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Podcast: New Books in Medicine
Episode: Lina Zeldovich, "The Other Dark Matter: The Science and Business of Turning Waste Into Wealth and Health" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
Description: The average person produces about four hundred pounds of excrement a year. More than seven billion people live on this planet. Holy crap!Because of the diseases it spreads, we have learned to distance ourselves from our waste, but the long line of engineering marvels we've created to do so--from Roman sewage systems and medieval latrines to the immense, computerized treatment plants we use today--has also done considerable damage to the earth's ecology. Now scientists tell us: we've been wasting our waste. When recycled correctly, this resource, cheap and widely available, can be converted into a sustainable...