Look, do what you want with your pubic hair. Shave it off, give it a coconut oil hair mask, braid it, bedazzle it, whatever. Do what makes you feel good. But for heaven's sake, be safe when you're doing it.

There's a decent chance you'll get some kind of cancer at some point. If you're a man, your odds are one in two. If you're a woman, one in three. Your risk of dying from cancer is only slightly lower: one in four and one in five, respectively.

“Bubonic” is almost onomatopoeic. It sounds bulbous and grotesque and ancient. It sounds like something your great great grandmother might have contracted as a child, along with “the consumption.” So when headlines proclaim that the bubonic plague is alive in Arizona (or New Mexico, or wherever) it feels like some archaic monster has risen from the grave. The reality is that it never actually died.

Once difficult and expensive even for the most technologically advanced labs, genetic testing is fast becoming a cheap and easy consumer product. With a little spit and 200 dollars, you can find out your risk for everything from cystic fibrosis to lactose intolerance.

If you look at your skin, most of what you will see is actually dead cells. This thin outermost sheet protects the living cells underneath as they develop.

It takes a hookworm four to six weeks to travel through the human body and reach the gut, where it latches onto the small intestine and sucks blood to sustain itself.