Podcasts about Bioethics

About this episode:   Research on the potential impacts of certain medications, vaccines, and interventions on pregnant people and their fetuses is lacking. Much of this is due to culturally perceived risks associated with pregnancy and fears of litigation. In this episode: Ruth Faden, an expert in bioethics, explains how this gap in data can fuel other risks and how to ethically and responsibly include pregnant people in clinical trials. Note: This conversation builds on a recent episode of playing god?, the podcast from the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. Listen to that episode here. Guest:  Ruth Faden, PhD, MPH, is the Philip Franklin Wagley Professor of Biomedical Ethics and the founding director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics.  Host:  Stephanie Desmon, MA, is a former journalist, author, and the director of public relations and communications for the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs.  Show links and related content:  Two Bodies, One Prescription—playing god? COVID-19 Vaccines and Pregnancy—Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health The second wave: Toward responsible inclusion of pregnant women in research—International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics Weighing the Risks and Benefits of Medication Use During Pregnancy—Public Health On Call (October 2025) Transcript information: Looking for episode transcripts? Open our podcast on the Apple Podcasts app (desktop or mobile) or the Spotify mobile app to access an auto-generated transcript of any episode. Closed captioning is also available for every episode on our YouTube channel. Contact us: Have a question about something you heard? Looking for a transcript? Want to suggest a topic or guest? Contact us via email or visit our website. Follow us: @‌PublicHealthPod on Bluesky @‌PublicHealthPod on Instagram @‌JohnsHopkinsSPH on Facebook @‌PublicHealthOnCall on YouTube Here's our RSS feed Note: These podcasts are a conversation between the participants, and do not represent the position of Johns Hopkins University.

In 2020, Emily Mendenhall drove from Washington, DC to Okoboji, Iowa, a town of 800 that swells to 200,000 every summer, and walked into a pandemic that looked nothing like the one dominating national headlines. Inside gas stations and bars, masks marked you as an outsider. In one stop, a man told her family they would not be served if they kept theirs on. Her 6 year old daughter cried, confused. Mendenhall, a medical anthropologist at Georgetown University, did what she always does. She started asking questions. Over months, she interviewed neighbors, former classmates, and local officials, including her own brother in law who helped lead the local COVID response. The result became Unmasked, a case study in how community identity, economics, and politics shaped public health decisions in real time. That work led directly into her latest book, Invisible Illness: A History, from Hysteria to Long COVID, where she tracks a much older problem. Patients with chronic illness, especially women, often fail to meet medicine's demand for proof. Without a clear diagnosis, they lose access to care, insurance coverage, and legitimacy. Mendenhall argues that long COVID did not create this failure. It exposed it.This conversation centers on how healthcare systems reward certainty and punish complexity. Long COVID clinics send patients to 17 specialists without resolution. Insurance structures require diagnoses that many conditions cannot provide. Medical training still struggles to integrate trauma, mental health, and chronic disease into a coherent model of care.Mendenhall brings lived experience into the conversation. After COVID, she dealt with months of fatigue and escalating anxiety that altered her baseline health. She does not claim the label of long COVID, but she understands how quickly the system becomes harder to navigate once symptoms stop fitting clean categories. The stakes are not theoretical. In the United States, access to healthcare, disability benefits, and treatment still depends on whether a condition can be measured, coded, and reimbursed. For millions living with invisible illness, the burden of proof becomes the illness itself.RELATED LINKSEmily MendenhallInvisible Illness: A History, from Hysteria to Long COVIDScience PoliticsGeorgetown UniversityFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As Christians, we need to stay informed about the rapidly changing world of fertility treatments, genetic testing, and IVF before making decisions or forming opinions. Join C.L. as we explore the powerful story behind the Boozer family, wrestle with difficult questions about life, embryos, technology, and God's will, and seek biblical wisdom for navigating one of the most important ethical conversations of our time.

When Ashley Womble decides she wants to start a family, she worries she'll need to stop taking her antidepressant medication. Instead of finding clear guidance, she runs head-first into a troubling reality: many of the questions pregnant women and their physicians face about medication safety remain difficult to answer because pregnant women have historically been excluded from medical research. This episode looks at the ethical trade offs of leaving pregnant women out of medical research—and what happens when they and their doctors must make high stakes healthcare decisions without high quality evidence.This episode features:Ashley Womble, MPH: Writer and marketing professional.Ruth Faden, PhD, MPH: Philip Franklin Wagley Professor of Biomedical Ethics at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics.Crystal Clark, MD, MSc: Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto.Marika Toscano, MD, MS: Assistant Professor of Gynecology and Obstetrics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.This episode contains references to suicide, which may be distressing for some listeners. If you or someone you know is struggling, support is available.In the U.S., you can call or text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 or the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline at 1-833-TLC-MAMA.For listeners outside the U.S., the International Association for Suicide Prevention can help connect you with support in your area: www.iasp.info/suicidalthoughts/“playing god?” is a podcast by the iDeas Lab at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. To read a transcript of this episode, visit the iDeas Lab website at https://bioethics.jhu.edu/pgs2e6.The Johns Hopkins University Sesquicentennial is proud to support this podcast. JHU celebrates 150 years of pioneering education and research—advancing knowledge to meet the challenges of every generation. Learn more at 150.jhu.edu.

Host Dr. Mike Chupp is joined by CMDA's Vice President of Advocacy & Bioethics, Dr. Brick Lantz, to answer listener questions from both CMDA members and non-members. Together, they cover a wide range of topics, including conscience protections for pharmacists, the collision of faith and culture in the exam room, caring for patients who are dying, and the spiritual disciplines that help keep Christian healthcare professionals grounded.

Wesley J. Smith of the Discovery Institute Wesley Smith’s National Review Columns Culture of Death: The Age of “Do Harm” Medicine Forced Exit: Euthanasia, Assisted Suicide and the New Duty to DieThe post A Bioethics Update – Wesley Smith, 6/16/26 (1673) first appeared on Issues, Etc..

At 25, Jace Yawnick was building a career in health and wellness sales, chasing growth, status, and the usual young adult fantasy of getting somewhere fast. Then his body stopped cooperating. Fatigue turned into chemotherapy. The diagnosis was primary mediastinal B cell non Hodgkin lymphoma, and the rest of his life split into before and after. Now in remission, he talks about cancer the way people actually live it, not the way nonprofits package it. He gets into survivorship, mental health, young adult isolation, and the deadening absurdity of prior authorization. One of the sharpest parts of the conversation lands on a simple American insult disguised as policy: treatment innovation means very little when insurance can still deny the scan, the drug, or the next step. Jace has seen that firsthand, including during routine monitoring after active treatment. This episode tracks what happens when a young cancer patient becomes a public voice and refuses to play mascot. It covers oncology, insurance, remission, advocacy, and the long mental hangover that follows survival. It also names the part too many institutions dodge: the system works great right up until it doesn't, and when it fails, patients get handed the bill, the panic, and a camera if they want anyone to care. RELATED LINKSJace Beats CancerJace Yawnick on LinkedImConquer Cancer ArticleCURE Today ArticlePyure BrandsFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Rebecca Morrison is healthy by many measures. But like millions of people today, she finds herself wondering whether or not she should be taking a GLP-1 drug. What's the right thing to do? This episode explores how this new class of weight loss drugs is reshaping our healthcare choices, and the landscape in which we make them.You can read more about Rebecca Morrison's story in her novel, The Blue Dress, released March 2026. This episode features:Rebecca K. Morrison: Writer.Mara Gordon, MD: Primary Care Physician at Cooper University Hospital and Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University.Alexandra Brewis, PhD: Regents Professor and President's Professor at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University.Jeffrey Kahn, PhD, MPH: Andreas C. Dracopoulos Director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics.“playing god?” is a podcast by the iDeas Lab at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. To read a transcript of this episode, visit the iDeas Lab website at https://bioethics.jhu.edu/pgs2e5.The Johns Hopkins University Sesquicentennial is proud to support this podcast. JHU celebrates 150 years of pioneering education and research—advancing knowledge to meet the challenges of every generation. Learn more at 150.jhu.edu.

