We live in a world of endless opportunity — hundreds of dating options, dozens of jobs to apply to, the ability to market your creations, or even yourself directly online — but with opportunity inevitably comes rejection. Sometimes, a lot of rejection.

Rejection, or even the thought of it, can strike fear into our hearts, and leave a bad taste in our mouths. It often leads to a mix of sadness, shame, anxiety, and anger — along with nagging questions. What’s wrong with me? Why did this person not like me? Why didn’t I win this award? Why didn’t I get the job?

But it doesn’t have to be that way, and there’s a lot we can learn from not making the cut. On this episode, we explore the experience of rejection — what it feels like, how it functions, and the lessons we can draw from it.

We’ll hear from a fear and anxiety researcher about the evolutionary roots of anxiety — and why asking someone out on a date can feel like a life-or-death situation. Then we’ll explore a common experience among people with ADHD, known as rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD), and hear how one future physician dealt with the worst rejection of her life.

Also heard on this week’s episode:

• We talk with Arash Javanbakht, a trauma psychiatrist who studies fear and anxiety at Wayne State University, about the evolutionary purpose of the dread we feel around rejection, how it affects our brains, and evidence-based ways to manage those feelings.
• Every year, thousands of graduating medical students apply for the next stage of their medical education — residency. But not everyone gets selected. Reporter Liz Tung tells the story of one such student, Katie Bellas, and how she dealt with the biggest rejection of her life.
• Entrepreneur Jia Jiang experienced a rejection as a child that stayed with him through his adult life. He chats with us about how he learned to overcome rejection and start negotiating. He is the author of “Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection.”

We all know that exercise is good for us — for both our bodies and our minds — but motivating yourself to hit the gym, take a run, or even go for a walk sometimes feels like the hardest thing in the world. There are constant rebuttals that arise in our minds: We’re too busy. We’re too tired. We need a break — we’ll start next week. At the same time, we’re bombarded by messages from people who are all about fitness — influencers with seemingly perfect bodies and a healthy glow, who convince us that we too can get into shape. It’s a habit that many of us try to cultivate — yet often seem to hit a wall.

On this episode, we look at the science of fitness, the evolution of cultural messages surrounding exercise, and how we can overcome inertia to start fitting it into our lives. We’ll hear about how exercise affects our mood and overall health, different approaches to getting in shape, the real-life struggle of becoming an Instagram fitness influencer, and one couch potato’s reluctant journey to getting active.

Also heard on this week’s episode:

• We talk with historian Natalia Mehlman Petrzela about the evolution of exercise culture from sideshow attraction to multi-billion dollar industry. Her book is “Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession.”
• Neuroscience and kinesiology researcher Jennifer Heisz gives us the lowdown on how exercise affects our minds and bodies — from the runner’s high to cognitive function. Heisz is the director of the NeuroFit Lab at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.
• Reporter Grant Hill pulls the curtain back on the life of an Instagram fitness influencer, Grant Tamutus, who was his high school classmate.
• We’ve all heard about how bad sitting too much is for us. Research has found it can affect everything from blood pressure to cancer rates. And yet, 60% of Americans don’t get enough physical activity — and 25% don’t get any at all. Confirmed all-day sitter and reporter Liz Tung explores how much exercise you actually need to do in order to offset a sedentary lifestyle and ideas for how to fit that exercise in.

We hear about the big picture of climate change almost every day — the threats it poses, the effects on our world and lives, the fight to stop it. Across the world, armies of researchers are contributing pieces to that big picture narrative every day. They often travel long distances and brave the elements to collect information, one small data point at a time. How do Antarctic penguins fare when warming temperatures bring changing conditions to a part of the continent? How do we really know what Earth’s climate was like in the past, and how it compares to today? What’s it like to spend months living on an old oil drilling ship, in search of tiny ancient fossils? On this special episode of The Pulse, we go behind the headlines to spend time with scientists on the front lines of climate research. We’ll hear how they’re collecting data, what they’re learning, and what keeps them motivated.

