, which help to provide the biologic mechanism of a person’s disease, as shown for multiple conditions like heart attack, breast cancer, and depression. That is, the same disease phenotype can link to different genomic pathway underpinnings. An example for breast cancer could be related to signature 8 or signature 7; the latter tied to inflammation and metabolic abnormalities. This biological pattern could also be used to detect likely medication failure (such as SSRI treatment for depression) and predict rare diseases. In fact, the model was used to discover genomic signatures for different diseases, as shown below. This model predicted 1 and 10-year risk of diseases at the individual level and far surpassed routinely used clinical prediction calculators such as the pooled cohort equation (PCE) for coronary artery disease (0.89 vs 0.68, respectively, 1-year risk...

Patrick Hsu: How Is AI Catalyzing Life Science?

Jul 20, 2026 58 min

“The future of biology is programmable.” To give you a sense of how important this topic is, Patrick Hsu is the first guest we’ve had back to Ground Truths since the podcast began a few years ago. Nearly 2 years ago we spoke about digital biology but so much has happened since to help unravel the complexities in the language of life. Patrick is a co-founder and core investigator at the Arc Institute. His work is at the intersection of biology, engineering, and AI. At the ripe old age of 33, he’s a pioneer of genome editing technologies and my go-to for tracking progress in digital biology. Besides that he’s a great explainer with frequent use of metaphors and simplification of very complicated stuff. Here’s what we discussed with the relevant links: —Our recent review in Nature Biotechnology on the large language of life models (LLLMs). GBAI-generalist biological artificial intelligence —The 2 multi-agent AI Nature papers in May for accelerating drug discovery: Full House (Robin) and Google Deep Mind (Co-Scientist) Multiple drug candidates were described as an outgrowth of multi-agent AI , with a 200-fold decrease in workflow time. Below Figure from synthesis of the Robin and Co-Scientist papers: “AI devises hypotheses and ways to test them,” Nature News and Views, by Oliver Elemento —Biomni published in Science 9 July An infographic by NotebookLM below helps give you a sense of what—a diversity of important tasks— accomplished by Biomni —New workbench offerings by the AI companies including Anthropic’s Claude Science, Open AI, Google DeepMind and the competition with academic spinoffs —Spud Cells —Virtual Cell project, which it’s such a big deal, and the importance of perturbations —Alzheimer’s disease with OpenAI for finding mechanistic new targets for drug discovery —The Nature Editorial —Mid-Journey’s Ultrasound Imaging of the “Whole-Body” (and we’re not imaginative enough, the need to think big) —Mitigating the worries about humans as lab assistants an...

Aaron Newman: A Breakthrough Blood Test for Cancer

Jul 3, 2026 47 min

The tumor microenvironment (TME), composed of immune cells, fibroblasts, and endothelial cells, has emerged as critical to pathogenesis, prognosis and treatment for cancer (schematic Figure below). There’s no such thing as TMI (too much information) for TME! Yet there’s still no way of assessing it in the clinic by a blood test, and even by invasive biopsy the sampling bias for TME without broader geographic context can lead to important mistakes. That isn’t used for clinical decision making. The TME field is about to change. Recently, Professor Aaron Newman at Stanford and colleagues from many US leading centers published a landmark paper in Nature. It may ultimately be considered one of the most important leaps in cancer diagnostics in decades. Ground Truths is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This was a massive undertaking involving 10 million single-cell RNAseq in 10 types of cancer to define 9 TME types by spatial omics which they called “spatial ecotypes”. It was AI-enabled by machine learning (Spatial Ecotyper from biopsy samples) and extrapolating that to knowledge to deep learning AI (Liquid Ecotyper from blood samples). The whole project took several years. Here’s an infographic summary I made with the help of NotebookLM along with the Figures that follow. Some of the key points from our conversation: —TME is the soil in which the cancer cells live. It strongly influences whether the cancer cells will thrive or not, spread, respond to therapy, and determine the fate pf pre-cancerous lesion (as seen in recent important paper in pancreatic cancer evolution and colon cancer development). —Ecotypes, a term coined in 1922, to get at the local environment of tissue and cancer, was repurposed in this new project. Good metaphor: neighborhoods. And emphasis on location , location, location like real estate. —In the clinic today, the only window to TME is via a biopsy. But decisi...

Elisa Port: Discuss THE BREAST ADVICE Book

Jun 26, 2026 1 hr 3 min

“I may be the expert in cancer, but you are the expert in you.”—Elisa Port, MD Ground Truths is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Dr. Elisa Port is Professor of Surgery, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; Chief of Breast Surgery for the Mount Sinai Health System; Director of the Dubin Breast Center; and Director of the Center of Excellence for Breast Cancer at the Mount Sinai Tisch Cancer Center, a NCI-Designated Comprehensive Cancer Center. She is remarkably well qualified to provide guidance for prevention and treatment of breast cancer, and runs a model program at Mount Sinai in New York (←we’ll get into why I say that). She has just published a terrific book that centers around the concept of informed optimism. Many of her patient stories are integrated. We tried to cover the waterfront during our conversation including: —4 Ws for reduction of risk: weight, walking, wine, and working out (especially in Nature, “green exercise”) —Only 10-12% of women will ever develop breast cancer during their lives —Role of adipocytes (fat cells), aka estrogen and inflammation factories —Misinformation (underlying the need for this book) —Pervasive myths of magic supplements, with safety issues of unregulated intravenous drips and others when analyzed turned out to be crushed up, dried house plants —Total body MRI: mixed results from her patients —Breast cancer on the rise in young women. Dr. Port relates about recent patients diagnosed in their 20s. Some without BRCA or other pathogenic mutation. Why? —Mammograms in non-dense breasts pick up 80-90% of breast cancer. It’s the 40-50% women with dense breasts, which the scan is trying to find a polar bear in a snowstorm, is a problem. The problem with false-positives. —Use of AI with mammography for increased initial detection, prevention, detect high-risk in women with a “normal” mammogram, and risk of heart disease (see my recent Grou...

Helen Pearson: What Constitutes Real Medical Evidence?

Jun 6, 2026 51 min

Helen Pearson, PhD, is an award-winning biomedical journalist at Nature, named European Science Journalist of the Year in 2025. She teaches science writing at University College London. BEYOND BELIEF is her second, just published book. THE LIFE PROJECT was her first. The points we covered include: —The evolution of evidence over 8 decades, moving from rationalism, expert opinion, hunches (eminence-based) to empiricism, evidence-based —The enormous devastating adverse impact of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care book from a single sentence change, leading to an epidemic of sudden infant death syndrome. And how it ultimately got corrected. —The term evidence-based medicine was coined in 1991 at McMaster University —Iain Chalmers, Archie Cochrane and the Cochrane Collaboration “The scandalous failure of science to cumulate evidence scientifically”—Iain Chalmers —Systematic reviews —Natural experiments (such as with Shingles) —Resistance to change “Challenging a doctor’s conventional way of practice is like hitting him in the intellectual testicles”—Drummond Rennie, past JAMA editor —Evidence-based practice (and not) in the Covid pandemic —Recent examples of challenging dogma (kindly stones, thymus involution) —AI and misinformation, false evidence Thank you Harshi Peiris, Ph.D., Ageless Mind Project, Anthony Higgins, E West, MagnaAnimus, and many others for tuning into my live video with Helen Pearson! Join me for my next live video in the app. A big thanks to Ground Truths subscribers from every US state and 212 countries. Your subscription to these free essays and podcasts makes my work in putting them together worthwhile. If you’re not a subscriber, please join! If you found this interesting PLEASE share it! Paid subscriptions are voluntary and all proceeds from them go to support Scripps Research. They do allow for posting comments and questions, which I do my best to respond to. Please don’t hesitate to post comments and give me feedback. Let me know topics that...

