Better Off

Working from home has its perks: Better coffee, easy commute, no fluorescent lighting. But, as any home office worker can tell you, there are also downsides: No more office social ...

As COVID-19 swept through American prisons and jails in 2020, wardens scrambled to keep prisoners and corrections officers from getting sick. One strategy was to increase solitary ...

It’s estimated that half a million Americans are experiencing homelessness. Even a brief period of housing insecurity can make existing health issues worse, and bring up new physic...

What does a plate of healthy food look like? Everyone has an opinion – from doctors to dieticians to wellness experts. But advice on what to eat often ignores a big factor in how a...

It seems like every brand of makeup, fragrance, and hair care wants consumers to believe that their products are safe, natural, and clean. Is this all just greenwashing? The beauty...

40 million American homes cook their meals with natural gas. But most people don’t think of the little blue flame on their gas range as the end of a very long natural gas pipeline....

Season 2 of Better Off starts November 2. This season, we're asking public health experts what it means to have a healthy home – exploring how we cook, the foods we eat, and the pr...

While you wait for new episodes of Better Off, we wanted to give you an update on our very first episode about indoor air. In the last two years, Joseph Allen has been talking abou...

Eating disorders affect a population the size of the state of Texas, cost the economy tens of billions of dollars, and kill 10,000 Americans per year. If eating disorders are so co...

During the earliest days of the pandemic, younger people were told to protect the older adults in their lives from COVID-19 by isolating at home. Concerns about the virus and pande...

In a special bonus episode, recorded a day before Juneteenth was made a federal holiday, we listen in on a conversation between Opal Lee, an activist and teacher often called the "...

This spring, public health officials have been laser-focused on getting more Americans vaccinated against COVID-19. So why do racial disparities persist around vaccination? And onc...