Freakonomics Radio is an award-winning weekly podcast with Stephen J. Dubner and Steve Levitt. The radio hosts base this podcast on their best-selling 2009 book, Freakonomics. The book is a fascinating look into the economic consequences and incentives of everything around us.
Listen to this highly recommended broadcast of their Bad Medicine series and explore the other side of medicine.
REBROADCAST: Bad Medicine, Part 1: The Story of 98.6
“We tend to think of medicine as a science, but for most of human history it has been scientific-ish at best. In the first episode of a three-part series, we look at the grotesque mistakes produced by centuries of trial-and-error, and ask whether the new era of evidence-based medicine is the solution.”
REBROADCAST: Bad Medicine, Part 2: (Drug) Trials and Tribulations
“How do so many ineffective and even dangerous drugs make it to market? One reason is that clinical trials are often run on “dream patients” who aren’t representative of a larger population. On the other hand, sometimes the only thing worse than being excluded from a drug trial is being included.”
REBROADCAST: Bad Medicine, Part 3: Death by Diagnosis
“By some estimates, medical error is the third-leading cause of death in the U.S. How can that be? And what’s to be done? Our third and final episode in this series offers some encouraging answers.”