Assessment of the Hantavirus with Prof Donald Milton

May 14, 2026 52 min

Get full access to Ground Truths at erictopol.substack.com/subscribe

Joanna Stern: An AI Immersion for 365 Days

May 13, 2026 58 min

Joanna Stern was the Wall Street Journal technology journalist for 12 years. She’s an Emmy award winner for her documentary E-Ternal, and recently started her own company New Things, with added advice from ChatGPT! Over the years at WSJ, I relied on Joanna’s reviews of technology for many purchases (and things I avoided) reflecting her keen and brutal assessments. I also had fun working with her on some of her video assessments of health technologies. Her book I AM NOT A ROBOT is both hilarious and highly informative. It is a terrific primer for those who are not fully grounded in AI getting into the history of AI and right up to date with generative AI’s progress. To get a sense for why AI thought she was the next Tina Fey, check out the back cover! No surprise she got me laughing hard throughout the conversation, no less while reading the book. Here is a short YouTube video she posted on her All In AI year of 2025, referred to during the podcast. Much of her testing of >100 AI products related to medicine and health care, which is what we especially got into during our conversation. She has 3 major rules in her assessment of AI: (1) Ruthless testing; (2) Benchmark vs human; and (3) Costs, which include “compute cost” that we discussed. Here are some of the things we covered: * AI of her blood work * AI of mammogram and breast ultrasound, and overall experience as a person with increased risk of breast cancer * AI at the dentist (and ”Dentist Deep Clean”) * Assessment of Dr. GPT * Bill Gates on health AI * Her AI Trainer (Chris) * Waymo vs Uber * Her AI Therapist (Ash) * Nothing Bot Sex (her 2 digital lovers) * Impact on her children (including 6 F*****g Hamsters, the robodog Sirius) A big thanks to Ground Truths subscribers from every US state and 212 countries. Your subscription to these free essays and podcasts makes my work in putting them together worthwhile. If you’re not a subscriber, please join! If you found this interesting PLEASE share it! Paid sub...

Roxanne Khamsi: We Are All Genetic Mosaics

Apr 25, 2026 51 min

“You are a slightly different genetic version of yourself today from yesterday, and will be different yet again tomorrow.”—Roxanne Khamsi “Each neuron really is a beautiful and unique snowflake”—Ed Yong Roxanne Khamsi is one of the leading life science journalists, a contributing writer at The Atlantic, recognized with multiple awards for notable publications. Her new book is entitled BEYOND INHERITANCE. It tells the story about us all being genetic mosaics, chock full of somatic (acquired) mutations, and the implications of those mutations for our health. The myth of a single genome, carbon copy, master blueprint, but instead a dynamic, shifting mosaic in constant internal evolution. And here’s the back cover. I was delighted to endorse this book, and reread it to prepare for our podcast. It’s extraordinary and mind-bending. Here are the topics we covered: —The Math. 330 billion cells of our ~37 trillion turnover each day, which yields trillions of mutations per day. —Cellular competition. Winners and losers of an “endoevolution,” Darwinian selection inside us whereby healthy or super-fit mutated cells can crowd out the unfit ones. This was theorized in 1881 in a book THE STRUGGLE OF PARTS, by Wilhelm Roux which led to Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous quote “Uniformity is pure delirium.” —Single-cell sequencing. How this field catapulted forward owing to the ability to zoom in on genomic mutations at the cellular level. —Cancer chemotherapy overkill. The routine scorched earth, carpet bombing approach can promote resistance and deleterious mutations, leading to an adaptive strategy of leaving some cancer cells behind, as has been shown to be effective in prostate cancer for improving survival. —The immune system somatic hypermutation. B cells have the theoretical capacity to produce 1 quintillion unique antibodies (a million trillion). If this weren’t possible, we could die from a common cold. In the Covid pandemic, even before the Omicron variant appeared, Covid...

Sebastian Mallaby: The Infinity Machine

Apr 19, 2026 53 min

This is one of my favorite books over recent years. Sebastian Mallaby is the Paul A. Cocker Senior Fellow for International Economics at the Council of Foreign Relations and author of 6 bestselling books. THE INFINITY MACHINE tells the story of AI’s progress over the past 15 years largely, but not exclusively, from Demis Hassabis as the protagonist and leader of DeepMind’, with its 2010 mission statement to achieve superintelligence by 2030. It’s a rich, informative, page turner. What We Discussed: —What is an Infinity Machine? —Influence of Claude Shannon’s Information Theory and Douglas Hofstadter’s Pulitzer Prize winning book Gödel, Escher, Bach —Origin of DeepMind in 2010. Prescient. Charter, business plan, included use of agents. How Demis Hassabis was made for the mission! —Contrasts with Sam Altman and the other AI leaders, the Oligopoly (cover of The Economist this week). For example, Nature papers vs white papers on company websites. —In March 2016, the same day when DeepMind’s AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol, Hassabis says it’s time to do protein folding (later known as AlphaFold). —Symbolic AI (historic, deductive, rule-based) vs Deep Learning (Toronto tribe) and Reinforcement Learning (Alberta tribe). —The Big Miss: DeepMind’s lack of early recognition of the importance of transformer models (leading to ChatGPT), creating a big opening for OpenAI. And why was this missed? The Comeback Story. Is this happening again with coding (not in the book)? —The AI Arms Race and Hyperscaling —How the complex relationship between Google and DeepMind evolved —The Double Cross —With the dangers anticipated (parallels to Oppenheimer, Manhattan Project, and the atomic bomb), how to promote AI safety? —Is the major build up of data centers justified? Thank you Bob Fleischman, Jeanie, Ruben Max, FelonBroke America, Seitzinator ❌👑, and more than 600 others for tuning into our live video with Sebastian Mallaby! Join me for my next live video in the app. And a big thanks to G...

Trisha Pasricha: How to Get to Poophoria, Making Your Bowel Movements a Joy!

Apr 10, 2026 56 min

Dr. Trisha Pasricha is a gastroenterologist, Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School, and the Ask a Doctor columnist for The Washington Post. Her new book gets deep into the stigmatized, taboo, rarely discussed topics of our bowel movements and farts, no less the science that backs that up, with lucid explainers for the mechanisms (such as the gut-brain axis). Her research is on the gut origin of Parkinson’s disease. Here’s a quote from Trisha early in the book: “I’m not a wellness guru. I’m a scientist.” Another quote from a Vanderbilt professor: “An effortless, socially appropriately timed bowel movement is the second greatest bodily pleasure known to man.” The proportion of people with bowel issues is remarkable, a brief summary: Some of the topics covered in our lively, fun and highly informative conversation: —The 3 P’s Propulsion, Pliability, Pelvic Floor —Ten Myths —99% of farts have no odor; the 1% that do are from hydrogen sulfide, Pepto-Bismol substantially reduces the latter (and an incredible experiment of people with rectal tubes and judges smelling their gas) —What is the normal frequency of pooping? —the Bristol Scale of poop appearance and what it means —Transit time —The uselessness and danger of bowel cleanses —Fibermaxxing —5 minutes max on the toilet and positions to help propulsion —Psyllium and laxatives —The art of wiping and bidets —Fecal incontinence —Not to miss urges and the TRPV1 and PIEZO2 receptors —Impact of coffee, alcohol, NSAIDs (Ibuprofen, aspirin, naproxen, etc), and hydration —What are the different definitions of constipation? —What gives poop its color? ******************************************** Thank you YOUR DOCTOR KLOVER, Nickhil Jakatdar, Ph.D., Bob Fleischman, karemm, Jessica Nguyen, and >600 others for tuning into our live video with Trisha Pasricha! Join me for my next live video and newsletters in the app. And a big thanks to Ground Truths subscribers (> 200,000) from every US state and 212 countries. Your su...

