First up, abor­tion pills — a com­bo of two drugs, mifepri­s­tone and miso­pros­tol — are on notice: on April 7, 2023, a fed­er­al judge said the FDA’s approval of mifepri­s­tone was invalid. And then, not more than an hour lat­er, anoth­er fed­er­al judge in a sep­a­rate case said that mifepri­s­tone had to stay on the mar­ket in cer­tain states. With these two con­tra­dic­to­ry rul­ings, mifepri­s­tone — and med­ical abor­tion, in gen­er­al — is in the crosshairs. So, today, we want to rewind to an episode we made last year. It looks at these two drugs over the last 40 years, from their ori­gin sto­ries and devel­op­ment, to how their admin­is­tra­tion from doc­tors to patients keeps evolv­ing. This sto­ry, for us, started…

Then, for a spe­cial New Year’s treat, we take a tour through the his­to­ry of the uni­verse with the help of… poets. Our guide is Maria Popo­va, who writes the pop­u­lar blog The Mar­gin­a­lian (for­mer­ly Brain Pick­ings), and the poet­ry is from her project, ​“The Uni­verse in Verse” — an annu­al event where poets read poems about sci­ence, space, and the nat­ur­al world.