SAWBONES

A compelling, often hilarious and occasionally horrifying exploration of how modern medicine came to be!

Wondering whether eating powdered mummies might be just the thing to cure your ills? Tempted by those vintage ads suggesting you wear radioactive underpants for virility? Ever considered drilling a hole in your head to deal with those pesky headaches?

Probably not. But for thousands of years, people have done things like this - and things that make radioactive underpants seem downright sensible! In their hit podcast, Sawbones, Sydnee and Justin McElroy breakdown the weird and wonderful way we got to modern healthcare. And some of the terrifying detours along the way.

Consistently rated a top podcast on iTunes, with over 15 million total downloads, this rollicking journey through thousands of years of medical mishaps and miracles is not only hilarious but downright educational. While you may never even consider applying boiled weasel to your forehead (once the height of sophistication when it came to headache cures), you will almost certainly face some questionable medical advice in your everyday life (we're looking at you, raw water!) and be better able to figure out if this is a miracle cure (it's not) or a scam.


Sydnee McElroy has a BS in biology and an MD from Marshall University. She currently is a practicing licensed family physician and an assistant professor of medical education with Marshall.
Justin McElroy is a 15-year journalism veteran with two awards from the Ohio Associated Press for business writing. He has served as the managing editor of AOL's Joystiq and Vox Media's Polygon (of which he's also a founder).
Teylor Smirl is a graduate of New York's School of the Visual Arts whose work has been featured in comics such as Amazing Forest as well as her own series, Flightless Birds.