On the Future of Species

Mar 29, 2026 45 min

Adrian is a molecular biologist and co-founder and CEO of Genyro, a synthetic biology company. He has published 2 previous books on life science (Life Without Genes and An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Genetics). In this conversation we discussed his new book, cover below and the title of this post. ABI. As Adrian puts it, a monumental shift, a second genesis, the “artivolution,” ability to use a molecular Gutenberg press, it’s post-Darwinian. I made an infographic about the book and our conversation with NotebookLM The expansion of genome sequences beyond “Fred’s library” (referring to Fred Sanger, father of genome sequencing, little green box) We talked about the jump from DNA reading to editing and now writing genomes, with the potential of the latter for both good and harm. I disagreed with Adrian about the bright prospects for curing diseases, but there are many possibilities for positive impact, such as intervening vs the climate crisis and sustainability. We also discussed the large language of life models (LLLMs) and by coincidence my colleagues and I just published a review of these in this Nature Biotechnology (←free access is hyperlinked). “It should be possible to meet most of humanity’s needs through biologically inspired designs—to solve many global problems, revolutionize health care, extend human lifespan, and create other organisms to order.”—Adrian Woolfson If you are into life science, I think you’ll find Adrian’s book thoughtful and provocative, even if you don’t agree with some of his optimism like a disease-free organism. The topic connects with digital biology, a theme that is approached in many editions of Ground Truths, such as this one with Patrick Hsu *************************************************** Thank you Ric Bayly, Kevin Johnson, MD, YOUR DOCTOR KLOVER, Patricia Scott, Anne, and more than 600 others for tuning into my live video with Adrian Woolfson! Join me for my next live video in the app. And a big thanks to Ground Truths s...

A Master Class on Sleep

Mar 6, 2026 57 min

Yo-El Ju is the Barbara Burton and Reuben Morris Professor of Neurology at Washington University, St. Louis. She got her AB from Harvard and MD from Columbia and actively practices sleep medicine and is a prolific researcher, one of the top sleep scientists in the country. Here are some of the topics we discussed and a few related hyperlinked citations: —Importance of Deep Sleep (and her paper on what happens when deep sleep is purposely disrupted, how it is modulated, effect of alcohol —The Orexin Antagonist drugs that promote sleep (and a study that shows they can reduce p-tau217 and other neuroinflammation markers —Link of sleep regularity with less all-cause, cardiovascular, and cancer related mortality Figure 3.9 from SUPER AGERS (SRI-sleep regularity index) More things we discussed: —A sleep foundation model that predicts 130 diseases —Impact of menopause on sleep —Getting to sleep vs staying asleep —Role of naps —Impact of interruptions of sleep —Sleep apnea and new interventions —Vagal nerve stimulation and sleep —Cerebrospinal fluid wave that occurs during attention lapse after poor sleep —cognitive behavioral therapy for improved sleep —Wearables, sleep scores, and effect on sleep —Any supplements that help sleep? —The rare genetically endowed short sleepers Thank you Jeoffry Gordon, MD, MPH, Dr. Sara Wolfson, Lynn L, Vau Geha, Bernie Newman, and more than 600 others for tuning into my live video with Yo-El Ju! Join me for my next live video in the app. ************************************************** Thanks to Ground Truths subscribers (> 200,000) from every US state and 210 countries. Your subscription to these free essays and podcasts makes my work in putting them together worthwhile. Please join! If you found this interesting PLEASE share it! Paid subscriptions are voluntary and all proceeds from them go to support Scripps Research. They do allow for posting comments and questions, which I do my best to respond to. Please don’t hesitate to post...

Robert Wachter & Eric Topol - Discuss a Giant Leap Book

Feb 4, 2026 45 min

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Vagus Nerve Stimulation and the Immune System

Feb 1, 2026 1 hr 3 min

The vagus nerve, also known as the Great Nerve, connects the brain to all parts of the body, like an internet (Figure below). Every week we’re learning more about its importance for health and disease. Until recent years the brain and immune system were thought to be in separate “firewalled” compartments. But that turned out to be far from the truth. Dr. Kevin Tracey, who directs the Feinstein Institute at Northwell Health, has been studying the vagus nerve for more than 3 decades. In the early 1990’s he made the seminal observation that stimulating the vagus reduces the inflammatory cytokine known as tumor necrosis factor (TNF), what he described at the time as a “holy s**t” moment. In 2025 he published the book THE GREAT NERVE with many rich patient anecdotes and the history for how this field developed. I wrote about the brain-immune axis previously on Ground Truths, spotlighting the vagus nerve’s role. That included much more on depth of the pathways if you are interested. We discussed the recent FDA July approval for refractory rheumatoid arthritis (RA)(unresponsive to medications or intolerance to medical therapy) based on a sham-controlled randomized trial published in December 2025 in Nature Medicine. It is striking that the benefits were derived from 1 minute of vagal stimulation per day. That stimulation is barely perceived (tingling, many not at all) by device recipients. The surgery takes one hour to implant the tiny stimulator device along side the vagus nerve in the neck. But this is much bigger than a treatment for RA. It is now being tested for lupus, Crohn’s disease, and other autoimmune conditions. That’s beyond the role vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) has played for epilepsy and depression, independent of VNS’s anti-inflammatory impact (Tracey named it “the inflammatory reflex”). We also discussed handheld VNS devices, potential use for Long Covid and POTS, cold plunges, heart rate variability, stress, and other topics related to the vagus nerve a...

A Look Into the Blue Zones

Jan 18, 2026 55 min

Back in 2005 Dan Buettner patented Blue Zones. He’s written 9 books, of which 5 were NY Times bestsellers, and has another one in the works. His 2023 Netflix documentary series “Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones” won Emmy awards and was widely viewed. Many of the main points that Dan has emphasized over the years—healthy diet (he highlighted whole grains, beans, nuts, greens, and “peasant food” here), physical activity, social engagement, and sense of purpose—are backed up by randomized trials and/or large, prospective studies, as I reviewed in Super Agers. In this interview, I asked Dan about the critique he’s faced, predominantly from Saul Newman, a biologist in the UK, about accuracy of the data for extreme longevity in the blue zones. In December 2025, two of his collaborators published in The Gerontologist a rebuttal response (open-access) entitled “The validity of Blue Zones demography: a response to critiques” on the rigorous demographic work they’ve done. We also discussed the marketing and business operations of Blue Zones LLC, the company he sold to Adventist Health in 2020. His son, Danny, is the EVP of the company and likely successor to Dan’s work in the future. As Dan said, “He’s my genetic upgrade.” I hope you find this conversation informative. An AI-generated transcript is available in the tab at top right above. Some biomedical updates from the past week: * A vaccine to prevent colon cancer in carriers of mutations of Lynch Syndrome looks good for strong immune response and safety, ready for Phase 3 clinical trials * A review of the data of Tylenol during pregnancy reaffirms its safety and lack of increased risk for autism, ADHD, and intellectual disability. * Our perspective/review on how AI and large language models can reduce global health inequities * Another big jump vs refractory autoimmune diseases, this time for hemolytic anemia, using engineered T cells. See my recent review of this topic, from treatment to cures. * A pair of new...

