Body and health

Sleep, food, movement and medicine, and how to look after a body. 17 books, each condensed into about twenty minutes.

• Being MortalAtul GawandeMedicine is good at prolonging life and poor at helping it end well. Ask the dying what they fear and hope for, and let those priorities guide their care.
• Brain EnergyChristopher M. PalmerExplore Christopher Palmer’s theory linking mental disorders to metabolism and mitochondria, with careful attention to evidence, individualized care, and medical safety.
• BreathJames NestorA journalist plugs his nose for ten days in a Stanford study, then traces breathing from ancient yoga to modern labs, showing how it shapes sleep, health, and anxiety.
• Everything Is TuberculosisJohn GreenTB has been curable for seventy years, yet it still kills more people than any other infection. John Green shows how injustice keeps it alive, and how to end it.
• LifespanDavid A. Sinclair, Matthew D. LaPlanteWhy Sinclair argues that aging is a disease that can be slowed, the mouse and yeast experiments behind that belief, and what he does himself, with the doubts left in.
• Outlive: The Science and Art of LongevityPeter Attia, Bill GiffordA physician's plan for living longer and better: catch heart disease, cancer, dementia and metabolic illness early, and train, eat, sleep and tend your emotional health for the decades ahead.
• Replaceable YouMary RoachA witty, reported tour of how medicine replaces body parts, from pig organs and printed tissue to ivory hips and iron lungs, and why originals stay hard to match.
• Salt Sugar FatMichael MossSee how food companies combine biology, product engineering, convenience, and marketing to make restraint difficult for consumers and for the industry itself.
• Super AgersEric TopolSeparate proven longevity practices from anti aging hype, and see how prevention, precision medicine, and equitable access could extend the years lived in good health.
• The Blue ZonesDan BuettnerVisits to Sardinia, Okinawa, Loma Linda, Nicoya and Ikaria, where people reach 100 unusually often, distilled into nine shared habits for living longer.
• The Ghost MapSteven JohnsonFollow John Snow and Henry Whitehead through the 1854 cholera outbreak, and see how maps, local knowledge, statistics, and public infrastructure transformed urban health.
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta LacksRebecca SklootIn 1951 doctors took Henrietta Lacks's cells without asking. They became the first immortal human cells, used in labs worldwide, while her family spent decades learning what had happened.
• The Joy of MovementKelly McGonigalDiscover how movement can strengthen persistence, belonging, expression, agency, purpose, and hope while honoring individual ability, evidence limits, and the need for support.
• The Omnivore's DilemmaMichael PollanMichael Pollan traces four meals to their sources, from cheap industrial corn and big organic to a grass farm and a dinner he hunted and gathered himself.
• Ultra Processed PeopleChris van TullekenA doctor eats industrially made food for four weeks, measures what it does to his body and brain, and explains why it is designed to make you eat more.
• When Breath Becomes AirPaul KalanithiA neurosurgeon facing terminal illness explores medicine, meaning, time, love, and what remains when a planned future disappears.
• Why We SleepMatthew WalkerA sleep scientist explains what sleep does for memory, mood and health, why modern life cuts it short, and what that costs us.