Also heard on this week’s episode:

• The Antarctic Peninsula is experiencing some of the fastest warming on Earth — and scientists are already seeing the effects among two of the region’s penguin populations: the Adélie and the Gentoo. Reporter Sophia Schmidt talks with penguin researchers about what changes they’re witnessing, and why.
• We talk with leading climate scientist Kim Cobb about her work in the field of paleoclimatology, and what studying coral — old and new — can tell us about the earth’s ancient climate history. She also explains what’s next on the horizon in our fight against global warming. Cobb is director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, and a recent addition to President Biden’s Intelligence Advisory Board.
• There’s a certain way we expect scientists to communicate — in calm, measured tones that prioritize facts over feelings. But science communicator Joe Duggan thought that feelings were an important part of the narrative — a powerful tool to communicate how urgent climate research is. He decided to ask scientists to express their emotions about their work and the fate of the planet in letters. Nichole Currie reports on his project.
• On a beach in the Siberian Arctic, a marine biologist lives in a small hut and waits for more than 100,000 walruses to pile their massive bodies on shore. The walruses overcrowd the beach and sometimes die due to stampedes. This coming out-of-the-water phenomenon is called a “haulout,” and it’s a result of climate change. Filmmaker Evgenia Arbugaeva talks about documenting this phenomenon and the scientist who studies the walruses. “Haulout” was nominated for an Academy Award for best Documentary Short Film this year.

On April 3, 1973, an engineer named Martin Cooper stood nervously along a busy midtown Manhattan street, about to make a phone call. It was a call that would change life as we know it: The first cell phone call ever.

The phone Cooper used that day — a prototype — was a bulky, 2-pound monster that looked a bit like a shoe with an antenna sticking out of the top. In the half-a-century since, this technology has changed more about the way we communicate and connect than Cooper could’ve ever imagined.

On this special episode, we mark the 50th anniversary of the first cell call with an exploration of the past, present, and future of mobile communications. We hear about Cooper’s work on this world-altering invention, one community’s fight against the 5G revolution, and why satellite phones are making a comeback in a big way.

Also heard on this week’s episode:

• Cell towers may keep us all connected, but there’s a downside: They’re an eyesore. That’s led some providers to try disguising their towers as giant trees or cactuses. But is there a better solution? We hear from architect and writer Jesse LeCavalier, who directs the Cornell University Urban Design Program in New York City, about the history of telecommunication aesthetics, and how attitudes have changed.

Pain is powerful — and when it becomes chronic, it can be all-consuming. It takes over our minds, saps our energy, and becomes the focus of our existence. And yet, pain is also invisible. We can try to describe it — stabbing, nagging, dull, achy; we can rate it on a number scale from one to 10, or point to a smiley or frowny face to define it, but it’s not something we can ever fully communicate. Our pain is ours — to feel, to bear, to live with.

Millions of Americans live with chronic pain, and yet it can be a profoundly lonely experience. The individual nature of pain, the mysterious way it often sneaks into our lives, without a definitive source, can make it hard to deal with — and even harder to treat. On this episode, we explore the nature of chronic pain — what causes it, how it affects us, and the ongoing fight to stop it. We talk with physician Haider Warraich, who wants to change the way medicine thinks about pain, people who’ve spent years trying to treat their pain, and a reporter who’s tracking the newest developments in pain medicine.

Also heard on this week’s episode:

• As a med student in Pakistan, all Haider Warraich knew about pain was what he’d learned in textbooks. That changed when, while lifting weights at the gym, his back gave out, and he found himself thrust into a world of agony. Today, Warraich is a doctor who’s calling on the medical world to change the way it approaches pain — we talk with him about his own experience, what he’s learned about the nature of pain, and what doctors can and should do differently. His book is “The Song of Our Scars: The Untold Story of Pain.”
• Millions of Americans live with chronic pain — and despite seeing doctor after doctor, never find an answer about what’s causing their misery, or how to fix it. Reporter Alan Yu tells the story of one man whose journey to alleviate his pain took him through the gamut of medical options — and ended in an unexpected place.
• Drugs like oxycodone used to be a go-to solution for treating acute and longer-lasting pain — but that’s changed in the wake of the ongoing opioid epidemic. We talk with Damian Garde, a biotech industry reporter for STAT News, about the challenges to developing non-addictive painkillers, and one candidate — a new drug from the biotech company Vertex — that could offer hope.

If you’re training to become a physician, your first patient is usually dead. In fact, “first patient” is what med students call the human cadavers that they work on in anatomy class — when they first learn to make careful incisions, and lay eyes on the beautiful intricacies of bone, muscle, blood vessels, and organs that make our bodies work.

Human cadavers have long played a crucial role in medicine and science. They not only teach generations of doctors about the human body — they allow researchers to learn valuable lessons about everything from the causes of rare diseases to the effects of how we live our lives. But how do bodies end up on dissection tables in the first place? What can they still teach us? And why do people choose to donate their remains?