How Our Brain Drains Its Waste Products

Dec 21, 2025 56 min

Jonathan Kipnis is a neuroscientist, the Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Immunology at Washington University, St. Louis, who discovered meningeal lymphatics and has been a prolific researcher in brain drainage and the continuous immune system surveillance of the brain. I made this infographic with the help of Notebook LM to summarize many of the concepts we discussed. (Notebook LM is free and worth trying) We went over his new review with 24 co-author leading experts in the recent issue of Neuron A Clever Cover The drainage system anatomy on influx and efflux (blue arrows) The 3 ways the flow of glymphatics are modulated. I mentioned the recent studies that show atrial fibrillation, via reduced cardiac pulsation, has an effect on reducing glymphatic flow. We also discussed his recent review on the immune surveillance system in Cell: A schematic of key channels for the “faucet” and “drain” and how the system changes from healthy to central nervous system autoimmune diseases (such as multiple sclerosis) and aging with different immune bar codes. The outsized role of astrocytes in the brain, a subject of recent Nature feature, was also mentioned. Our understanding of the brain’s immune system has been completely revamped. Kipnis’s recent review in Nature Immunology highlights the critical role of the outer layers —the skull, dura and meninges—as an immune reservoir that is ready to detect and react abnormalities in the brain with a continuous “intelligence report.” Notably, Kipnis touched on lymphatic-venous anastomosis (LVA) surgery (Figure below) for Alzheimer’s disease which is popular in China, available at 30 centers in multiple cities, and the subject of multiple randomized trials as a treatment for Alzheimer’s. Trials of LVA surgery are also getting started in the United States for treatment of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Here is a Figure to show the surgical anastomoses (connections) from the deep cervical ly...

The Story of Francis Crick, a new masterpiece biography by Matthew Cobb

Dec 7, 2025 59 min

A recording from my enthralling conversation with Prof Matthew Cobb about the life and science contributions of Francis Crick, regarded as one of the most influential biologists of all times, along with Darwin and Mendel. As you’ll see, there’s so much more to Crick’s story than cracking DNA’s double helix structure in a matter of weeks with James Watson. Matthew Cobb, Emeritus Professor of the University of Manchester, has written several award-winning books on life science, but I think this is his most important one to date, deeply researched and a thrilling account of Crick’s life, clearing up, as best as one can, many questions, and presenting some surprises. The transcript is available (A.I. generated) by clicking at the top right. A few things we discussed —Crick’s reaction to James Watson’s book Crick contrasted his own approach to science writing with Watson’s memoir: “The difference between my lecture and your book is that my lecture had a lot more intellectual content and nothing like so much gossip. (...) Your book on the other hand, is mainly gossip and I think it a pity in this way that there is so much of it that it obscures some of the important conclusions which can be drawn of what we did at the time”. —The Peyote Poem, by Michael McClure (part 1) that had a big influence on Crick —Crick’s 1994 neuroscience book “The Astonishing Hypothesis” “You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free Weill, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.”—Crick The book has been reviewed at Science, Nature, The Economist and many other journals. Here is a gift link to The Economist It has deservedly been named a best book of 2025 by The Guardian, The Economist, and many other media. Thank you Bruce Lanphear, Harshi Peiris, Ph.D., Elisabetta Pilotti, Allan Konopka, Stephen B. Thomas, PhD, and over 500 others for tuning into my live video with Matt...

Jennifer Gunter & Eric Topol: Discuss Women’s Health and Recent Changes by FDA for MHT

Nov 28, 2025 1 hr 0 min

A couple of weeks ago, the FDA Commissioner published a WSJ oped “The FDA Liberates Women’s Hormone Replacement Therapy” (←gift link) and, with other FDA colleagues, a JAMA essay entitled “Updated Labeling for Menopausal Hormone Therapy” (open-access). That change, and the data cited, led to a series of articles in the days that followed, such as at STAT News “FDA reverses decades-old warning on hormone therapy products for menopause. Agency says the treatments o!fer heart, brain, and bone health benefits” and at the Washington Post “The FDA finally corrects its error on menopause hormone therapy. Women have been needlessly scared away from effective treatments.” If you read through these links, you’ll be confused. Does MHT have proven cognitive benefits? What about a study from 1991 that showed ~50% reduction of fatal heart events with MHT? Or the 35% decreased risk of Alzheimer’s disease? Or the breast cancer increased risk attributed to medroxyprogesterone acetate? I turned to my go-to gynecologist truth teller, Dr. Jen Gunter, to get her review of the evidence. This is a complex topic, with old data from the 2002 Women’s Heath Initiative (WHI), new reports since, population level analysis, changes in preparations of MHT including local delivery, and much more. Here is our conversation which isn’t just about MHT but includes “Big Wellness” marketing direct to middle aged women, the new FDA approved drug for hot flashes, the $14 million cut of the NIH’s Office of Women’s Health , marked increase in philanthropic support of women’s health research, the Surgeon General nominee, ovarian failure, and a lightning round on proven benefits of MHT. Here’s a brief clip on her views of the women’s health “wellness” predators We also discussed the reasons for Dr. Gunter’s planned move next year back to Canada after practicing gynecology for 3 decades in the United States. I referred to a recent GT I wrote about the WHI and the potential favorable impact of MHT on the immun...

Dr. Susan Monarez—Former CDC Director, First Live Interview

Nov 8, 2025 54 min

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 give approval to new vaccine recommendations without ever seeing them or their evidence and firing scientists without cause, she was fired. In my view, she’s a hero for standing up for science and speaking truth to power. In her first live interview since leaving the CDC, we review her background. That includes growing up in rural Wisconsin and getting her college and PhD education at UW-Madison, the latter in microbiology and immunology. She then went on to 18 years of government service with an extensive portfolio of jobs and management at BARDA, the White House, ARPA-H, and others, before becoming Acting Director of the CDC in early 2025. We discussed the horrific CDC shooting on August 8th, days after she started. Then we reviewed a conversation that we had on August 19th in which she laid out her exciting vision for the future of CDC, emphasizing the goal of prevention (BTW, CDC stands for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and asked me to help as an advisor. At the time, she was well aware, with growing tension, that her tenure at CDC might be limited. I asked about her perspective for the jobs of 4,300 people at CDC who have been terminated, which account for more than 1/3rd of the workforce, no less the gutting of the budget. Then we got into what she learned from this ordeal and her plans for the future, which includes a very ambitious initiative: 90/90/2035. As you’ll see from our conversation, Dr. Monarez is exceptionally resilient and an optimist. She’s got lots to do in the years ahead to carry out her mission of promoting human health! Dr. Monarez just started a Substack The Road Best Traveled so you can follow her there. It was a real privilege for me to do this interview with her. In deep admiration of her willingness to not only take on the job of CDC Director in tough circumstances, her profes...

Seth Berkley & Eric Topol - Discuss Fair Doses Book

Nov 5, 2025 47 min

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Tom Frieden & Eric Topol - Discuss the Formula for Better Health Book

Oct 1, 2025 35 min

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Shana Kelley: Biosensors to Track Proteins and Inflammation in Our Blood in Real Time

Sep 14, 2025 31 min

Prof Shana Kelley is the Neena Schwartz Professor of Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University and President of the CZI Chicago Biohub, which brings together life scientists at Northwestern, University of Chicago, and U. Illinois Urbana Champaign. Her lab’s website provides recent publications in the 3 major areas of biomolecular sensors, rare and single cell analysis, and intracellular molecular delivery. You are undoubtedly familiar with wearable biosensors on the wrist and rings, and continuous glucose monitoring (CGM), all of which can transmit physiologic data in real time to your smartphone. What is different about Prof Kelley’s work is the ingenious way of continuously tracking any proteins in our blood via a sensor that could function just like CGM in the future (hair thin sensor applied just below the skin and data relayed to your smartphone). A proof-of-concept paper in Science showed how exquisitely sensitive such a sensor worked to track inflammation markers [interleukin-6 (IL-6) and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)] in the diabetic rat model. As seen. below, just the injection of insulin evoked inflammation, and introduction of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) did so markedly. This capability opens up the potential for monitoring body-wide inflammation in real time, but also extends to many other conditions such as autoimmune diseases, heart failure (e.g. continuous brain natriuetic peptide monitoring), and neurodegenerative diseases (with specific markers of neuroinflammation). This innovation represents a new dimension in individualized (precision) medicine. In our conversation, Shana takes us through the discovery of these unique bimolecular sensors that have no reagents, and use electricity to shake off the protein from DNA strands. And she maps out the path to clinical trials and commercialization in the next couple of years. Thank you Stephen B. Thomas, PhD, Linda Kemp, Lynn L, Pat Mumby PhD, David Hobson, and many others for tuning into...

