First Opinion Podcast

Mar 12 2025 126 ep. 31 mins 315

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A weekly podcast about the people, issues and ideas that are shaping health care.

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119: Carl Zimmer on Covid, singing, and going ‘Air-Borne’

Mar 12 2025 35 mins

Tuesday marked the fifth anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring Covid-19 a global pandemic. For science writer Carl Zimmer, a columnist for the New York Times, covering Covid meant “watching [scientists] figuring out this disease in real time.” Notably, “there were a lot of mysteries about it. I was really struck as, as others were, by how strange it was that,

118: Dr. Glaucomflecken uses humor to spotlight the darkness in medicine

Dec 18 2024 32 mins

You’ve probably come across Will Flanary, aka Dr. Glaucomflecken, the internet’s most famous physician/comedian. For more than four years, the ophthalmologist has been gently roasting medicine by playing a rotating cast of characters — the emergency physician clad in cyclist gear, the “ortho bro,” the pediatrician in a unicorn headband. But he's also used his comedy to sk

From the archives: The power, and limits, of the placebo effect

Dec 11 2024 26 mins

Have you ever taken phenylephrine for a stuffed-up nose and then felt better? If so, you might have been perplexed when Food and Drug Administration experts said last year that that the drug — which is in some versions of DayQuil, Sudafed, and other medicines — is no more effective than a placebo. On this episode of the “First Opinion Podcast,” we talk with professor and re

117: ADHD is this scientist’s ‘superpower’

Dec 03 2024 45 mins

Biomedical engineer Jeff Karp’s famous lab has created medical tape inspired by spider webs, waterproof adhesive bandages that take inspiration from geckos, needles reminiscent of porcupine quills. But as an elementary school student, Karp told me on the “First Opinion Podcast,” he struggled. His second-grade teacher wanted to hold him back a year. “I was getting all these

116: How chaplains help to heal 'spiritual injury'

Nov 27 2024 27 mins

About 75% of U.S. hospitals use chaplains, who are either employed by the health care center or are spiritual leaders from the local community. Physician Robert Klitzman and chaplain Molly O’Neil Frank join today’s podcast to discuss why chaplains are a critical part of patient care. Perhaps counterintuitively, they say, chaplains' roles have become even more important as relig

115: Paying a visit to ‘Mom & Dad’s Nipple Factory’

Nov 19 2024 37 mins

When Randi Johnson was undergoing treatment for breast cancer, her husband, Brian, often felt at a loss to help. But then, when he and Randi met with a surgeon to discuss reconstructing her breast, he was struck by something he could do. The Midwestern father of five, a lifelong tinkerer, decided to make his wife the best possible prosthetic nipple. “The nipple solution is actual

114: Getting creative with health care in a new Trump administration

Nov 13 2024 29 mins

Torie speaks with Carmel Shachar, an assistant clinical professor at Harvard Law and health policy expert, about how the second Trump term might differ from the first, how the health policy world is preparing, and her work on reproductive health, telehealth, and vaccines.

113: How your genetics could determine your politics

Nov 06 2024 42 mins

No matter who wins the 2024 presidential race, one thing is clear: Political anxiety and division will remain high for the foreseeable future. So just before Election Day, Torie spoke with Kevin Smith, a professor of political science at the University of Nebraska who studies the intersection of political attitudes, biology, and evolution. In 2019, he and colleagues published a stu

112: Abortion is just another part of medicine

Oct 29 2024 33 mins

This close to Nov. 5, we are being battered with promises that this race will determine the future of the country. But Christine Dehlendorf wants people to remember that as important as Election Day is, it won’t be the end of discussions about reproductive health. Dehlendorf is a family physician and professor of family and community medicine at the University of California, San

111: No one wants to talk about Medicare policy

Oct 22 2024 27 mins

Medicare policy has been conspicuously absent from the 2024 presidential race. Health policy scholar Paul Ginsburg thinks this is because both Democrats and Republicans understand that the reforms needed in the Medicare system are not going to be popular.