On this episode, we explore bodies donated to science — how they’re used, why they’re so important, and why people make this choice for their remains. We hear stories about one woman’s mission to recruit future medical cadavers, and how 19th century medical schools got involved in body snatching. We’ll take a closer look at a program that connects med students to the families of their “first patients,” and find out why one firefighter has opted for a future in the Body Worlds exhibition.

Also heard on this week’s episode:

• Across the country — and the world — medical schools are facing a shortage of cadavers, a situation that has been worsened by the pandemic. Reporter Grant Hill explores the rules that govern donations, and one woman’s mission to recruit future donors.
• Reporter Elana Gordon dug into the history of medical schools and body snatching, through the tale of “One-Eyed Joe” a legendary 19th-century horse thief whose brain went missing after his body was autopsied in prison.
• We chat with Ernest Talarico, a researcher and anatomy professor at Purdue University Northwest in Hammond, Indiana, about what cadavers can teach us about rare conditions.

Science is all about observing the world. But how do you study something you can’t see, smell, or hear — like the tiniest particles all around us? How do you test a new energy source when it doesn’t really exist yet?

These are the challenges that the world of physics often faces. You can come up with theories, using modeling and calculations, and devise some kind of experiment on paper to investigate things. But then you have to translate those ideas into tangible, real-world experiments, which is often incredibly challenging.

On today’s show, we peek behind the curtain of multimillion-dollar physics experiments that are changing the way we understand our world — and hear about some of the big challenges they face. We dig into the origins of the James Webb Space Telescope, talk with xkcd cartoonist Randall Munroe about some of his more outlandish — and complicated — physics calculations, and hear from accelerator physicist Suzie Sheehy about the physics experiments that changed the world.

Also heard on this week’s episode:

• When the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope were revealed just last year, they seemed to inspire a collective moment of awe. They offered stunning glimpses of deep space never before seen. We talk with astronomer and astrophysicist Garth Illingworth about the origin of the telescope, and what pushed him and his colleagues to design something they’d never even dared to imagine.
• Cartoonist Randall Munroe joins us to talk about his latest book “What If? 2,” in which he uses science to answer absurd questions from fans and readers.
• Suzie Sheehy is an experimental physicist, so she knows all about the challenges of creating places and spaces where she can test out her ideas. Her new book about famous experiments in physics is called “The Matter of Everything.”
• Dakotah Tyler wants to inspire the next generation of astrophysicists — and he’s taking to TikTok and Instagram to talk about space, stars, and dark matter in an approachable way.

In 2018, brother and sister filmmaking duo Evgenia Arbugaeva and Maxim Arbugaev traveled to a beach in the Siberian Arctic — an area in Northeast Russia. When they arrived on this beach, the sand was almost black in color, and a horrifying smell of decay filled the air. The beach looked deserted, except for a man living in a small hut nearby.

His name is Maxim Chakilev. He’s a marine biologist who waits for more than 100,000 walruses to pile their massive bodies on this beach in autumn. The walruses overcrowd the beach and sometimes die due to stampedes. This coming out-of-the-water phenomenon is called a haulout, and it’s a result of climate change in the area.

After witnessing a haulout with Chakilev, Arbugaeva and her brother returned to the beach in 2020 to live with the biologist for three months and film his every move. For weeks at time, the hut was completely surrounded by the animals, making it impossible to leave.

They produced a documentary with The New Yorker on their findings last year called “Haulout” – and it’s nominated for an Academy Award for best Documentary Short Film this year.

Filmmaker Evgenia Arbugaeva spoke to host Maiken Scott about the film. Interview highlights

Why do walruses haulout on this beach?

“So, in an ideal world, walruses would not come out on land at all, or they would come out in very small numbers. They’re migratory animals. And they would rest on floating ice during their migration and feeding. But because there is no ice in summer anymore, they’re just forced to come out, haulout, on land to rest. And the reason why they come out on this particular beach is because their feeding ground, which is mollusks on the bottom of the ocean, is about 200 kilometers from this beach. So, what they do, they go feed, then they come back, and they rest on the beach, and then they go back and feed, and they do it about three times.”