In this Ask Me Anything episode — recorded from memory after the questions were accidentally deleted — Dr. Will Cole and his team answer listener questions on candida overgrowth, body odor as a gut-skin axis check engine light, and Alpha-Gal syndrome. They cover the rotating antifungal approach, the microbiome-body odor connection from a 2017 study, and how ear acupuncture showed 96% symptom relief for Alpha-Gal in a small clinical trial. The conversation also lands on a jaw-dropping Bioethics journal article suggesting scientists should intentionally bioengineer ticks to give humans Alpha-Gal syndrome as an environmental strategy to reduce red meat consumption. Plus Sip of the Summer round two: LaCroix Sunshine, a Costa Rica orange espresso, and organic black iced tea. For all links mentioned in this episode, visit www.drwillcole.com/podcast.Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.Sponsors:Refresh your wardrobe with Quince. Go to Quince.com/willcole for free shipping and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too.Go to http://bioptimizers.com/willcole and use my exclusive code WILLCOLE to get 15% off any order.Use code WILLCOLE for an extra 30% off at blissy.com/WILLCOLE!To learn more and get 20% off your order, visit ActiveSkinRepair.com and use code: WILLCOLE . You can also find Active Skin Repair on Amazon and at your local CVS.Go to lyma.life and use code WILL10 for 10% off the LYMA Laser.Produced by Dear Media.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Attorney Nicolena Nino-Rosato has a unique and diverse background. Having started her career in the District Attorney's office while completing her master's degree In Healthcare Ethics and Bioethics, she understands all sides of a criminal case. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from Washington and Jefferson University in 2005. She then earned her joint JD/MA at Duquesne University and in 2008 Nicole went on to complete her residency program for her PhD at Duquesne University at Mercy Hospital. After working for a large firm in downtown Pittsburgh, Attorney Nino furthered her education by attending Saint James School of Medicine, to which she attributes her ability to grasp difficult medical concepts that come up in her cases. We also have with us co-Founder Timothy Rosato of an app called The NotME App. In episode 682 of the Fraternity Foodie Podcast, we find out common legal situations that college students find themselves in unintentionally, why communication is so complicated today, what was the inspiration behind The NotME App, healthy ways that college students can communicate their boundaries, how technology has changed the way college students communicate, what role alcohol plays in clouding communication, what is Title IX, how fraternities and sororities can create consent cultures in college, and how being a parent changes the way you think about student safety. Learn more about the app at: https://www.thenotmeapp.com

At 20 years old, newly arrived from Puerto Rico and trying to build a future in science, Benjamin Suarez Jimenez found himself sitting in front of two senior faculty members accused of plagiarism. He knew the material. He had done the work. His mistake came from failing to cite class notes during an exam because nobody had told him that was expected. In a matter of minutes, he watched what felt like his entire career flash before him.On this episode of Standard Deviation, host Oliver Bogler examines the hidden architecture of academic science through the experiences of Dr. Benjamin Suarez Jimenez, Assistant Professor at the University of Rochester and a neuroscientist studying PTSD, anxiety, trauma, and spatial cognition through virtual reality and video game environments.Benjamin traces his path from Puerto Rico to the mainland United States, through the NIH, Columbia University, and eventually to leading his own laboratory. Along the way, he encountered a series of barriers that had little to do with scientific ability and everything to do with access to unwritten rules. From academic gatekeeping to grant writing expectations, he learned that success in biomedical research often depends on knowledge that never appears in a textbook.Oliver explores how those invisible obstacles shape careers, influence research funding, and determine who gains access to opportunity. The conversation also examines the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Program at the Life Science Editors Foundation, which pairs scientists from underrepresented backgrounds with experienced scientific editors. Through that mentorship, Benjamin transformed a critical grant proposal into a successful pilot award that helped launch an NIH R01 application.The discussion extends beyond one scientist's experience. Benjamin describes helping a former mentee navigate dissertation roadblocks that threatened her graduation, illustrating how institutional bureaucracy can delay careers and discourage talented researchers. Together, they explore the hidden administrative burden, cultural barriers, and bias that many scientists carry alongside their research, and what happens when someone who receives support turns around and opens the door for others.RELATED LINKSLife Science Editors FoundationBenjamin Suarez Jimenez LabDr. Benjamin Suarez JimenezBenjamin Suarez JimenezFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

After 144 years the tallest tower on the Sagrada Familia is finally complete, but when Gaudi first designed it, the technology to build the tower didn't exist. We're joined by Tristram Carfrae, structural engineer and designer at Arup who was tasked with this impossible feat over a decade ago. With the reappearance of screwworm in North America, we ask – is it ever acceptable to intentionally drive a species to extinction? Tom is joined by Dr Gregory Kaebnick from the Hastings Center for Bioethics to dive into the science that could make it happen and the ethics stopping us. Four in five of us will check the weather daily, but do we really know what our apps are telling us? Meteorologist Simon King guides us through the complex models behind these forecasts that govern our daily decisions. Plus, science journalist Caroline Steel is in the studio bringing us the scientific discoveries the headlines missed, but that you need to know. Presenter: Tom Whipple Producer: Kate White Editor: Martin Smith Production Co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth

What does it mean to practice pure unlimited love? Love research defines pure unlimited love as a state in which the security and well-being of another becomes as real and meaningful to you as your own. Embracing this mindset is a profound pathway to discovering lasting inner peace. At the heart of this approach is the activation of the ten distinct forms of love that allow us to engage with our modern, enraged culture. By applying the science of altruism, we can look past the anger and actively transform conflict into a deep, authentic connection.. To unpack the science of altruism, Harvesting Happiness Podcast host Lisa Cypers Kamen welcomes Stephen G. Post, the Founding Director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics at Stony Brook University Renaissance School of Medicine. Stephen breaks down the ten core principles of love from his book, Pure Unlimited Love: Science and the Seven Paths to Inner Peace. He also explores the concepts of care-frontation, Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), and love as the ultimate reality. Like what you're hearing? WANT MORE SOUND IDEAS FOR DEEPER THINKING? Check out More Mental Fitness by Harvesting Happiness bonus content available exclusively on https://harvestinghappiness.substack.com/ and https://medium.com/@HarvestingHappiness.

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Daniel Fogal, Assistant Professor of Bioethics at NYU GPH, about his course Advanced Introduction to The Ethics of Technology. Dr. Fogal shares his journey from a philosophy undergraduate degree to joining the NYU Center for Bioethics, mapping how the discipline has expanded beyond traditional doctor-patient relationships and research ethics to address broader population-level challenges. We dive into complex global issues, including the allocation of scarce medical resources and the modern ethical implications brought on by the rise of social media and artificial intelligence self driving vehicles. Dr. Fogal discusses his passion for teaching applied, controversial issues in the classroom, explaining how he leverages the diverse perspectives of his students to help them think more clearly, carefully, and critically. This conversation highlights NYU GPH's unique interdisciplinary expertise and teaching excellence, showing how grounding public health issues in ethical frameworks equips students to navigate tomorrow's scientific and technological challenges. To learn more about the NYU School of Global Public Health, and how our innovative programs are training the next generation of public health leaders, visit http://www.publichealth.nyu.edu.

