First Opinion Podcast

Alicia Zhou's son Davi was an early five years old when the pandemic started. Now, he's six and a half, entering the first grade. He's adjusted well to pandemic living as a young child, but Zhou says she's still worried sending him to in-person school. Luckily, as a chief science officer at a health technology company, she happens to be particularly qualified to advise schools on how that can happen safely. Zhou breaks down the risks and best precautions for this back-to-school season.

When the inventors of the iron lung wheeled their contraption into the hospital for the first time, they likely had one thing on their minds: saving the lives of children with polio. And they did. But there exists a darker side of these machines and their successors: people with persistent critical illnesses — like those with Covid-19 today — tethered to ventilators for weeks, if not longer, living in a "twilight existence" of being kept alive by a machine. This week, intensive care physician Hannah Wunsch explores the history of mechanical breathing, the countless lives it has saved, and the moral dilemmas it created that have only grown with the technology.

Bertrand Might was born with a rare disease that had never before been diagnosed, an odyssey that took four grueling years. He was 12 years old when he died last year — almost a decade older than physicians predicted he would live. This week on the First Opinion Podcast, Bertrand’s father, computer scientist Matthew Might, talks about how he used his coding skills to try to extend his son’s life, and how daring research projects could save lives across the country and around the world if the Biden administration’s proposed Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) comes to life.

This week, physician Frank Lin discusses with former patient Anne Madison how difficult it can be for seniors to access care for hearing loss and hearing aids. "When you move into a community with older people, you get on two mailing lists: the hearing aids mailing list and the cemetery lots mailing list," Madison said. But the price tag is sky-high.

This week, Stephen Tourjee shares his experience contracting a breakthrough case of Covid-19, months after he thought he was safe thanks to the vaccine. Céline Gounder provides expert context on just how worried we should — or shouldn't — be about these breakthrough cases.

This week, writer and philosopher Adam Hayden opens up about what it's like to be in the minority of glioblastoma patients that have survived the harrowing brain cancer. Around 93% of patients with the disease will die before 5 years — as long as Hayden has survived so far. As the pandemic began, Hayden knew there were lessons for physicians and the public to learn from his experience.

Episode 25: A journalist on what the Vietnam war taught us about addiction by STAT

Are health care workers more obligated than others to get a Covid-19 vaccine? In this week's episode, physician and bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel argues that hospitals and healthcare facilities nationwide need to issue vaccine mandates for all employees in order to prevent further deaths from Covid-19.

Why do more women die in and after childbirth in the U.S. than any other industrialized nation? In this week's episode of the "First Opinion Podcast," physician Alissa Erogbogbo argues that the only way the country can change the maternal mortality rates is through addressing the inherent biases and inequities of traditional health care.

What if every time we went to the bathroom, we could say we contributed to a local public health initiative? In this week's episode of the "First Opinion Podcast," biostatistician Aparna Keshaviah digs into the benefits of wastewater testing as a public health measure.