Inside the visual experience of a haulout

“I felt that I was in the film “Lord of the Rings,” and there was the army of orcs. It was scary, and it was scary because they’re not aggressive animals because especially when they’re on the beach, they’re in their unnatural environment. So, they’re really vulnerable, and actually, they’re so easily scared. So, any foreign smell or sound can scare them and kind of send this wave of panic in the whole haulout. So, we had to be really careful actually, not to scare them, not to use the stove, not to produce any smell, not to use a generator, which was quite challenging because we couldn’t use batteries, or charge our batteries. But the sound was scary because you could hear the animals struggling, you could hear some voices, like very high-pitched voices of cubs that are looking for their mothers and being separated or being squashed by these bigger animals.”

Maxim Chakilev’s concerns about the walrus population and climate change

Chakilev-1024x538.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="336">Maxim Chakilev is a marine biologist who has been researching pacific walruses in the Siberian Arctic for a decade. (The New Yorker Studios)

“The biggest concern, of course, is how this animal adapts to the new reality that this has been happening for a long time now. Maxim started his research 10 years ago … And unfortunately, as we know, this process is irreversible. So, there will be a possibility of a shrinking of the population of the animal. I think all biologists that are now working are concerned about the same thing really, of the disappearance of species and what can be done to protect them.”

Filming during the hottest year on record in the Arctic

“We were anticipating, of course, that we’ll be surrounded by walruses, but we didn’t know for how long. And that was the record. The longest time walruses were on the beach. And so, we planned only for a maximum of a week being surrounded. And we had just enough water for that time. And when we realized it will be two weeks, and it went to almost three weeks, we started to be really worried about the amount of water that we had. And we had to be very careful not to wash our hands and just keep it for drinking.”

The takeaway message from the film, “Haulout”

“We made this film because we wanted to show people what really is happening in the Arctic, and we wanted to make it in the way that is not heavily message-driven or narrated. We wanted people to see for themselves that this is the reality that animals in the Arctic are facing and that we just need to do something about it. We need to be realistic. I mean, there are so many ways to talk about climate change. Oftentimes, it’s stories of hope, which I also support. There has to be hope, but there also has to be some realistic understanding of what is really going on. And I hope our film will contribute to that understanding.”

Pests: We know them when we see them. The mice that lurk in our kitchens, the squirrels that steal our tomatoes, the mosquitoes that bite us in the summer, and the pigeons that flutter around busy city streets. And yet, in other places and times, a lot of these animals are anything but pests. They could be seen as beloved pets and important working animals, or even be revered.

So what is it exactly that defines a pest? On this episode, we investigate that question, looking at animals ranging from your everyday pigeons and rats — to more exotic creatures like Burmese pythons and Bobbit worms. We talk with a science writer who’s done a deep dive into the science of pests, find out why one mosquito researcher loves the world’s most hated insect, and hear the story of one man’s epic battle against the sea’s most disturbing creature.

Also heard on this week’s episode:

• We talk with Cornell entomologist Laura Harrington about why mosquitoes are so good at surviving — even in the winter, how they procreate, and what we can do to keep them away from our homes.
• Reporter Alan Yu tells the story of how entomologist Autumn Angelus — who works in mosquito control — came to love the bugs everyone else hates.
• We hear the epic tale of the Bobbit Worm Chronicles — one man’s harrowing journey to defend his aquarium against the ocean’s creepiest pest. Reported by Liz Tung.

It seems like every day, new skin care products hit the market: lotions, serums, collagen boosters, light therapy, at-home lasers — potions and procedures designed to coax our skin into peeling and healing, plumping and renewing. Their promise: wrinkle-free faces, poreless, dewy skin, and an eternally youthful glow.

But there’s no one magic bullet to flawless skin. And what is this chase really about?

On this episode, we get into the science of skin care, looking at what works, what doesn’t, and what dermatologists have to say about the latest frontiers in our quest for eternal youth. We hear stories about a new treatment that uses stem cells to rejuvenate skin, some shady aspects of the Botox business, and why K-beauty has taken global skin care by storm.

Also heard on this week’s episode:

• We talk with Janiene Luke, a dermatologist at Loma Linda University Medical Center in Southern California, about common skin concerns — from wrinkles to dryness to discoloration — along with what actually works (and doesn’t) to treat them. Luke gives skin care advice on her Instagram and TikTok.
• When NPR’s Elise Hu first moved to Seoul, she noticed something striking — the faces. Flawless and dewy, they beamed from skyscrapers and subway stations — monuments to one of South Korea’s most popular exports: skin care. Hu explains what exactly “K beauty” is, the cultural factors that have led to its dominance, and what it says about social pressures on women. Hu’s upcoming book is called “Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K Beauty Capital.” We’ll post a longer version of our interview when the book is out — follow our podcast so you won’t miss it!