Hour 1 for 6/10/26 Drew and Father Tad Pacholczyk discuss DNA editing and cloning (5:22). Topics/calls: epigenetics (14:03), cloning (20:27), personality of clones (22:26), and review boards (25:02). Then, Steve Mosher from the Population Research Institute discusses falling fertility rates (33:57). Topics: why young people don't want children (38:00), socialization (43:30), and the economy (48:31). Links: https://www.ncbcenter.org/ http://fathertad.com/ https://www.pop.org/

In this medical ethics report from the UKMFA podcast, host Ian Humphreys explores the hidden, uncomfortable realities of assisted suicide. As the UK considers reintroducing the Terminally Ill Adults Assisted Dying Bill, the mainstream narrative presents a peaceful, sanitized version of an assisted death. But what is the actual physiological and pharmacological reality of these protocols?Ian is joined by Amanda Hunter, convenor of this series of podcasts, Dr Liz Evans, CEO of the UK Medical Freedom Alliance and special guest Dr Joel Zivot MD/FRCPC, a practicing Academic Physician specializing in Anaesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine. Dr Zivot did his medical training in Canada and the US, with additional qualifications in Bioethics and Law. He currently works in Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia as an Associate and Adjunct Professor in various departments. Drawing from his extensive research into US death row executions and Canada's MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) system, Dr Zivot reveals the unacknowledged and horrifying physical suffering experienced by the patient in Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia.“Assisted dying is death-loving. It's not life-loving. As a physician, I love life. I'm an advocate for life. I'm not an advocate for death.” — Dr Joel ZivotKey Topics DiscussedImpersonating a Medical Act: Why expanding medical care to include killing is an unprecedented ethical shift that transforms healing drugs into lethal poisons.The Execution Parallel: How the unresearched chemical cocktails used for death row executions mirror the intravenous protocols utilized in Canadian MAID deaths.The Truth About Midazolam & Paralytics: How paralyzing drugs are used in Assisted Suicide protocols to artificially create an outward appearance of peace for witnesses, while potentially masking profound internal distress of the patient as they suffocate to death.Pulmonary Oedema Findings: Dr Zivot's shocking autopsy research revealing that 75% to 80% of executed individuals die from severe pulmonary oedema—meaning they die by oxygen starvation and suffocation.The Legislative Slippery Slope: Why legal safeguards fail and how the introduction of assisted suicide inevitably expands to vulnerable, lonely, or under-resourced populations, while actively eroding the funding and practice of true palliative care.IN SUMMARY: Assisted Suicide deaths are not the glamorous and beautiful “Hollywood” deaths-on-demand, sold by the sponsors of the Assisted Dying Bill and lobby groups such as Dignity in Dying.UKMFA: CALL TO ACTION: Please follow us and subscribe on our YouTube and Rumble channels and please share our content on social media and with friends and family, to help us get the message out and increase our reach.All our podcasts can also be found on the major audio platforms e.g. Apple and Spotify.Our Substack is found here: https://substack.com/@ukmfa1We are grateful for all donations to help us to continue and grow our work; lobbying decision makers; educating and empowering the public; running campaigns and producing our podcasts. You can use this link to donate directly: https://donorbox.org/ukmfa_podcast. Please visit the UK Medical Freedom Alliance at www.ukmedfreedom.org and https://substack.com/@ukmfa1 to access all our material and resources.

Michael Shermer speaks with Oxford philosopher Carissa Véliz about the long human desire to know the future—from ancient oracles and astrology to AI, surveillance capitalism, predictive policing, and "data-driven" decision-making. Véliz argues that prediction is rarely neutral: the same machinery that collects personal data also tries to forecast behavior, and once institutions start treating predictions as facts, forecasts can become tools of control. The conversation gets into why privacy matters for democracy, how algorithms can turn human lives into self-fulfilling prophecies, and why extraordinary people often fall outside predictive models. Shermer and Véliz also discuss the limits of science, the replication crisis, crime statistics, effective altruism, utilitarian ethics, and free will. Carissa Véliz is an associate professor at the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford. Her first book, Privacy Is Power (Melville House) was an Economist book of the year and has been published in seven languages. Her academic work has been published in The Harvard Business Review, Nature, AI & Society, and The American Journal of Bioethics, among others. Her new book is Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI.

Dr. Sarah Matt trained as a burn surgeon, working in a field where patients arrive with catastrophic injuries and survival depends on speed, skill, and resources. She left the bedside after confronting a limit that medicine does not like to admit. One physician can only see so many people in a day. The system surrounding those patients decides the rest. She moved into health technology, held leadership roles in startups, and built global infrastructure at Oracle to scale care across populations. Then she watched billions of dollars in digital health and AI initiatives stall out when they hit real clinical environments.This episode follows that pivot from surgeon to strategist and back into direct patient care in rural New York, where she now treats uninsured patients, migrant workers, and communities pushed to the margins. The conversation centers on a persistent failure across healthcare systems. Products get built for regulators, executives, and investors instead of the people who use them. The result shows up in failed adoption, broken workflows, prior authorization delays, and rising physician burnout.The discussion cuts through health policy language and lands on lived consequence. The system rewards speed over usability, scale over trust, and compliance over care. Patients absorb the fallout. Physicians carry the liability. The incentives remain intact.RELATED LINKSDr. Sarah MattThe Borderless Healthcare RevolutionThe Clinical RealistJessica FedererSovatoFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

After losing their son Noahto to mitochondrial disease, Kristelle and Evan Shulman are determined that his death will not be in vain, holding fast to their dream of having healthy, biologically-related children. This search leads them abroad in pursuit of an emerging reproductive technology, one filled with scientific promise, but also ethical questions, financial strain, and profound uncertainty. This episode explores how families and physicians make decisions when novel approaches can reduce risk, but never eliminate it. (Part 2 of 2.)This episode features:Kristelle and Evan Shulman: Parents navigating mitochondrial disease and reproductive decisionmaking.Marni Falk, MD: Attending physician and Executive Director of the Mitochondrial Medicine Frontier Program at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Professor in the Division of Human Genetics, Department of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.Jeffrey Kahn, PhD, MPH: Andreas C. Dracopoulos Director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics.“playing god?” is a podcast by the iDeas Lab at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. To read a transcript of this episode, visit the iDeas Lab website at https://bioethics.jhu.edu/pgs2e4.The Johns Hopkins University Sesquicentennial is proud to support this podcast. JHU celebrates 150 years of pioneering education and research—advancing knowledge to meet the challenges of every generation. Learn more at 150.jhu.edu.

