Podcast HackSick of 'Morning' SicknessBy Unexplainable, Noam Hassenfeld, Marlena Fejzo, Ph.D.
In a Nutshell
In this June 2025 episode of Vox's Unexplainable podcast, host Julia Longoria talks to Dr. Marlena Fejzo, the geneticist who discovered the cause of severe morning sickness.

Favorite Quote
Pregnancy nausea has been in the human record since about the year 2000 BC. But the story of how we finally got some kind of scientific answer as to why starts with a woman in the 1990s.
Julia Longoria
Introduction
Morning sickness – nausea and vomiting associated with the first trimester of pregnancy – affects around 70% of all pregnancies.
While morning sickness has been recognized as an early sign of pregnancy for centuries, the medical community has done surprisingly little to discover its underlying causes and develop adequate treatment options.
Hosted by Vox journalists Noam Hassenfeld, Julia Longoria, Byrd Pinkerton, and Meradith Hoddinott, the Unexplainable podcast explores scientific mysteries and unanswered questions.
In this episode from June 2025, Julia Longoria interviews American geneticist Marlena Fejzo, Ph.D., about her groundbreaking research on morning sickness and women's reproductive health.
Here are the 3 key insights from this Hack
- 1.About two percent of pregnant people experience debilitating morning sickness
- 2.Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc volutpat, leo ut.
- 3.Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc volutpat, leo ut.