Clinical medicine, explained through clogged drains and hidden sewers.
Humerus Hacks teaches medicine in open conversation and lets analogies about clogged drains and hidden sewer pipes carry most of the explanation. Recent episodes cover low blood pressure, routine blood results and the organs of the immune system, and some subjects are split across two parts.
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Humerus Hacks is a medical-teaching podcast that works through clinical topics in open conversation, and analogies do most of the explaining. Recent episodes begin with an acknowledgement of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, on whose land the show is recorded. Then comes the catchphrase, a cheerful promise to teach the listener things. The recent run covers a wide range of subjects, all of them clinical. '#69 - MET CALL: Under Pressure (Hypotension)' works through obstructive causes of low blood pressure, with Lauren joining again when she is close to finishing medical school. Pulmonary embolism is explained by following the blood. It travels from the right heart to the lungs and back to the left heart, and when a clot blocks the way, less blood arrives and less gets pumped out. Cardiac tamponade comes next, framed around the pericardium. The two-part 'Macrodata Refinement' set is billed as 'Bloods for Dummies' and is aimed at students just starting their clinical years. A high hemoglobin might be the body making up for too little oxygen, or it might be overproduction, such as a blood cancer whose name one speaker admits to never pronouncing properly. Testosterone given in gender-affirming care comes up as another cause, along with the value of a baseline reading. Creatinine becomes a backlog in a clogged drain and eGFR is set apart as the longer-term measure, before one speaker starts in on a story from an old apartment. 'Only 2% Shall Pass' covers the immune organs in two halves, with the spleen and thymus first and the lymph nodes second, after the hosts admit they got over-enthusiastic. There is a Maltesers pun along the way. The spleen gets two portraits: the Shakespearean sense of an organ of feeling, and a pathology textbook's drier description of a filter for the blood, divided into red pulp and white pulp. The thymus is likened to the audio-visual crew at an event, unnoticed until something goes wrong. The lymphatics are cast as the body's hidden sewer, remembered through Healthy Harold, a health-education van in New South Wales with a puppet and posters of the body. '#44: How to FOAMed!' was recorded in a hospital in Leeds with Johnny, an NHS doctor and core medical trainee. The conversation recalls a meeting three years earlier at a medical education conference at Stanford, after a run of meme-swapping on Twitter, and it closes by agreeing that this is how nerds meet. Mistakes tend to stay in. One episode keeps a fumbled opening lyric for the sake of continuity, and another closes with a sign-off that falls apart into 'stay hacked' and 'hack off'. A listener gets revision that sounds like people thinking aloud: concepts built from everyday images, sometimes checked against a textbook, and delivered with no pretence of polish.
Made for: Suits a medical student starting clinical years or facing final exams who remembers physiology best through analogies and relaxed back-and-forth rather than dense notes.
What sets it apart: It builds each concept from an everyday image, such as a kidney as a clogged drain or the thymus as an event's audio-visual crew. It pairs textbook definitions with childhood and pop-culture references and keeps its own flubs in the recording.
Final year medical students turned real life doctors attempt to liven up their studies with mnemonics and banter!
A clogged drain makes your creatinine lesson click, then someone mentions a water ghost.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded, conversational review of hypotension mechanisms that makes hospital presentation logic easier to remember.
Hypotension gets a clear, practical run-through as Lauren works through the obstructive causes that cut venous return and leave the heart with too little output to offer.
Blood-test basics come through clogged drains, loose chat, and a sharp-toothed puppy.
The episode makes UECs feel less like a block of lab shorthand and more like a set of clues: urea, electrolytes, and creatinine, with liver function tests, CRP, and maybe CMP waiting nearby.
A conversational guide to FBE, hemoglobin, anemia, and the clinical questions blood results can raise.
This single-episode review treats FBE as a way to ask better clinical questions, not just as a list of lab values. It moves from hemoglobin and oxygen carrying into how the body may compensate for low oxygen, then links that thread to the effect testosterone can have on…
Hidden immune drainage becomes memorable through a sewer analogy, childhood health posters, and a Maltesers detour.
Humorous Hacks makes the immune system's hidden drainage feel unusually easy to picture. After returning to the spleen and thymus, the episode shifts into lymphatics and lymph nodes, using a sewer-system comparison to explain how the network clears excess tissue fluid when veins…
A witty, clinically grounded spleen-and-thymus lesson with anatomy that stays useful.
Immune organs get an unusually catchy frame here, with the spleen presented as both anatomy lesson and clinical problem. The episode makes its blood-filtering role feel concrete, then builds out the red pulp and white pulp without losing sight of why the details matter.
Practical anesthesia safety, one case at a time.
Surgery, mentorship, and life in training.
Clear conversations on bones, joints, and recovery.
Humerus Hacks #69, 'MET CALL: Under Pressure (Hypotension),' uses Lauren's final stretch of medical school to teach ward hypotension and MET-call triage.
Humorous Hacks returns with part two of 'Bloods for Dummies' and opens by repeating the Choosing Wisely rule that a blood test should change management.
Humerus Hacks #67, "Macrodata Refinement (Part 1)," turns FBE, UEC, LFT, CMP, CRP, and venous blood gas into a bloods-for-dummies guide for junior clinicians.
Humerus Hacks #66, "Only 2% Shall Pass," spends Part 2 on mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue, or MALT, after covering the spleen and thymus in Part 1.
["Humorous Hacks #65, \"Only 2% Shall Pass (Immune Organs: Part 1),\" splits the immune-system tour into the spleen and thymus, with MALT and lymph nodes saved for part two.", "The unnamed host interviews Ed Roper, who says he is a card-carrying pathologist and has held several spleens in the pathology lab.", "The spleen section uses Hippocrates' four humors, black bile, Shakespeare's \"vent your spleen,\" and Robbins and Cotran's red pulp and white pulp model to make the organ memorable.", "The thymus section covers involution, cell-mediated immunity, splenectomy vaccines, Galen, autopsies, and the episode's detour into transference, counter-transference, and clinical judgment."]
At 17, Lauren learned after an ultrasound that she had no visible uterus, and later received an MRKH diagnosis.
Lauren, an MRKH community member and guest on Humerus Hacks, estimates the condition affects about 1 in 5,000 females.
Laheru teaches medical students and junior doctors to assess non-cardiac surgery using “Every Anaesthetist Loves Morning Coffee.” The mnemonic starts with emergency timing, then checks active cardiac conditions and whether surgery is low risk.
Dr.
Two medical interns return from a hiatus to share lessons learned from completing their internship.
A group of friends humorously discuss anal pathology after a Korean dinner, covering sphincter anatomy and a song about defecation.
Two new doctors humorously discuss their med school journey and offer survival tips.
Newly graduated doctors share humorous and practical advice for surviving the transition from medical student to intern.