Dust off your aprons and heat up your cast iron because it's finally time for one of our most requested episodes yet! In this episode, Hannah and Marcelle dig deep into the tradwife phenomenon. Using the viral tradwife influencer Ballerina Farm as a case study, Hannah leads us through a discussion about eugenics, replacement theory, and clean living movements. They also get into influencer culture, the performance of farm life, and…milk. Whew! That's a lot, and it's ALL relevant.This episode is for those of you who love to hate tradwives, are curious about their meteoric rise in popularity over the last few years, or have never even heard of them!Related listening:9 to 5 x Labour Feminism with Zena SharmanGet Out x Horrifying WhitenessWitch, Please: Book 7, Ep. 6 | EugenicsWorks Cited:Agnew, Megan. “Meet the queen of the ‘trad wives' (and her eight children.” The Times 20 July 2024: https://archive.ph/YHB08. “Clean living movement.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_living_movement. Accessed 14 May 2026. Elster, N., Parsi, K., & Caplan, A. Guest editorial. “Laundering Public Health: Using Autism to Revive Eugenics.” The American Journal of Bioethics (2026): 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2026.2659519. “Eugenics and Scientific Racism.” National Human Genome Research Institute 18 May 2022. https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Eugenics-and-Scientific-Racism. Accessed 14 May 2026. Luse, Brittany. “Mormon Moms: Unpacking a national obsession.” It's Been A Minute (NPR) 12 November 2024: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1212541651. Moskin, Julia. “Tycoon or Tradwife? The Woman Behind Ballerina Farm Makes Her Own Path.” The New York Times 3 December 2024: https://archive.ph/Q9j2J#selection-489.0-489.70. Petersen, Anne Helen. “The Edenic Allure of Ballerina Farm.” Culture Study 10 February 2022: https://annehelen.substack.com/p/the-edenic-allure-of-ballerinafarm. Sykes, Sophia and Dr Veronica Hopner. “Tradwives: The Housewives Commodifying Right-Wing Ideology.” Global Network on Extremism & Technology 7 July 2023: https://gnet-research.org/2023/07/07/tradwives-the-housewives-commodifying-right-wing-ideology/. Valverde, Mariana. The Age of Light, Soap, and Water: Moral Reform in English Canada, 1885-1925. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1991.***To learn more about Material Girls, head to our Instagram at instagram.com/ohwitchplease! Or check out our website ohwitchplease.ca. We'll be back next week with a Material Concerns episode, but until then, go check out all the other content we have on our Patreon at Patreon.com/ohwitchplease! Patreon is how we produce the show and pay our team!Material Girls is a show that makes sense of the zeitgeist through materialist critique* and critical theory! Each episode looks at a unique object of study (something popular now or from back in the day) and over the course of three distinct segments, Hannah and Marcelle apply their academic expertise to the topic at hand.*Materialist Critique is, at its simplest possible level, a form of cultural critique – that is, scholarly engagement with a cultural text of some kind – that is interested in modes of production, moments of reception, and the historical and ideological contexts for both.Music Credits:“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”.Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the late 1980s, a child exposed to fallout from the Chernobyl disaster lay in a hospital bed while doctors told his family there were no clear answers and no reliable path forward. Decades later, that same child, Yan Leyfman, walks into exam rooms as a hematology oncology fellow, expected to deliver clarity inside a system that still runs on delay, uncertainty, and institutional self preservation.This episode traces the throughline from early life shaped by radiation exposure and hospice level uncertainty to a career inside academic medicine, translational research, and oncology media. Yan built his identity around survival and usefulness, moving from patient to physician while carrying the memory of what it feels like to sit on the other side of the table. He helped launch MedNews Week during the COVID crisis to push back on misinformation and expand access to medical knowledge, stepping into a public role while still in training.The conversation stays grounded in the friction between personal narrative and system reality. Clinical training demands efficiency, hierarchy, and emotional distance. Cancer care demands time, clarity, and human connection. Those forces collide in real patient encounters where prior authorization delays, insurance barriers, and fragmented care pathways shape outcomes as much as any treatment protocol.Yan speaks openly about mentorship, belonging, and the drive to make meaning out of survival. The discussion pushes further into what the healthcare system actually rewards, what it quietly strips away, and how quickly empathy can erode under institutional pressure. The episode also examines the role of medical media, where education, industry influence, and narrative control often blur together.This is a conversation about identity under construction, about what happens when someone who remembers powerlessness steps into a role that carries authority, and about whether that memory can survive long enough to change anything.RELATED LINKSYan Leyfman on LinkedInYan Leyfman on InstagramSurviving ChernobylFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When Kristelle and Evan Shulman lose their young son Noah to a rare mitochondrial disease, they are told they may never be able to have a healthy biologically related child. Then they discover mitochondrial replacement technology, or MRT, a controversial procedure that could prevent the disease from being passed on to future generations. This episode explores how families, clinicians, and policymakers grapple with the ethics of novel reproductive technologies that offer extraordinary hope amid profound uncertainty. (Part 1 of 2.)This episode features:Kristelle and Evan Shulman: Parents navigating mitochondrial disease and reproductive decision-making.Marni Falk, MD: Attending physician and Executive Director of the Mitochondrial Medicine Frontier Program at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Professor in the Division of Human Genetics, Department of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.Jeffrey Kahn, PhD, MPH: Andreas C. Dracopoulos Director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics.“playing god?” is a podcast by the iDeas Lab at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. To read a transcript of this episode, visit the iDeas Lab website at https://bioethics.jhu.edu/pgs2e3.The Johns Hopkins University Sesquicentennial is proud to support this podcast. JHU celebrates 150 years of pioneering education and research—advancing knowledge to meet the challenges of every generation. Learn more at 150.jhu.edu.

Bioethics are a matter of practical, everyday concern for physicians, and other health care providers, especially as medical science continues to advance, opening up new therapeutic possibilities. In this episode of The Lancet Voice, the bioethicist and oncologist, Ezekiel Emanuel, talks about applying bioethics to some of today's most pressing health problems, globally.   Click here to read the full article: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/piis0140-6736(09)60137-9/fulltext

