logo
episode-header-image
Sep 2022
58m 59s

Playing God

Wnyc Studios
About this episode
When people are dying and you can only save some, how do you choose? Maybe you save the youngest. Or the sickest. Maybe you even just put all the names in a hat and pick at random. Would your answer change if a sick person was right in front of you? In this episode, first aired back in 2016, we follow New York Times reporter Sheri Fink as she searches for th ... Show More
Up next
Oct 16
The Smell of Hell
Throughout human history, there’s been one element we’ve always associated with death. Just the smell of it is an alarm bell that says, “something here is dangerous.” But what if our noses have been wrong all along?In this episode of our series Viscera: Gripping Tales of the Huma ... Show More
43m 9s
Oct 9
Math Vs Machine
In less than four years, mathematician Steve Strogatz watched AI go from flailing at basic arithmetic to solving problems that baffle the world’s best mathematicians. In September of 2026, Open AI announced it had solved a Millennium Prize Problem, one of math’s highest achieveme ... Show More
31m 22s
Oct 2
A 4-Track Mind
In this short episode, first aired in 2011, a neurologist issues a dare to a ragtime piano player and a famous conductor. When the two men face off in an fMRI machine, the challenge is so unimaginably difficult that one man instantly gives up. But the other achieves a musical fea ... Show More
21m 7s
Recommended Episodes
Mar 2021
Chaos
What happens when teenagers are shipwrecked on a deserted island? Can you find the fingerprint of God in warzones? Why was the concept of zero so revolutionary for humanity? A year into a pandemic that has completely upended the lives of people around the world, we look at how we ... Show More
1h 2m
Jun 2025
Mostly dead is slightly alive
tail spinning
18m 51s
Jan 2021
Who Gets The Next Shot?
Dr. Ruth Faden, an expert in biomedical ethics with Johns Hopkins University, has helped vaccine drives answer some tough questions: Who should be ahead of who? Do we prioritize speed or equity? And once people are inoculated, should they get ‘vaccine passports’ allowing freer mo ... Show More
36m 38s
Dec 2023
Prequel: The God Squad
Back in the 1960s, a committee of seven Seattle residents met regularly to decide which patients with chronic kidney disease were “worthy” of life-saving dialysis. Whoever wasn’t selected by the committee would likely die within months. An exposé of this so-called “God Squad” hel ... Show More
21m 16s
Aug 2023
Living for the Dead
There are people who help us at every stage of life –– from the moment we're born to our last breath. But at the end, who's helping us when we're gone? On the season finale of the StoryCorps Podcast, twin mortician brothers look back on a life of caring for the dead. See pcm.adsw ... Show More
16m 3s
May 2020
Apocalypse Survival Skill #5: Tactical Hope
<p>What behaviors and choices make the difference between life and death in a disaster? What are the skills that will matter most in a crisis, and how do we learn them? Autumn interviews the brilliant founders of <a href="https://www.queernature.org/">Queer Nature</a>, who lead w ... Show More
1h 16m
Oct 2020
Overheard Season 4
Documenting democracy. Untwisting the world’s largest tornado. Searching for wrecks of lost slave ships. Dinosaur hunting in Morocco. Accidentally inventing a new color. Come dive into one of the curiously delightful conversations overheard at National Geographic’s headquarters, ... Show More
2m 37s
May 2024
Life after death?
Sebastian Junger came as close as you possibly can to dying. While his doctors struggled to revive him, the veteran reporter and avowed rationalist experienced things that shocked and shook him, leaving him with profound questions and unexpected revelations. In his new book, In M ... Show More
52m 37s