This Podcast Will Kill You

Two Erins, both with PhDs in disease ecology and epidemiology, sit down every couple of weeks to absolutely wreck your sense of safety about the microbial world. Erin Welsh and Erin Allmann Updyke started This Podcast Will Kill You back in 2017, and it has since grown into one of the most beloved science shows around, with over 275 episodes and a 4.8-star rating from nearly 17,000 reviewers on Apple Podcasts. Each episode picks a disease, pathogen, poison, or medical mystery and traces it from its biological nuts and bolts through to its historical and social impact. They covered plague long before it was trendy, tackled COVID-19 in real time, and have gone deep on things like lupus, endometriosis, and asbestos exposure. The format is thorough but never dry. The two hosts have genuine chemistry and a knack for making virology and parasitology feel like storytelling rather than a lecture. One signature touch: every episode comes with a themed cocktail recipe (the quarantini) and a non-alcoholic version (the placeborita), so you can sip along while learning about Ebola transmission routes. It sounds absurd, and it kind of is, but it works. The show is part of the Exactly Right podcast network and tends to run about an hour per episode. If you have even a passing interest in infectious disease, immunology, or just want to understand why certain outbreaks shaped human history the way they did, this is the show to follow.