Dust off your aprons and heat up your cast iron because it's finally time for one of our most requested episodes yet! In this episode, Hannah and Marcelle dig deep into the tradwife phenomenon. Using the viral tradwife influencer Ballerina Farm as a case study, Hannah leads us through a discussion about eugenics, replacement theory, and clean living movements. They also get into influencer culture, the performance of farm life, and…milk. Whew! That's a lot, and it's ALL relevant.This episode is for those of you who love to hate tradwives, are curious about their meteoric rise in popularity over the last few years, or have never even heard of them!Related listening:9 to 5 x Labour Feminism with Zena SharmanGet Out x Horrifying WhitenessWitch, Please: Book 7, Ep. 6 | EugenicsWorks Cited:Agnew, Megan. “Meet the queen of the ‘trad wives' (and her eight children.” The Times 20 July 2024: https://archive.ph/YHB08. “Clean living movement.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_living_movement. Accessed 14 May 2026. Elster, N., Parsi, K., & Caplan, A. Guest editorial. “Laundering Public Health: Using Autism to Revive Eugenics.” The American Journal of Bioethics (2026): 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2026.2659519. “Eugenics and Scientific Racism.” National Human Genome Research Institute 18 May 2022. https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Eugenics-and-Scientific-Racism. Accessed 14 May 2026. Luse, Brittany. “Mormon Moms: Unpacking a national obsession.” It's Been A Minute (NPR) 12 November 2024: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1212541651. Moskin, Julia. “Tycoon or Tradwife? The Woman Behind Ballerina Farm Makes Her Own Path.” The New York Times 3 December 2024: https://archive.ph/Q9j2J#selection-489.0-489.70. Petersen, Anne Helen. “The Edenic Allure of Ballerina Farm.” Culture Study 10 February 2022: https://annehelen.substack.com/p/the-edenic-allure-of-ballerinafarm. Sykes, Sophia and Dr Veronica Hopner. “Tradwives: The Housewives Commodifying Right-Wing Ideology.” Global Network on Extremism & Technology 7 July 2023: https://gnet-research.org/2023/07/07/tradwives-the-housewives-commodifying-right-wing-ideology/. Valverde, Mariana. The Age of Light, Soap, and Water: Moral Reform in English Canada, 1885-1925. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1991.***To learn more about Material Girls, head to our Instagram at instagram.com/ohwitchplease! Or check out our website ohwitchplease.ca. We'll be back next week with a Material Concerns episode, but until then, go check out all the other content we have on our Patreon at Patreon.com/ohwitchplease! Patreon is how we produce the show and pay our team!Material Girls is a show that makes sense of the zeitgeist through materialist critique* and critical theory! Each episode looks at a unique object of study (something popular now or from back in the day) and over the course of three distinct segments, Hannah and Marcelle apply their academic expertise to the topic at hand.*Materialist Critique is, at its simplest possible level, a form of cultural critique – that is, scholarly engagement with a cultural text of some kind – that is interested in modes of production, moments of reception, and the historical and ideological contexts for both.Music Credits:“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”.Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Matthew Zachary is a brain cancer survivor, healthcare advocate, founder of Stupid Cancer and We the Patients, and host of Out of Patients. In April 2026, he returned to the stage at Merkin Hall near Lincoln Center for his first solo public piano concert in almost 22 years while launching his debut book, We the Patients: Understanding, Navigating, and Surviving America's Healthcare Nightmare.What unfolded became far larger than a concert.Over 2 hours, survivors, clinicians, advocates, nonprofit founders, journalists, pharmaceutical sponsors, and healthcare insiders gathered in one room to reflect on 30 years of survivorship, institutional failure, accidental advocacy, and the emotional afterlife of cancer. The evening moved through original piano performances, live chapter readings, and deeply personal conversations about infertility, disability, financial toxicity, insurance denials, grief, burnout, and what happens when patients spend decades navigating systems designed around transactions instead of continuity.Guests including Wendell Potter, Maimah Karmo, Craig Lustig, Shelly Fuld Nasso, Tamika Felder, and others reflected on how the modern cancer advocacy movement emerged largely because patients built parallel systems where healthcare infrastructure failed to meet human needs. The conversation explored how prior authorization, reimbursement incentives, administrative fragmentation, and institutional distrust continue shaping the patient experience across oncology and survivorship.The performance also marked a deeply personal milestone. After brain cancer compromised his left hand at age 21, Zachary spent 6 months rehabilitating both hands to return to public performance for the first time in over 2 decades. The result became part concert, part civic gathering, and part historical record of a generation of survivors who refused to disappear quietly.RELATED LINKSMZLIVE Official WebsiteMZLIVE YouTube VideoFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What does it take to build a culture of ethics inside a health system — and what happens when leaders lack the courage to defend it? In this episode of SoundPractice, host Mike Sacopulos sits down with Arthur Caplan, PhD, one of the world's foremost bioethicists and the founding head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine's Department of Population Health. Dr. Caplan traces his path into bioethics from a childhood hospitalization for polio to graduate training at Columbia, where he witnessed firsthand the ethical gaps in medicine's early encounters with IVF, informed consent, and research oversight. That experience shaped a career devoted not just to theorizing about ethics, but to solving real problems in real institutions. In this wide-ranging conversation, Dr. Caplan and Mike Sacopulos explore: - What an effective ethics infrastructure looks like - The defining bioethical challenges of the next decade - Compassionate use and unproven therapies - Misinformation and informed consent - Rationing and equity - Bioethics training for the next generation Learn more about the American Association for Physician Leadership.

In December 1996, a 37 year old pharmaceutical executive sat in a Borders bookstore reading medical textbooks on the floor, trying to understand a disease she had never heard of. Multiple myeloma carried a three year prognosis. Her daughter was 18 months old. Her father had just died of cancer. Within weeks, she pushed her doctors to say the quiet part clearly. This would likely end her life before her child entered kindergarten.Kathy Giusti refused to accept passive survival. She built a plan while the system offered fragments. She interviewed oncologists and fertility specialists at the same time. She pursued IVF to have a second child while preparing for treatment. She stayed employed to keep insurance coverage. Every decision carried financial, medical, and emotional risk.That same urgency exposed a deeper failure. Cancer research moved slowly. Academic centers guarded data. Clinical trials lacked coordination. Patients entered a system that demanded compliance without providing clarity. Giusti responded by building the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, not as a support group, but as an operating engine to accelerate drug development, fund research, and force collaboration across institutions.This episode tracks the tension between individual agency and systemic failure. Giusti describes how patients navigate diagnosis, insurance barriers, and fragmented care in real time. She explains how data, genomics, and clinical trials reshape cancer treatment while still leaving patients responsible for decisions they are not trained to make. She addresses disparities in access, the limits of early detection, and the reality that progress in oncology often depends on speed, funding, and alignment of incentives.The conversation moves between lived experience and structural critique. It names the cost of delay, the burden placed on patients to act as their own advocate, and the tradeoffs required to push a system forward that still protects itself first.⸻RELATED LINKSKathy GiustiMultiple Myeloma Research FoundationFatal to FearlessAmerican Society of Hematology⸻FEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Humanity is actively working towards a mission to Mars. When astronauts like Bernard Harris leave Earth, they accept risk as part of the mission. But a journey to Mars would push that risk into entirely new territory—where help is unreachable, uncertainty is unavoidable, and coming home may not be an option. This episode explores how space agencies, astronauts, and all of us need to grapple with how much risk is ethically acceptable for individuals to take on in pursuit of societal benefit, and who gets to decide. This episode features:Bernard A. Harris Jr., MD: former NASA astronaut.James D. Polk, DO: Chief Health and Medical Officer of NASA.Jeffrey Kahn, PhD, MPH: Andreas C. Dracopoulos Director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics.“playing god?” is a podcast by the iDeas Lab at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. To read a transcript of this episode, visit the iDeas Lab website at https://bioethics.jhu.edu/pgs2e2.The Johns Hopkins University Sesquicentennial is proud to support this podcast. JHU celebrates 150 years of pioneering education and research—advancing knowledge to meet the challenges of every generation. Learn more at 150.jhu.edu.

For this episode, we are joined by Kadija Ferryman, an anthropologist who studies equity and policy in health risk prediction technologies. Dr. Ferryman is Faculty at the Berman Institute of Bioethics and Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.Dr. Ferryman traces her path into studying technology through a cultural anthropology lens, beginning with an early curiosity about how different cultures define illness and disease. She explains how the cultural anthropology focus on beliefs, values, and power structures shapes the way she examines modern health technologies. Using examples like the sequencing of the human genome, she highlights how different scientific communities drew strikingly different conclusions from the same discovery, revealing deeper tensions about race, biology, and social meaning that continue to influence biomedical research.Building on this foundation, Dr. Ferryman explores how bias becomes embedded in everyday health technologies, from pulse oximeters to clinical risk prediction algorithms. She describes how known inaccuracies of pulse oximeter readings for darker-skinned individuals persisted for decades and became especially visible during the COVID-19 pandemic. Extending these concerns to emerging areas like generative AI, she raises important questions about how biased data can shape both clinical care and healthcare systems more broadly. At the same time, she offers a more nuanced perspective: these flawed technologies can also serve as powerful windows into the inequities of our society and as opportunities to rethink how ethics is integrated into medicine and technological development.Ferryman K, Mackintosh M, Ghassemi M. Considering Biased Data as Informative Artifacts in AI-Assisted Health Care. N Engl J Med. 2023 Aug 31;389(9):833-838.Ethical Guidelines for AI:https://healthaipartnership.org/health-equity-across-the-ai-lifecycle-heaalhttps://www.chai.org/https://nam.edu/our-work/programs/leadership-consortium/health-care-artificial-intelligence-code-of-conduct/Select other publications by Dr. Ferryman:Collins BX, Bélisle-Pipon JC, Evans BJ, Ferryman K, Jiang X, Nebeker C, Novak L, Roberts K, Were M, Yin Z, Ravitsky V, Coco J, Hendricks-Sturrup R, Williams I, Clayton EW, Malin BA; Bridge2AI Ethics and Trustworthy AI Working Group. Addressing ethical issues in healthcare artificial intelligence using a lifecycle-informed process. JAMIA Open. 2024 Nov 15;7(4):ooae108.Shachar C, Drabo EF, Iwashyna TJ, Ferryman K. Addressing Racial and Ethnic Bias in Pulse Oximeters-A Wicked Problem. JAMA. 2025 Feb 18;333(7):563-564.Ferryman K, Crews DC, Drabo EF, Iwashyna TJ, Kane O, Jackson JW. Adherence to FDA Guidance on Pulse Oximetry Testing Among Diverse Individuals, 1996-2024. JAMA. 2025 Feb 18;333(7):631-632Also mentioned on the show: Joy Buolamwini Coded Bias

