Many in the global West have heard something about acupuncture as a treatment for pain relief; they may even have learned of its use in treating opioid addiction. But few know that, in the early 1970s, acupuncture was employed as a means of social and political revolution by Black, Latinx, and radical left-wing activists, inspired by the barefoot doctors of ... Show More
Nov 23
Tom White, "Bad Dust: A History of the Asbestos Disaster" (Repeater, 2025)
Once used extensively in schools, hospitals, and housing, asbestos has taken the lives of millions. Bad Dust: A History of the Asbestos Disaster (Repeater, 2025) by Tom White traces the international history of the asbestos disaster — from mining operations in apartheid South Afr ... Show More
39m 40s
Nov 23
Heather Davis, "Plastic Matter" (Duke UP, 2022)
Plastic is ubiquitous. It is in the Arctic, in the depths of the Mariana Trench, and in the high mountaintops of the Pyrenees. It is in the air we breathe and the water we drink. Nanoplastics penetrate our cell walls. Plastic is not just any material—it is emblematic of life in t ... Show More
1h 1m
Nov 22
Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy, "Videotape" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Over the span of a single decade, VHS technology changed the relationship between privacy and entertainment, pried open the closed societies behind the Iron Curtain, and then sank back into oblivion. Its meteoric rise and fall encapsulated the dynamics of the '80s and foreshadowe ... Show More
44m 53s
Apr 2024
Rupa Marya and Raj Patel, "Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice" (FSG, 2021)
Raj Patel, the renowned political economist and New York Times bestselling author of The Value of Nothing, teams up with the physician Rupa Marya to offer a radical new cure: the deep medicine of decolonization. Decolonizing heals what has been divided, reestablishing our relatio ... Show More
1h 3m
Sep 2023
Alexander Stille, "The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune" (FSG, 2023)
In the middle of the Ozzie and Harriet 1950s, the birth control pill was introduced and a maverick psychoanalytic institute, the Sullivan Institute for Research in Psychoanalysis, opened its doors in New York City. Its founders, Saul Newton and Jane Pearce, wanted to start a revo ... Show More
44m 53s
Feb 2024
Judith Pearson, "Crusade to Heal America: The Remarkable Life of Mary Lasker" (Mayo Clinic Press, 2023)
Mary Woodard Lasker had a singular goal: saving lives by increasing medical research. Together with her husband, advertising genius Albert, they created the Lasker Foundation, bestowing the Lasker Awards. Known as the "American Nobels," these became the most prestigious research ... Show More
58m 32s
Oct 2020
Boel Berner, "Strange Blood: The Rise and Fall of Lamb Blood Transfusion in 19th-Century Medicine and Beyond" (Transcript Verlag, 2020)
In the mid-1870s, the experimental therapy of lamb blood transfusion spread like an epidemic across Europe and the USA. Doctors tried it as a cure for tuberculosis, pellagra and anemia; proposed it as a means to reanimate seemingly dead soldiers on the battlefield. It was a conte ... Show More
59m 13s
Feb 2023
Helena Hansen et al., "Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America" (U California Press, 2023)
In the past two decades, media images of the surprisingly white “new face” of the US opioid crisis abounded. But why was the crisis so white? Some argued that skyrocketing overdoses were “deaths of despair” signaling deeper socioeconomic anguish in white communities. Whiteout: Ho ... Show More
1h 32m
Apr 2021
Episode 169: Antiracism in Medicine Series – Episode 7 – Antiracism, Global Health Equity, and the COVID-19 Response
Summary In this episode of Clinical Problem Solvers: Anti-Racism in Medicine, we are joined by Michelle Morse, MD, MPH, Deputy Commissioner for the Center for Health Equity and Community Wellness (CHECW) and the inaugural Chief Medical Officer at the NYC Department of Health and ... Show More
1h 7m
Aug 2023
Elaine Schattner, "From Whispers to Shouts: The Ways We Talk about Cancer" (Columbia UP, 2023)
The “war on cancer” was launched during the Nixon Administration in 1971, but the term was part of the national dialog on cancer at least early as 1913. Pink ribbons have been ubiquitous symbols of breast cancer awareness and fund-raising promotions since the mid-1980s, but “canc ... Show More
49m 32s