Meet your new favorite organ, the thymus. Scientists have since discovered a whole world within this little wad of tissue in your chest – a complex system that trains and equips some of your body's most important fighters against disease.

Jarrod Dudakov, professor of immunology at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, explains how the thymus can help us understand why our bodies get worse at fighting disease as we age.

More resources:

• Jarrod Dudakov at the Fred Hutchinson Canter Research Center
• The landmark 1961 research article in The Lancet, “The Immunological Function of the Thymus”

Pocket Science is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network. It is hosted by Gabriel Spitzer, edited by Jim Gates and produced by Anna Boiko-Weyrauch.

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A full wiring diagram of the brain could show how its different parts work together, and it could potentially reveal new insights into diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Gabe visits the electron microscopy connectomics project at Seattle’s Allen Institute, and learns how they are using AI to parse over 100 million high resolution pictures of a slice of mouse brain the size of a poppyseed.

More resources:

• The Connectomics team at the Allen Institute's brain science accelerator
• Forrest Collman
• Andrew Hickl

Pocket Science is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network. It is hosted by Gabriel Spitzer, edited by Jim Gates and produced by Shane Mehling and Anna Boiko-Weyrauch.

We can only make Pocket Science because listeners support us. Tap here to make a gift and keep Pocket Science in your feed.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mud is everywhere…under our shoes, our buildings, our crops. How it behaves affects where we can build, what we can grow and the shape of the land itself. But on a microscopic level we barely understand why it does what it does. Gabriel heads out with mud expert Kendall Valentine who gets ankle-deep in the stuff in order to unlock its mysteries.

Listen to Pocket Science on the KUOW app or wherever you get podcasts.

More resources:

• Kendall Valentine
• Coastal Ecogeomorphology Lab
• UW Sediment Dynamics Lab

Pocket Science is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network. It is hosted by Gabriel Spitzer, edited and produced by Jim Gates.

We can only make Pocket Science because listeners support us. Tap here to make a gift and keep Pocket Science in your feed.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.