At 19, Shlomit woke up unable to speak. The right side of her body went numb. An emergency room sent her home and called it stress. That moment did not end in a diagnosis that changed policy or triggered reform. It sent her into a decade long pursuit of understanding how the brain fails language and how the healthcare system fails patients who cannot advocate for themselves.Shlomit trained as a speech language pathologist and spent years inside acute care hospitals and ICUs, performing endoscopies and treating patients with brain injury, stroke, and dysphagia. She watched medical teams rotate in and out, deliver dense updates, and leave families nodding without comprehension. She stayed behind and translated. Every day, patients told her she was the only one who explained what was happening. That gap is not an accident. Hospital systems optimize for throughput, not understanding. Patients move through beds based on cost, not readiness. Discharge planning becomes a financial decision wrapped in clinical language. A stay under 48 hours can shift the insurance burden dramatically, leaving patients exposed to higher out of pocket costs. Shlomit left the system and built Patient Path NYC, a private patient advocacy service. She now spends 15 to 20 hours a week per client reading charts, coordinating care teams, and translating medical decisions into plain language. Her work sits in the uncomfortable space between healthcare policy and lived experience. Families pay out of pocket to understand their own care. Hospitals benefit from the clarity she provides while maintaining the same structural incentives that created the confusion.This conversation tracks the human cost of fragmented care, the economics behind discharge decisions, and the quiet reality that patients who cannot communicate clearly often lose control of their own outcomes.RELATED LINKSShlomit LibertyShlomit Liberty on LinkedInPatient Path NYCBoard Certified Patient AdvocateFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When journalist Esmé Deprez receives a text from her father, Ron Deprez, asking for help to die, she enters one of the most ethically fraught spaces in modern medicine: Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD). This episode explores what it means to assist a loved one's death under MAiD law—and how personal compassion collides with professional and societal ethics.This episode features:Esmé E. Deprez: Writer and investigative journalist. Jeffrey Kahn, PhD, MPH: Andreas C. Dracopoulos Director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics.Jennifer Eitingon, MD: Medical Director of Monument Health Hospice and Inpatient Palliative Care Attending Physician.You can see photos and read more about Esmé and Ron Deprez's story in her 2021 essay, “Death With Dignity: How I Helped My Dad Die.” “playing god?” is a podcast by the iDeas Lab at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. To read a transcript of this episode, visit the iDeas Lab website at https://bioethics.jhu.edu/pgs2e1 The Johns Hopkins University Sesquicentennial is proud to support this podcast. JHU celebrates 150 years of pioneering education and research—advancing knowledge to meet the challenges of every generation. Learn more at 150.jhu.edu.

In 2020, developmental biologist Dr. Crystal Rogers drove the country roads outside Davis, California crying between grant rejections, wondering whether she was about to lose her lab, her career, and the scientific future she had spent years building. She had already done what academia tells young scientists to do. She earned the credentials. She landed a faculty position at UC Davis. She built a lab. Then the real test began.On this episode of Standard Deviation, Dr. Oliver Bogler examines the unspoken rules that determine which scientists survive academic research and which quietly disappear from it. The conversation follows Crystal Rogers and cancer biologist Dr. Michelle Mendoza as they collide with the “Hidden Curriculum” of biomedical science: the unwritten rhetoric, institutional signaling, and grant writing strategies that often decide who receives funding, tenure, and long term stability.Michelle Mendoza entered a tenure track position at the Huntsman Cancer Institute while raising 3 children, navigating a divorce, and trying to secure major NIH funding during COVID. What looked like objective scientific review turned out to depend heavily on persuasion, presentation, and insider fluency. Established researchers could promise massive research agendas based on reputation alone. Junior investigators faced a completely different standard.Oliver traces how the Life Science Editors Foundation and its JEDI program intervened by pairing scientists with former editors from journals including Cell and Nature. The work had little to do with commas or grammar. Editors challenged logic, structure, and scientific framing before grant reviewers could destroy an application in public.Both researchers eventually secured career defining grants. One realized she would keep her job and not have to move her family. The other celebrated by ordering a personalized “DEV BIO” license plate and driving through Davis blasting nineties hip hop and Beyoncé.The episode exposes how biomedical research funding rewards institutional fluency as much as scientific talent, and how hidden systems inside academic medicine continue shaping who gets to stay in science long enough to make discoveries.RELATED LINKSDr. Crystal Rogers LinkedInDr. Crystal Rogers Faculty PageDr. Crystal Rogers LabDr. Michelle Mendoza LinkedInDr. Michelle Mendoza Faculty PageHuntsman Cancer Institute Mendoza LabLife Science Editors FoundationFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Send us Fan MailWhen you hear “bioethics,” you might picture abstract debates and dense academic language, but that's not the case with today's guest. I'm joined by Dr. Elizabeth Yuko, an award-winning journalist, bioethicist and longtime Rolling Stone contributor, to talk about the real-world ethical choices hiding inside health headlines, medical research and public policy decisions that don't come with clean answers.We dig into how Elizabeth built a career that blends deep expertise with plainspoken science journalism, from her early training to reporting across public health, culture and even design. She shares what it was like to spend months closely following the researchers working on COVID vaccines, why long COVID coverage still struggles for attention and how grief became a central part of her early pandemic reporting while she was sick herself. Along the way, we talk about how journalists keep stories accurate when misinformation spreads fast and when once-trusted institutions no longer feel like reliable touchpoints.Then we get into media ethics right now: AI in newsrooms, AI-generated drafts, sloppy AI research habits and the growing pressure to write for SEO or to “optimize” stories so chatbots cite them. Elizabeth makes a clear argument for why journalism should serve readers first. We also cover neurodiversity, including her ADHD diagnosis, and yes, how The Golden Girls can be a surprisingly sharp framework for explaining bioethical dilemmas. If you work in PR, she closes with straightforward pitching advice on relevance, exclusives and what immediately raises red flags.Subscribe for more conversations with the people who report on the world, share this with a friend who cares about media ethics and leave a review telling us what part of the AI and misinformation conversation hit you hardest.Dr. Elizabeth Yuko website: https://elizabethyuko.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/elizabethyuko/Rolling Stone: https://www.rollingstone.com/author/elizabeth-yuko/ TEDx Talk: Bioethics and The Golden Girls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rn1RyDPZOA Fordham University bio/profile: https://www.fordham.edu/academics/departments/ethics-and-society/faculty/elizabeth-yuko/ 