Charlotte Blease: Is A.I. Going to Remedy Medicine’s Problems?

Sep 12, 2025 30 min

Thank you Bruce Lanphear, Clyde Wilson, Tracy Dennis-Tiwary, Diego Pereyra, Dr Mike Hunter, and many others for tuning into my live video with Charlotte Blease! Join me for my next live video in the app. Whether A.I. will transform the practice of medicine in a positive way remains controversial. Health researcher Prof Charlotte Blease, on faculty at Uppsala University in Sweden and researcher at Harvard University, has written a new book —Dr. Bot—that critically assesses the unmet needs in healthcare and whether A.I. can fulfill them. She provides an optimistic viewpoint (see the subtitle), and our conversation probes whether that is justified. She has a substack, too, here Thanks for listening to Ground Truths. Through analytic essays and podcasts, I try to cover the important issues and discoveries in life science and medicine. If you have suggestions for topics I should get into, please pass them along. Get full access to Ground Truths at erictopol.substack.com/subscribe

Peter Hotez & Eric Topol - Discuss “Science Under Siege” book

Sep 8, 2025 53 min

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 Hotez! Join me for my next live video in the app. Peter Hotez and I discuss his new book, co-authored with Michael Mann, SCIENCE UNDER SEIGE, on the anti-science superstorm culminating from the climate crisis, the Covid pandemic, and a vast interconnected network that has waged a direct assault on scientific truth. During our conversation we trace history of priors in civilization, such as Lysenko and Stalinism in the last century. And acknowledge the future role of A.I. for promoting infinite disinformation. Beyond human suffering and direct health outcome consequences (such as Red Covid), the toll this is taking on the career of young scientists, universities, public health agencies, and loss of public trust are reviewed. The interdependent role of the media and the wellness industry is touched on. The book and our conversation puts forth a call to arms, potential solutions, including the need to move away from invisible scientists and political activism. Thanks for listening to Ground Truths podcasts and reading the analytic posts. In case you missed any, these are a few recent and related ones: Podcasts with Michael Osterholm and Sanjay Gupta on their new books—The Big One and It Doesn’t Have to Hurt, respectively. Next up is Charlotte Blease and her new book Dr. Bot on where we are headed with medical A.I. If you found this interesting PLEASE share it! That makes the work involved in putting these together especially worthwhile. All content on Ground Truths—its newsletters, analyses, and podcasts, are free, open-access. Paid subscriptions are voluntary and all proceeds from them go to support Scripps Research. They do allow for posting comments and questions, which I do my best to respond to. Please don't hesitate to post comments and give me feedback. Let me know topics that you would like to see covered. Ma...

Sanjay Gupta & Eric Topol - Discuss “It Doesn’t Have to Hurt” book

Sep 5, 2025 22 min

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. Sanjay Gupta. Join me for my next live video in the app. A Brief Summary of Our Conservation We discussed the new understanding and approach to chronic pain, which affects nearly 1 in 4 adults. Dr. Gupta gets personal telling the story of his wife, Rebecca, who has an autoimmune disease and at one point he had to carry her up stairs. He also tells the story of his mother who had a back injury and didn’t want to live because of the pain. How his family members got relief is illuminating. Our whole understanding and approach to pain has changed, with the acronym change from RICE to MEAT. A newly approved drug Suzetrigine (Journavx) exploits the sodium channel gene mutation initially discovered via a family of fire walkers. It’s the first new pain medicine approved for more than 2 decades. Many other new non-opioid treatments are reviewed, no less lifestyle changes (anti-inflammatory diet and sleep), and acupuncture. Sanjay’s research over the past few years has led to a video special on CNN with the same title as the book, set to air 9 PM EST Sunday. If you know someone suffering chronic pain, please share the post. Get full access to Ground Truths at erictopol.substack.com/subscribe

Mike Osterholm & Eric Topol - Discuss “The Big One” book

Sep 3, 2025 36 min

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Bruce Lanphear: Chronic Lead Exposure, a Risk Factor for Heart Disease

Aug 17, 2025 25 min

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 on risk factors for heart disease. First, the podcast. You may have thought the problem with lead exposure was circumscribed to children, but it’s a much bigger issue than that. I’ll concentrate on the exposure risk to adults in this interview, including the lead-estrogen hypothesis. Bruce has been working on the subject of lead exposure for more than 30 years. Let me emphasize that the problem is not going away, as highlighted in a recent New England Journal of Medicine piece on lead contamination in Milwaukee schools, “The Latest Episode in an Ongoing Toxic Pandemic.” Transcript with links to the audio and citations Eric Topol (00:05): Well, hello. This is Eric Topol with Ground Truths, and I'm very delighted to welcome Professor Bruce Lanphear from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia for a very interesting topic, and that's about lead exposure. We tend to think about lead poisoning with the Flint, Michigan, but there's a lot more to this story. So welcome, Bruce. Bruce Lanphear (00:32): Thank you, Eric. It's great to be here. Eric Topol (00:33): Yeah. So you had a New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) Review in October last year, which was probably a wake up to me, and I'm sure to many others. We'll link to that, where you reviewed the whole topic, the title is called Lead Poisoning. But of course it's not just about a big dose, but rather chronic exposure. So maybe you could give us a bit of an overview of that review that you wrote for NEJM. Bruce Lanphear (01:05): Yeah, so we really focused on the things where we feel like there's a definitive link. Things like lead and diminished IQ in children, lead and coronary heart disease, lead and chronic renal disease. As you mentioned, we've typically thought of lead as sort of the overt lead poisoning where somebody becomes acutely ill. But over the past cent...

Owen Tripp: Why Can't I Find and Get to the Right Doctor?

Jul 13, 2025 32 min

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'd like to start off if you would, with the story from 2016, because really what I'm interested in is patients and how to get the right doctor. So can you tell us about when you lost your hearing in your right ear back, what, nine years ago or so? Owen Tripp (00:38): Yeah, it's amazing to say nine years, Eric, but obviously as your listeners will soon understand a pretty vivid memory in my past. So I had been working as I do and noticed a loss of hearing in my right ear. I had never experienced any hearing loss before, and I went twice actually to a sort of national primary care chain that now owned by Amazon actually. And they described it as eustachian tube dysfunction, which is a pretty benign common thing that basically meant that my tubes were blocked and that I needed to have some drainage. They recommended Sudafed to no effect. And it was only a couple weeks later where I was walking some of the senior medical team at my company down to the San Francisco Giants game. And I was describing this experience of hearing loss and I said I was also losing a little bit of sensation in the right side of my face. And they said, that is not eustachian tube dysfunction. And well, I can let the story unfold from there. But basically my colleagues helped me quickly put together a plan to get this properly diagnosed and treated. The underlying condition is called vestibular schwannoma, even more commonly known as an acoustic neuroma. So a pretty rare benign brain tumor that exists on the vestibular nerve, and it would've cost my life had it not been treated. Eric Topol (02:28): So from what I gather, you saw an ENT physician, but that ENT physician was not really well versed in this condition, which is I guess a bit surprising. And then eventually you got to the right ENT physician in San Francisco. Is that right? Owen Tripp...

