After the lawsuits of the last fifteen years, most people assume that Big Tobacco was dealt a mortal blow. Yet the 21st century is poised to see ten times more deaths than the already mind-boggling number of people who died from cigarettes in the 20th. Historian of science Robert Proctor discusses the contents of cigarettes, which may include arsenic and radioactive polonium amongst other bizarre ingredients, the strange episode of Nazi research into tobacco, and the ways that academics have been bought off by America's most powerful industry.

After the lawsuits of the last fifteen years, most people assume that Big Tobacco was dealt a mortal blow. Yet the 21st century is poised to see ten times more deaths than the already mind-boggling number of people who died from cigarettes in the 20th. Historian of science Robert Proctor discusses the contents of cigarettes, which may include arsenic and radioactive polonium amongst other bizarre ingredients, the strange episode of Nazi research into tobacco, and the ways that academics have been bought off by America's most powerful industry.

Health care is medical care, right? That might sound logical, but a number of people have challenged that notion head-on. Some have drawn connections between health and political power; others decided that health clinics should do much more than diagnose and treat illness. Jenna Loyd weighs the theoretical insights of Michel Foucault and others; she also points to a time when community health took a radical turn.

Wonderbread vs artisanal bread. It may seem like a simple choice between variants of the same thing, but for many the two are a universe apart -- one representing industrial production and American hubris; the other a wholesomeness that bespeaks a different way of being in the world. Food scholar Aaron Bobrow-Strain has written a social history of white bread. He discusses the unexpected consequences of trying to change the world with food.

A groundbreaking study, conducted over eight decades, has shed light on what makes some of us live longer than others from the same socio-economic background -- and many of the results are quite surprising. Leslie Martin, one of the scientists involved in the Longevity Project, discusses the findings, which challenge conventional wisdom about the links between long lives and optimistic personalities, as well as marriage, divorce, religious belief, and work.

Clichés about hope and individual responsibility pervade popular-culture narratives about cancer in the US. Lochlann Jain critiques what she calls "the cultural management of cancer terror" and suggests alternative, more politically conscious ways of discussing disease. She also relates prevailing cancer rhetorics to notions of time, progress, and accumulation under capitalism.