In 2008, Katy Talento walked away from Capitol Hill and into a Catholic convent. Within a year, she walked out. Within another decade, she sat inside the White House shaping health policy. Somewhere in between, she got labeled “infertile” after a single cycle of testing and spent years believing it.That label stuck. The pain that came before it never got investigated. Doctors offered birth control and moved on. No one asked why her body was struggling. No one followed the thread.Talento built her career inside the very systems she now critiques. She worked on federal health policy, global disease programs, and later advised the Trump administration on healthcare reform. She helped advance price transparency rules in a system where hospitals can still list 457 different prices for the same service.Then she left.Now she builds employer health plans that bypass insurers, PBMs, and traditional networks. Her approach replaces insurance contracts with direct payment, nurse navigators, and cost sharing models that promise simplicity but raise hard questions about risk and protection.This conversation sits in that tension.Talento describes a healthcare system shaped by layered incentives, where insurers, hospitals, and intermediaries profit from complexity. She argues that employers hold the leverage to disrupt it. The host pushes on what happens when patients fall outside those structures, when contracts disappear, and when community based models fail.The episode moves through infertility, misdiagnosis, insurance design, and the mechanics of employer sponsored care. It tracks how policy decisions made in Washington ripple into exam rooms, billing departments, and family lives.It also confronts a harder truth.Even insiders who understand the system can still get caught in it.RELATED LINKSAllBetter HealthKaty TalentoThem Before UsAn Arm and a LegRelentless Health ValueFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Life and death decisions. Difficult tradeoffs. “playing god?” explores ethical dilemmas in health and medicine through the first-person stories of people who have lived them. Brought to you by the Dracopoulos-Bloomberg iDeas Lab at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. New episodes weekly starting May 19. 

Guest: Hank Greely, Professor of Law and Expert in Bioethics at Stanford University

In a wooded campground cabin in the early 2000s, 19 year old Ben Unger stood in the doorway and watched 20 naked men form a circle around a crying teenager. A counselor held up two tangerines and shouted, “These are your balls.” The exercise claimed to cure same sex attraction by forcing young men to “reclaim” their masculinity from overbearing mothers. Phones had been confiscated. Parents had paid thousands of dollars. Religion supplied the script. Pseudoscience supplied the props.Ben had grown up in an Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn and later studied in Israel to become a rabbi. When he admitted he felt attracted to men, rabbis told him to eat 7 figs a day, immerse in a ritual bath 5 times daily, or marry a woman and trust that “if there's friction, it works.” At 19, he entered conversion therapy through an organization called Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality, known as JONAH. He left with depression, religious trauma, and 6 months of silence toward the mother he had been taught to blame.Years later, represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Ben helped sue JONAH for consumer fraud in a landmark New Jersey case. The argument centered on evidence, not theology. Sexual orientation cannot be changed. The jury deliberated for 3 hours and ruled against the organization. The verdict helped reshape how states regulate conversion therapy and protect minors from psychological harm disguised as treatment.Today, Ben runs Buff Personal Training in New York City, a gym built on autonomy, mental health, and self respect. His story traces the arc from institutional control to self authorship. The conversation examines religion, LGBTQ rights, conversion therapy, consumer protection law, and the lasting cost of being told your identity is a disorder.RELATED LINKSBen Unger on LinkedInBen Unger on InstagramBUF Personal TrainingSouthern Poverty Law CenterJONAHFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this deeply moving episode of I Am Refocused, host Shemaiah Reed welcomes the dynamic husband-and-wife team Dr. Bob Cranston and Tammy Cranston. Dr. Bob Cranston is a neurologist with 35 years at Carle Health, a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology, and Illinois Rural Physician of the Year 2024. He holds an MA in ethics, authored Bioethics and Today's Christian, and lectures widely on medical ethics while recently earning certification in Comprehensive Bereavement Skills. Tammy Cranston is an award-winning author, keynote speaker for women's retreats, and hospice volunteer. Her books include Why Not Me? and the critically acclaimed children's book Rooted: A Seedling's Journey (first in a five-book series). She too is certified in Comprehensive Bereavement Skills. Together, they co-authored The Blank Journal, write memoirs, and speak on grief companioning, advance directives, death, and finishing life well. Married since 2012 and living in Pensacola Beach, Florida, they also model a vibrant, adventurous life—skydiving, paragliding, white-water rafting, and more—while cherishing their four children and 13 grandchildren. If you've ever wondered how to navigate loss, make clear end-of-life decisions, or live with greater purpose and intention, this conversation will help you refocus and finish strong.https://tammycranston.com/

This episode is great to share with your doctor or healthcare provider. We explore how medical visits could become more supportive for people living with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS).We focus on listening, trust, and the responsibility clinicians have to support people with chronic illness. And how small changes can lead to more respectful, effective care.Aaron Goodman speaks with Téa Christopoulos, PhD candidate and sessional instructor at the University of Toronto, working across the Faculty of Kinesiology and the Joint Centre for Bioethics. Her research explores narrative medicine and Chronic Invisible Disabilities, examining how lived experience can reshape care to be more ethical, responsive, and truly patient-centered.

This episode features a conversation with Dr. Katie Batza on their recently published book, AIDS in the Heartland: How Unlikely Coalitions Created a Blueprint for LGBTQ Politics. Published by the University of North Carolina Press, AIDS in the Heartland demonstrates the unique collaborations of crop duster pilots, church van drivers, nuns, tribal leaders, and synagogue ladies in places such as decommissioned convents, backyard barbecues, high school gyms, and city parks that fostered loud, radical queer politics and homonormative strategies alike. As a result, Batza contends with the respectability of the heart of the nation and how it prevails as core values in national LBGTQ political strategies today. Histories of AIDS in the United States typically regard San Francisco and New York to be the epicenters of the crisis. The Midwest, if considered at all, appears as a footnote to the social, medical, and political struggles of coastal queer communities and communities of color. But the US heartland cultivated its own distinct strategies for survival that became the surprising and lasting blueprint for LGBTQ politics today. Though AIDS cases were relatively low compared to the coasts, the conservative political and religious landscape, lack of medical infrastructure, and diffuse gay communities brought Midwesterners together in unexpected ways. Unearthing this complex story, health activism expert Katie Batza masterfully illustrates the diversity, resilience, innovation, and influence of the Midwest's responses to the AIDS epidemic. Katie Batza is chair of women, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Kansas and the author of Before AIDS: Gay Health Politics in the 1970s. Their research explores the intersection of sexuality, health, and politics in the late 20th-century United States. Donna Doan Anderson is a research assistant professor in History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Maile Aihua Young is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Bioethics and Health Humanities at the University of Texas-Medical Branch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

This episode features a conversation with Dr. Katie Batza on their recently published book, AIDS in the Heartland: How Unlikely Coalitions Created a Blueprint for LGBTQ Politics. Published by the University of North Carolina Press, AIDS in the Heartland demonstrates the unique collaborations of crop duster pilots, church van drivers, nuns, tribal leaders, and synagogue ladies in places such as decommissioned convents, backyard barbecues, high school gyms, and city parks that fostered loud, radical queer politics and homonormative strategies alike. As a result, Batza contends with the respectability of the heart of the nation and how it prevails as core values in national LBGTQ political strategies today. Histories of AIDS in the United States typically regard San Francisco and New York to be the epicenters of the crisis. The Midwest, if considered at all, appears as a footnote to the social, medical, and political struggles of coastal queer communities and communities of color. But the US heartland cultivated its own distinct strategies for survival that became the surprising and lasting blueprint for LGBTQ politics today. Though AIDS cases were relatively low compared to the coasts, the conservative political and religious landscape, lack of medical infrastructure, and diffuse gay communities brought Midwesterners together in unexpected ways. Unearthing this complex story, health activism expert Katie Batza masterfully illustrates the diversity, resilience, innovation, and influence of the Midwest's responses to the AIDS epidemic. Katie Batza is chair of women, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Kansas and the author of Before AIDS: Gay Health Politics in the 1970s. Their research explores the intersection of sexuality, health, and politics in the late 20th-century United States. Donna Doan Anderson is a research assistant professor in History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Maile Aihua Young is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Bioethics and Health Humanities at the University of Texas-Medical Branch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