Priscilla Chan & Jennifer Doudna: New Center for Pediatric CRISPR Cures

Jul 8, 2025 23 min

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 announcement for a new Center for pediatric CRISPR Cures. And I'm delight to introduce doctors Jennifer Doudna and Priscilla Chan. And so, first let me say this is amazing to see this thing going forward. It's an outgrowth of a New England Journal paper and monumental report on CRISPR in May. [See the below post for more context] Let me introduce first, Dr. Doudna. Jennifer is the Li Ka Shing Chancellor's Chair and a Professor in the departments of chemistry and of molecular and cell biology at the University of California Berkeley. She's also the subject of this book, one of my favorite books of all time, the Code Breaker. And as you know, the 2020 Nobel Prize laureate for her work in CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing, and she founded the Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI) back 10 years ago. So Jennifer, welcome. Jennifer Doudna (01:08): Thank you, Eric. Great to be here. Eric Topol (01:10): And now Dr. Priscilla Chan, who is the co-founder of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) that also was started back in 2015. So here we are, a decade later, these two leaders. She is a pediatrician having trained at UCSF and is committed to the initiative which has as its mission statement, “to make it possible to cure, prevent, and manage all diseases in this century.” So today we're going to talk about a step closer to that. Welcome, Priscilla. Priscilla Chan (01:44): Thank you. Thanks for having me. Eric Topol (01:46): Alright, so I thought we'd start off by, how did you two get together? Have you known each other for over this past decade since you both got all your things going? Jennifer Doudna (01:56): Yes, we have. We've known each other for a while. And of course, I've admired the progress at the CZI on fundamental science. I was an advisor very early on and I think actually that's how we got to know each other. Right, Priscil...

Adam Kucharski: The Uncertain Science of Certainty

Jun 29, 2025 45 min

“To navigate proof, we must reach into a thicket of errors and biases. We must confront monsters and embrace uncertainty, balancing — and rebalancing —our beliefs. We must seek out every useful fragment of data, gather every relevant tool, searching wider and climbing further. Finding the good foundations among the bad. Dodging dogma and falsehoods. Questioning. Measuring. Triangulating. Convincing. Then perhaps, just perhaps, we'll reach the truth in time.”—Adam Kucharski My conversation with Professor Kucharski on what constitutes certainty and proof in science (and other domains), with emphasis on many of the learnings from Covid. Given the politicization of science and A.I.’s deepfakes and power for blurring of truth, it’s hard to think of a topic more important right now. Audio file (Ground Truths can also be downloaded on Apple Podcasts and Spotify) Eric Topol (00:06): Hello, it's Eric Topol from Ground Truths and I am really delighted to welcome Adam Kucharski, who is the author of a new book, Proof: The Art and Science of Certainty. He’s a distinguished mathematician, by the way, the first mathematician we've had on Ground Truths and a person who I had the real privilege of getting to know a bit through the Covid pandemic. So welcome, Adam. Adam Kucharski (00:28): Thanks for having me. Eric Topol (00:30): Yeah, I mean, I think just to let everybody know, you're a Professor at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and also noteworthy you won the Adams Prize, which is one of the most impressive recognitions in the field of mathematics. This is the book, it's a winner, Proof and there's so much to talk about. So Adam, maybe what I'd start off is the quote in the book that captivates in the beginning, “life is full of situations that can reveal remarkably large gaps in our understanding of what is true and why it's true. This is a book about those gaps.” So what was the motivation when you undertook this very big endeavor? Adam Kucharski (01:17): I th...

Eric Topol With Devi Sridhar on her new book- How Not to Die (Too Soon)

Jun 17, 2025 37 min

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 University of Edinburgh. Over the past 2 decades she has become one of the world’s leading authorities and advisors for promoting global health. Her new book —How No to Die Too Soon—provides a unique outlook for extending healthspan with a global perspective admixed with many personal stories. We talked about lifestyle factors with lessons from Japan (on diet) and the Netherlands (on physical activity), ultra-processed foods, air pollution and water quality, the prevention model in Finland, guns, inequities, the US situation for biomedical research and public health agency defunding, and much more. Get full access to Ground Truths at erictopol.substack.com/subscribe

Matthew Walker: Promoting Our Sleep Health

Jun 14, 2025 37 min

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 the Center for Human Sleep Science, and has a long history of seminal contributions on sleep science and health. Audio File (also downloadable at Apple Podcast and Spotify) “Sleep is a non-negotiable biological state required for the maintenance of human life . . . our needs for sleep parallel those for air, food, and water.”—Grandner and Fernandez Eric Topol (00:07): Hello, it's Eric Topol with Ground Truths, and I am really delighted to welcome Matt Walker, who I believe has had more impact on sleep health than anyone I know. It's reflected by the fact that he is a Professor at UC Berkeley, heads up the center that he originated for Human Sleep Science. He wrote a remarkable book back in 2017, Why We Sleep, and also we'll link to that as well as the TED Talk of 2019. Sleep is Your Superpower with 24 million views. That's a lot of views here. Matt Walker: Striking, isn't it? Eric Topol: Wow. I think does reflect the kind of impact, you were onto the sleep story sooner, earlier than anyone I know. And what I wanted to do today was get to the updates because you taught us a lot back then and a lot of things have been happening in these years since. You're on it, of course, I think you have a podcast Sleep Diplomat, and you're obviously continued working on the science of sleep. But maybe the first thing I'd ask you about is in the last few years, what do you think has been, are there been any real changes or breakthroughs in the field? What Is New? Matt Walker (01:27): Yeah, I think there has been changes, and maybe we'll speak about one of them, which is the emergence of this brain cleansing system called the glymphatic system, but spreading that aside for potential future discussion. I would say that there are maybe at least two fascinating areas. The first is the broader impact of sleep on much more complex huma...

Katie Couric and Eric Topol: On the State of US Life Science and Extending Healthspan

Jun 12, 2025 54 min

Thank you Richard DeWald, Michael Mann, Dr Avneesh Khare, Maud Pasturaud, Lower Dementia Risk, and many others for tuning into my live video with Katie Couric! Join me for my next live video in the app. Get full access to Ground Truths at erictopol.substack.com/subscribe

Sir John Bell: Transforming Life Science and Medicine's Future

May 26, 2025 33 min

Audio File Ground Truths can also be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube. The UK is the world leader in human genomics, and laid the foundation for advancing medicine with the UK Biobank, Genomes England and now Our Future Health (w/ 5 million participants). Sir John Bell is a major force in driving and advising these and many other initiatives. After 22 years as the Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford he left in 2024 to be President of the Ellison Institute of Technology. Professor Bell has been duly recognized in the UK: knighted in 2015 and appointed Companion of Honor in 2023. In our conversation, you will get a sense for how EIT will be transformational for using A.I. and life science for promoting human health. Transcript with audio links Eric Topol (00:06): Hello, this is Eric Topol from Ground Truths. And I'm really delighted to welcome today, Sir John Bell who had an extraordinary career as a geneticist, immunologist, we'll talk about several initiatives he's been involved with during his long tenure at University of Oxford, recently became head of the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) in the UK. So welcome, John. Sir John Bell (00:30): Thanks, Eric. Thanks very much for having me. Eric Topol (00:34): Well, I think it's just extraordinary the contributions that you have made and continue to make to advance medicine, and I thought what we could do is get into that. I mean, what's interesting, you have had some notable migrations over your career, I think starting in Canada, at Stanford, then over as Rhodes Scholar in Oxford. And then you of course had a couple of decades in a very prestigious position, which as I understand was started in 1546 by King Henry VII, and served as the Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford. Do I have that right? Sir John Bell (01:11): It was actually Henry VIII, but you were close. Eric Topol (01:14): Henry VIII, that's great. Yeah. Okay, good. Well, that's a pretty notable...

