New Books in Medicine

Mar 09 2025 1029 ep. 55 mins 1.2k

New Books in Medicine Podcast artwork

Interviews with Scholars of Medicine about their New Book

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Lina-Maria Murillo, "Fighting for Control: Power, Reproductive Care, and Race in the US-Mexico Borderlands" (UNC Press, 2025)

Mar 09 2025 71 mins

The first birth control clinic in El Paso, Texas, opened in 1937. Since then, Mexican-origin women living in the border cities of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez have confronted various interest groups determined to control their reproductive lives, including a heavily funded international population control campaign led by Planned Parenthood Federation of America as well as the Catholi

Ibn Butlan, "The Doctors' Dinner Party: A Satirical Novella " (NYU Press, 2023)

Mar 08 2025 43 mins

In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia, Raja Aderdor, the host, delves deeper into this fascinating work with Jeremy Farrell, a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at Leiden University, who co-authored a translation of this novella. Jeremy shares his insights into the satire, the medical practices described, and how Ibn Buṭlān's critique resonates with today's debates on medicine

Jorge Goldstein, "Patenting Life: Tales from the Front Lines of Intellectual Property and the New Biology" (Georgetown UP, 2025)

Mar 07 2025 67 mins

In this episode, Jorge Goldstein, the author of Patenting Life: The Commercialization of Biology, delves into the critical junction where biotechnology meets patent law. With a background as a molecular biologist turned patent attorney, Goldstein offers unique insights into how commercial biology has evolved and its profound effects on patent regulations. The discussion takes liste

Christos Lynteris, "Visual Plague: The Emergence of Epidemic Photography" (MIT Press, 2022)

Mar 02 2025 77 mins

How epidemic photography during a global pandemic of bubonic plague contributed to the development of modern epidemiology and our concept of the “pandemic.” In Visual Plague: The Emergence of Epidemic Photography (MIT Press, 2022), Christos Lynteris examines the emergence of epidemic photography during the third plague pandemic (1894–1959), a global pandemic of bubonic plague

Steven Lesk, "Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness" (Prometheus, 2023)

Feb 26 2025 65 mins

Of all the mental illnesses, schizophrenia eludes us the most. No matter the strides scientists have made in neurological research nor doctors have made in psychiatric treatment, schizophrenia remains misunderstood, almost complacently mythologized. Without a reason for the illness, patients feel even more alienated than they already do, families are left hopeless, and doctors stru

Nicole Lobdell, "X-Ray" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

Feb 19 2025 49 mins

X-rays are powerful. Moving through objects undetected, revealing the body as a tryptic of skin, tissue, and bone. X-rays gave rise to a transparent world and the belief that transparency conveys truth. It stands to reason, then, that our relationship with X-rays would be a complicated one of fear and fascination, acceptance and resistance, confusion and curiosity. In X-Ray (Bl

Rebecca Haw Allensworth, "The Licensing Racket: How We Decide Who Is Allowed to Work, and Why It Goes Wrong" (Harvard UP, 2025)

Feb 12 2025 55 mins

When we think about "red tape" and the cost of regulation it's hard to overstate the impact of professional licensing. According to Professor Rebecca Haw Allensworth, it's bigger than unions and more expensive than sales taxes. Millions of American workers are required - by law - to obtain a license in order to work. This barrier of entry depends on requirements set by licensing bo

Shoumita Dasgupta, "Where Biology Ends and Bias Begins: Lessons on Belonging from Our DNA" (U California Press, 2025)

Feb 10 2025 59 mins

Dr. Dasgupta is a geneticist and internationally recognized anti-racism educator. In this book, she provides a powerful, science-based rebuttal to common fallacies about human difference. Well-meaning physicians, parents, and even scientists today often spread misinformation about what biology can and can’t tell us about our bodies, minds, and identities. In this accessible, myth

Michael Rembis, "Writing Mad Lives in the Age of the Asylum" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Feb 09 2025 49 mins

The asylum--at once a place of refuge, incarceration, and abuse--touched the lives of many Americans living between 1830 and 1950. What began as a few scattered institutions in the mid-eighteenth century grew to 579 public and private asylums by the 1940s. About one out of every 280 Americans was an inmate in an asylum at an annual cost to taxpayers of approximately $200 million. U

Daniel Oberhaus, "The Silicon Shrink: How Artificial Intelligence Made the World an Asylum" (MIT Press, 2025)

Feb 04 2025 59 mins

AI psychiatrists promise to detect mental disorders with superhuman accuracy, provide affordable therapy for those who can't afford or can't access treatment, and even invent new psychiatric drugs. But the hype obscures an unnerving reality. In The Silicon Shrink: How Artificial Intelligence Made the World an Asylum (MIT Press, 2025), Daniel Oberhaus tells the inside story of how t