What does it mean to be human? And how does the answer to that question impact how we view medicine and medical advancements? Bioethicist, Katelyn Walls Shelton, shares an introduction to bioethics in the reproductive health space and gives listeners two questions to ask when considering next steps to take, whether it's about birth control, IVF, or anything in between. We only scratched the surface, so we'll be sure to have her back on soon!NOTE: This episode is appropriate for all audiences.GUEST BIO: Katelyn Walls Shelton is a visiting fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a recipient of the Robert Novak Journalism Award. She is a women's health policy expert who previously worked at the US Department of Health and Human Services. She graduated from Yale Divinity School and Union University and lives near Washington DC with her husband, John, and their four children.SHOW NOTES:Substack: Technically Human | Katelyn Walls SheltonSubstack: Fertile Faith | Caitlin EstesMinistering to Women Includes Physical Health, Christianity TodayEp. 6: The Pill - Facts about Birth ControlEp. 29: Should we think theologically about fertility? with Dr. Cameron JorgensonEp. 34: Is Contraception a Faithful Choice for Christians?Ep. 135: Can I trust Natural Birth Control?Send Us a Text!Support the showOther great ways to connect with Woven Natural Fertility Care: Learn the Creighton Model System with us! Register here!Get our monthly newsletter: Get the updates!Chat about issues of fertility + faith: Substack Follow us on Instagram: @wovenfertilityWatch our episodes on YouTube: @wovenfertilityLove the content? The biggest gift you could give is to click a 5 star review and write why it was so meaningful! This podcast is provided for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute providing medical advice or professional services. The information provided should not be used for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease, and those seeking personal medical advice should consult with a licensed physician. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health provider regarding a medical condition. If you think you may have a medical emergency, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room immediately. Neither Woven nor its staff, nor any contributor to this podcast, makes any representations, exp...

Drew Flugstad-Clarke never planned to work in brain cancer. She planned to play Division I soccer at Georgetown. She planned to paint. She even tried investment banking, answering emails at 4am in a cubicle that never slept. Then in June 2022 her father, Jim, was diagnosed with glioblastoma at 57. He died 1 day shy of 7 months later, just before his 58th birthday. His symptoms began with emotion, not seizures. A steady HR executive suddenly cried. His golf game slipped. By the time he entered the hospital for a scan, he did not leave without surgery. A subway poster for a 5K became a lifeline. Drew showed up. She found a community. She later joined the American Brain Tumor Association as Community Manager for the Eastern Region. This conversation walks through anticipatory grief, caregiving in real time, strategic numbness, and what it costs to curate hope when the median survival clock is already ticking.RELATED LINKSDrew Clark Flukestad on LinkedInTopor StudiosAmerican Brain Tumor AssociationGeorgetown University Women's SoccerFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

   4 HEADLINE: The Ecological Role and Bioethics of the Independent Dog GUESTS: Jessica Pierce and Mark Bekoff SUMMARY: This segment defines the "universal dog" as a creature that adapts its style and behavior to its specific environmental niche, from deserts to high latitudes. The guests emphasize that dogs retain a "DNA memory" and latent potential for wild behaviors, such as the killing bite, which were largely suppressed by human selection. From a bioethical perspective, this thought experiment reveals that viewing dogs solely as pets is a limited way to understand their true nature. Instead, dogs should be recognized as independent individuals with lives and interests that exist apart from humans. This shift in perspective encourages owners to see their dogs as wild animals with autonomous needs for richness and meaning. 41861

Hour 3 for 4/22/26 John Harper welcomes Dr. Gabriel LeBeau to discuss the bioethics of brain death (6:32). Topics/calls: brain death (13:15), neurosurgery (19:12), organ harvesting (20:16), surgery (22:36). Then, Peter Breen from The Thomas Moore Society discusses a recent California abortion pill lawsuit (28:17), the irony of the suit (35:46) and if the AG can be sued (47:54). Link: https://www.thomasmoresociety.org/news/hearing-alert-court-to-consider-ending-californias-lawsuit-against-pro-life-pregnancy-help-organizations-over-abortion-pill-reversal-information

The final of a three-part limited Science Podcast series that looks at the history of normal human subjects in research In episode two, we heard what happened to the normals program after church volunteers came to the U.S. National Institutes of Health's Clinical Center—and were surprisingly happy despite going through sometimes-painful procedures. In the decades to follow, the program got bigger as government funding expanded and started to recruit more broadly, stepping away from specific religious groups toward recruiting from colleges, universities, and unions. In this episode, we hear about how normal human subjects experience research today and the ways the normals project influenced oversight and safety for these sometimes vulnerable people. All episodes in this series Appearing in this episode: Laura Stark, history professor at the Center for Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University Jill Fisher, professor of social medicine in the Center for Bioethics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Kaviya Manoharan, lecturer and clinical research program manager in the Centre for Clinical Pharmacology, SRM Medical College Hospital and Research Centre Martin Enserink, deputy news editor at Science Kevin McLean, Science multimedia managing producer Sarah Crespi, Science Podcast senior host and producer Additional resources: BOOKS The Normals: A People's History of Modern America in Five Human Experiments by Laura Stark Adverse Events: Race, Inequality, and the Testing of New Pharmaceuticals by Jill Fisher NEWS STORIES Global effort aims to protect health and safety of human ‘guinea pigs' in drug trials by Martin Enserink Key global bioethics guidelines get ‘dramatic' update by Cathleen O'Grady WEBSITES Volrethics Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Janine Durso spent 30 years inside pharmaceutical advertising shaping healthcare narratives before becoming a belief strategist and founder of The Believist. In November 2024, during a routine Zoom coaching session, she felt what she called a sharp, terrible pain in the right side of her head. Within hours she was in surgery for a ruptured brain aneurysm. She does not remember the ambulance, the ICU, or the first weeks that followed. She spent 5 weeks in intensive care, then 10 days relearning how to walk, calculate simple change, and manage basic cognition. Doctors later placed a stent and continue monitoring a second unruptured aneurysm.This episode traces the moment she told her husband something broke in my brain, the 14 days doctors called touch and go, and the slow mental rebuild that followed. It also examines insurance barriers that require 2 direct relatives with aneurysms before screening coverage, and why she now lobbies in Washington for change.RELATED LINKSJanine DursoThe BelievistBrain Aneurysm FoundationWhite Plains HospitalDr. Jared CooperFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Rebecca Benghiat holds a JD, passed the bar, and skipped corporate law to build mental health systems instead. She now serves as Chief of Staff and Head of Impact at Inner Foundation, where she helps direct capital toward emerging adults ages 18 to 30 and asks a hard question every day: Is this actually working?In this conversation, she dismantles the myth of easy fixes. She explains why mental health measurement resists clean metrics, why a PHQ 9 score starts a conversation but never finishes one, and why “scale” often flatters institutions more than it helps people. She breaks down how impact investing shapes care delivery, why schools need networked systems not slogans, and why friction might be developmentally necessary.The stakes are real. Vulnerable families navigate snake oil, glossy apps, and pay to play algorithms while carrying the burden of choice in crisis. Benghiat lives inside that complexity and refuses to simplify it.RELATED LINKSRebecca BenghiatInner FoundationAspen Ideas HealthThe Jed FoundationFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.