Tyler Cowen: The Prototypic Polymath

May 10, 2025 32 min

Audio file, also on Apple and Spotify Tyler Cowen, Ph.D, is the Holbert L. Harris Professor of Economics at George Mason University. He is the author of 17 books, most recently Talent.: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World. Tyler has been recognized as one of the most influential economists of the past decade. He initiated and directs the philanthropic project Emergent Ventures, writes a blog Marginal Revolution, and a podcast Conversations With Tyler, and also writes columns for The Free Press." He is writing a new book (and perhaps his last) on Mentors. “Maybe AGI [Artificial General Intelligence] is like porn — I know it when I see it. And I’ve seen it.”—Tyler Cowen Our conversation on acquiring information, A.I., A.G.I., the NIH, the assault on science, the role of doctors in the A.I. era,, the meaning of life, books of the future, and much more. Transcript with links Eric Topol (00:06): Well, hello. This is Eric Topol with Ground Truths, and I am really thrilled today to have the chance to have a conversation with Tyler Cowen, who is, when you look up polymath in the dictionary, you might see a picture of him. He is into everything. And recently in the Economist magazine 1843, John Phipps wrote a great piece profile, the man who wants to know everything. And actually, I think there's a lot to that. Tyler Cowen (00:36): That's why we need longevity work, right? Eric Topol (00:39): Right. So he's written a number of books. How many books now, Tyler? Tyler Cowen: 17, I'm not sure. Eric Topol: Only 17? And he also has a blog that's been going on for over 20 years, Marginal Revolution that he does with Alex Tabarrok. Tyler Cowen (00:57): Correct. Eric Topol (00:57): And yeah, and then Conversations with Tyler, a podcast, which I think an awful lot of people are tuned into that. So with that, I'm just thrilled to get a chance to talk with you because I used to think I read a lot, but then I learned about you. “Cowen calls himself “hy...

Bob Bordone and Joel Salinas: How to Deal With Conflict

May 5, 2025 29 min

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 with these, including having them take on a mock conflict between each other on the merits of Covid research. Audio file You can also find this on Spotify and Apple podcasts with Ground Truths. The video is also posted on YouTube Transcript with Audio Links Eric Topol (00:06): Well, hello. It's Eric Topol with Ground Truths, and we're going to get into a new book called Conflict Resilience: Negotiating Disagreement Without Giving Up or Giving In, and we're lucky to have its two authors, Bob Bordone, who is a Senior Fellow at Harvard Law School, and Joel Salinas, who is a physician, neurologist, a clinician scientist at NYU. So welcome both Bob and Joel. Bob Bordone and Joel Salinas (00:34): Thank you for having us. Yeah, looking forward to the conversation. Eric Topol (00:37): Yeah. So first, how did you guys get together? This is a pretty diverse, you got law and medicine, usually they don't talk to each other very much. Bob Bordone (00:46): Well, we were very fortunate. I mean, we basically were friends, but part of that friendship, I think emerged from work that I do around conflict issues in the Mass General system and then just the larger, bigger Mass General, Harvard community. Yeah, so this began really as a friendship where we were each swimming in very different waters, but then as we would start to talk, we realized there was a lot of connection and maybe the possibility to bring two different disciplines together in a way that might be practically useful and make an impact. And even when we started writing this, which was during Covid, what seemed to be some pretty polarizing times that were unlikely to resolve by the time the book would come out. Eric Topol (01:44): Yeah, well you sure hit it with the divisiveness and the polarized world that we live in is perhaps worse than ever, certainly in all my years,...

Steve Quake and Charlotte Bunne: The Holy Grail of Biology

Mar 18, 2025 43 min

“Eventually, my dream would be to simulate a virtual cell.”—Demis Hassabis The aspiration to build the virtual cell is considered to be equivalent to a moonshot for digital biology. Recently, 42 leading life scientists published a paper in Cell on why this is so vital, and how it may ultimately be accomplished. This conversation is with 2 of the authors, Charlotte Bunne, now at EPFL and Steve Quake, a Professor at Stanford University, who heads up science at the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative The audio (above) is available on iTunes and Spotify. The full video is linked here, at the top, and also can be found on YouTube. TRANSCRIPT WITH LINKS TO AUDIO Eric Topol (00:06): Hello, it's Eric Topol with Ground Truths and we've got a really hot topic today, the virtual cell. And what I think is extraordinarily important futuristic paper that recently appeared in the journal Cell and the first author, Charlotte Bunne from EPFL, previously at Stanford’s Computer Science. And Steve Quake, a young friend of mine for many years who heads up the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) as well as a professor at Stanford. So welcome, Charlotte and Steve. Steve Quake (00:42): Thanks, Eric. It's great to be here. Charlotte Bunne: Thanks for having me. Eric Topol (00:45): Yeah. So you wrote this article that Charlotte, the first author, and Steve, one of the senior authors, appeared in Cell in December and it just grabbed me, “How to build the virtual cell with artificial intelligence: Priorities and opportunities.” It's the holy grail of biology. We're in this era of digital biology and as you point out in the paper, it's a convergence of what's happening in AI, which is just moving at a velocity that's just so extraordinary and what's happening in biology. So maybe we can start off by, you had some 42 authors that I assume they congregated for a conference or something or how did you get 42 people to agree to the words in this paper? Steve Quake (01:33): We did. We had a meeting at CZI...

Katelyn Jetelina: Public health in the US

Mar 14, 2025 26 min

Thank you Katelyn Jetelina, Andy Meyers, Tracy Paeschke, MD, FACC, Bruce Lanphear, Tay MacIntyre, and many others for tuning into my live video with Katelyn Jetelina! Join me for my next live video in the app. Get full access to Ground Truths at erictopol.substack.com/subscribe

Anna Greka: Molecular Sleuthing for Rare Diseases

Mar 9, 2025 48 min

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 leading physician-scientist at the Broad Institute who is devoted to unlocking the mysteries of rare diseases— that cumulatively affect 30 million Americans— and finding cures, science supported by the NIH. A clip from our conversation The audio is available on iTunes and Spotify. The full video is linked here, at the top, and also can be found on YouTube. Transcript with audio and external links Eric Topol (00:06): Well, hello. This is Eric Topol from Ground Truths, and I am really delighted to welcome today, Anna Greka. Anna is the president of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) this year, a very prestigious organization, but she's also at Mass General Brigham, a nephrologist, a cell biologist, a physician-scientist, a Core Institute Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and serves as a member of the institute’s Executive Leadership Team. So we got a lot to talk about of all these different things you do. You must be pretty darn unique, Anna, because I don't know any cell biologists, nephrologists, physician-scientist like you. Anna Greka (00:48): Oh, thank you. It's a great honor to be here and glad to chat with you, Eric. Eric Topol (00:54): Yeah. Well, I had the real pleasure to hear you speak at a November conference, the AI for Science Forum, which we'll link to your panel. Where I was in a different panel, but you spoke about your extraordinary work and it became clear that we need to get you on Ground Truths, so you can tell your story to everybody. So I thought rather than kind of going back from the past where you were in Greece and somehow migrated to Boston and all that. We're going to get to that, but you gave an amazing TED Talk and it really encapsulated one of the many phenomenal stories of your work as a molecular sleuth. So maybe if you could give us a synopsis, and of cours...

Carl Zimmer: Air-Borne and the Big Miss With Covid

Feb 28, 2025 53 min

Before getting into this new podcast, have you checked out the recent newsletter editions and podcasts of Ground Truths? —the first diagnostic immunome —a Covid nasal vaccine update —medical storytelling and uncertainty —why did doctors with A.I. get outperformed by A.I. alone? The audio is available on iTunes and Spotify. The full video is embedded here, at the top, and also can be found on YouTube. Transcript with links to Audio and External Links Eric Topol (00:07): Well, hello. It's Eric Topol with Ground Truths, and I am just thrilled today to welcome Carl Zimmer, who is one of the great science journalists of our times. He's written 14 books. He writes for the New York Times and many other venues of great science, journalism, and he has a new book, which I absolutely love called Air-Borne. And you can see I have all these rabbit pages tagged and there's lots to talk about here because this book is the book of air. I mean, we're talking about everything that you ever wanted to know about air and where we need to go, how we missed the boat, and Covid and everything else. So welcome, Carl. Carl Zimmer (00:51): Thanks so much. Great to be here. A Book Inspired by the Pandemic Eric Topol (00:54): Well, the book starts off with the Skagit Valley Chorale that you and your wife Grace attended a few years later, I guess, in Washington, which is really interesting. And I guess my first question is, it had the look that this whole book was inspired by the pandemic, is that right? Carl Zimmer (01:18): Certainly, the seed was planted in the pandemic. I was working as a journalist at the New York Times with a bunch of other reporters at the Times. There were lots of other science writers also just trying to make sense of this totally new disease. And we were talking with scientists who were also trying to make sense of the disease. And so, there was a lot of uncertainty, ambiguity, and things started to come into focus. And I was really puzzled by how hard it was for co...

