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: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America (U California Press, ... Show More
Today
Sebastian Truskolaski, "Adorno and the Ban on Images" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Adorno and the Ban on Images (Bloomsbury, 2022) upends some of the myths that have come to surround the work of the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno – not least amongst them, his supposed fatalism.
Sebastian Truskolaski argues that Adorno's writings allow us to address what is argua ... Show More
58m 5s
Today
Amy Hughes, "An Actor's Tale: Theater, Culture, and Everyday Life in the Nineteenth-Century United States" (U Michigan Press, 2025)
Harry Watkins was no one special. During a career that spanned four decades, this nineteenth-century actor yearned for fame but merely skirted the edges of it. He performed alongside the brightest stars, wrote scores of plays, and toured the United States and England, but he neve ... Show More
1h 4m
Yesterday
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
Mar 2023
Racism, Class, and the Opioid Crisis
Featuring Helena Hansen, Jules Netherland, and David Herzberg on how American capitalism and its illusions of whiteness both created the opioid crisis and shaped the response to it. We are discussing their book Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in Ameri ... Show More
1h 43m
May 2024
589. Why Has the Opioid Crisis Lasted So Long?
<p>Most epidemics flare up, do their damage, and fade away. This one has been raging for almost 30 years. To find out why, it’s time to ask some uncomfortable questions. (Part one of a <a href="https://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/why-is-the-opioid-epidemic-still-raging/">two-par ... Show More
48m 33s
May 2021
Episode 176: Antiracism in Medicine Series – Episode 8 – Towards Justice and Race Conscious Medicine
“There’s nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns” – Octavia E. Butler Summary: We invite social justice champion and acclaimed scholar of race, gender, and the law, Dorothy E. Roberts, JD, to discuss the history of race-based medicine and the movement for he ... Show More
1h 24m
Dec 2020
Episode 145: Antiracism in Medicine Series Episode 3 – Structural Inequities and the Pandemic’s Winter Surge
In this episode of Clinical Problem Solvers: Anti-Racism in Medicine, we sit down with Ed Yong, an award-winning journalist and science writer with The Atlantic, to discuss the structural inequities amplified by COVID-19 as well as the social concerns associated with the impendin ... Show More
22m 42s
Jan 2021
Episode 155: Antiracism in Medicine Series – Episode 5 – Racism, Power, and Policy: Building the Antiracist Health Systems of the Future
In this episode of Clinical Problem Solvers: Anti-Racism in Medicine, we are joined by Aletha Maybank MD, MPH, the American Medical Association’s (AMA) inaugural Chief Health Equity Officer and director of the AMA’s Center for Health Equity, and Camara Jones MD, PhD, MPH, thought ... Show More
1h 7m