Emily Silverman: Storytelling, Uncertainty, and Humanity in Medicine

Feb 9, 2025 47 min

Before getting into this new podcast, have you checked out the recent newsletter editions of Ground Truths? —how are gut microbiome drives sugar cravings —the influence of sleep on brain waste clearance and aging —the new findings of microplastics in the brain —the surprise finding about doctors and A.I. In this podcast with Dr. Emily Silverman, an internist and founder of The Nocturnists, an award winning podcast and live show, we discuss what inspired her in medicine, what led to her disillusionment, the essentiality of storytelling, of recognizing uncertainty, the limits of A.I., and promoting humanity in medicine. The audio is available on iTunes and Spotify. The full video is linked here, at the top, and also can be found on YouTube. “Storytelling is medicine's currency. Storytelling is not just an act of self-healing; it may actually create better physicians.”—Emily Silverman Transcript with links to audio and relevant publications, websites Eric Topol (00:07): Well, hello. This is Eric Topol with Ground Truths, and with me, I am delighted to welcome Dr. Emily Silverman, who is Assistant Volunteer Professor of Medicine at UCSF, an old training grounds for me. And we're going to talk about some of the experience she's had there and she is the Founder of the remarkably recognized podcast, The Nocturnists. It's more than a podcast folks. We'll talk about that too. So Emily, welcome. Emily Silverman (00:40): Thank you for having me. Inspiration by Kate McKinnon Eric Topol (00:42): Yeah. Well, I thought I would go back to perhaps when we first synapsed, and it goes back to a piece you wrote in JAMA about going to the Saturday Night Live (SNL) with Kate McKinnon. And it was one of my favorite columns, of course, it brought us together kind of simpatico because you were telling a story that was very personal, and a surprise factor added to it. We'll link to it. But it said, ‘Sometime in 2016, I fell in love with SNL comedian Kate McKinnon.’ You wrote, ‘It was some...

Lotte Bjerre Knudsen: The Scientist Who Drove GLP-1 Drugs For Obesity and Alzheimer's

Jan 4, 2025 47 min

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 subsequently for Alzheimer’s. She was recently recognized by the 2024 Lasker Medical Research Award, and the 2024 AAAS Bhaumik Breakthrough of the Year Award. That recognition is richly deserved, since it is unclear if the GLP-1 drug path to obesity treatment, and all of the associated benefits, would have been seen at this time without her influence. That’s especially true given the mystery for why people with Type 2 diabetes (for which these drugs were used for many years) did not exhibit much in the way of weight loss. We discussed that and the future of these drugs, including their potential to prevent neurodegenerative diseases. And about dressing up in pink! The Ground Truths podcasts are also available on Apple and Spotify. Our entire conversation can also be seen by video at YouTube along with all of the Ground Truths podcasts. If you like the video format, please subscribe to this channel. Even if you prefer video, please take a look at the transcript with graphics and useful links to citations. A Video Clip below on the barriers of a woman scientist to push Novo Nordisk to develop GLP-1 for obesity. “I was always just been a nerdy little scientist who kind of found home here in this company for 35 years.”—Lotte Bjerre Knudsen, 60 Minutes Transcript with Links to audio and external references Eric Topol (00:06): Well, hello, it's Eric Topol with Ground Truths, and I have with me a special guest. She's the Chief Science Officer of Novo Nordisk and it's Lotte Bjerre Knudsen, and we're delighted to have her. She's a recent recipient of the Lasker Award, which I think is considered like the pre-Nobel Award here in the United States. And I was involved with her in terms of researching who was the principal person who brought the GLP-1 drugs to the forefront for obesity, and it turned out to be Lotte. So welcome,...

Ardem Patapoutian: The Pervasive PIEZO Channels

Dec 29, 2024 39 min

Piezo touch and pressure-sensing ion channels are showing up everywhere as the explanation for physiologic phenomena, both at the macro and micro levels. Ardem Patapoutian, my friend and colleague at Scripps Research, discovered these receptors back in 2010 and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2021 for his work. As you’ll see/hear from our conversation, the field has exploded. And you’ll get to know Ardem, who is such a fun, charismatic, and down-to-earth person. He also recently got a unique tattoo (videos below) and I wonder (unlikely) if any other Nobel laureates have one related to their discovery?! Below is a video clip from our conversation. Full videos of all Ground Truths podcasts can be seen on YouTube here. The current one is here. If you like the YouTube format, please subscribe! The audios are also available on Apple and Spotify. Transcript with links to audio Eric Topol (00:07): Well, hello. It's Eric Topol with Ground Truths, and I've really got a special guest today. The first time for the podcast, I've been able to interview a colleague and faculty at Scripps Research, Ardem Patapoutian, who just by the way happens to be the 2021 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine. So welcome, Ardem. It's so wonderful to have you. Ardem Patapoutian (00:30): Thanks so much, Eric. Looking forward to chatting with you. Eric Topol (00:34): Well, this has been interesting because although I've known you for several years, I didn't research you. I mean, I had to learn about more than I even do. And of course, one of the great sources of that is on the Nobel Prize website where you tell your whole story. It is quite a story and not to review all of it, but I wanted to go back just before you made the call to move to Los Angeles from Beirut, Lebanon and with the scare that you went through at that time, it seemed like that was just extraordinary that you had to live through that. Ardem Patapoutian (01:11): Yeah, so I am of Armenian origin, but I was born in Lebanon and...

Mark Cuban: A Master Disrupter for American Healthcare

Dec 20, 2024 37 min

American healthcare is well known for its extreme cost and worst outcomes among industrialized (such as the 38 OECD member) countries, and beyond that to be remarkably opaque. The high cost of prescription drugs contributes, and little has been done to change that except for the government passing the Affordable Insulin Now Act at the end of 2022, enacted in 2023. But in January 2022 Mark Cuban launched Cost Plus Drugs that has transformed how many Americans can get their prescriptions filled at a fraction of the prevailing prices, bypassing pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) that control 80% of US prescriptions. That was just the beginning of a path of creative destruction (disruptive innovation, after Schumpeter) of many key components American healthcare that Cuban is leading, with Cost Plus Marketplace, Cost Plus Wellness and much more to come. He certainly qualifies as a master disrupter: “someone who is a leader in innovation and is not afraid to challenge the status quo.” Below is a video clip from our conversation dealing with insurance companies. Full videos of all Ground Truths podcasts can be seen on YouTube here. The current one is here. If you like the YouTube format, please subscribe! The audios are also available on Apple and Spotify. Transcript with External links to Audio (00:07): Hello, it's Eric Topol with Ground Truths, and I have our special phenomenal guest today, Mark Cuban, who I think you know him from his tech world contributions and Dallas Mavericks, and the last few years he's been shaking up healthcare with Cost Plus Drugs. So Mark, welcome. Mark Cuban (00:25): Thanks for having me, Eric. Eric Topol (00:27): Yeah, I mean, what you're doing, you’ve become a hero to millions of Americans getting them their medications at a fraction of the cost they're used to. And you are really challenging the PBM industry, which I've delved into more than ever, just in prep for our conversation. It's just amazing what this group of companies, namely th...

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Podcast details

Created by: Eric Topol
Status: Active
Latest episode: Nov 10, 2026
Episodes: 99
Release period: Every two weeks
Avg. episode length: 45 min
Explicit: No
Language: English

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