Health & Medicine

New York Times reporter Jason DeParle says a provision in the new COVID relief package has the makings of a policy revolution — and would "roughly cut child poverty in half."

Lynn, who married when she was in her teens, later created controversy by singing about divorce and birth control. Her new album is Still Woman Enough.
Originally broadcast on Nov. 10, 2010.

Baker supplies nearly all of the guitars, drums, synthesizers, banjo, and mandolin on her new album. It's a confessional and frequently beautiful record about mental distress and addiction.

MIT professor Sherry Turkle was 27 when she learned that her estranged father had conducted psychological experiments on her when she was a child. She looks back on her childhood in a new memoir.

The Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines are the first vaccines to be activated by mRNA — and would not have been possible without the invention of the gene editing technology known as CRISPR. In his new book, The Code Breaker, author Walter Isaacson chronicles the development of CRISPR.

In his new book, The Ten Year War, Jonathan Cohn looks at the intense debate surrounding the Affordable Care Act, the compromises of the law itself, and the ongoing fight for universal health care.

The COVID-19 pandemic has left many American families without child care and in-person schooling. Those new household burdens have largely landed on the shoulders of women, says Journalist Claire Cain Miller. She has been working from home, reporting on how the pandemic has affected the lives of mothers, in a New York Times series called "The Primal Scream."

Less than three weeks into the new Biden administration, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease expert who has headed up the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, is encouraged by the new president's approach to the COVID-19 pandemic. Fauci has worked with seven presidents, from Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden. Much of his career has been devoted to researching viruses and the immune system.

Evan Osnos talks about Joe Biden's enduring quest to become president. He says Biden has a different mindset today than he once had: "He's a man who is at peace." Originally broadcast Oct. 27, 2020.

Daniel Lieberman is a professor in the department of human evolutionary biology at Harvard. He says that the notion of "getting exercise" — movement just for movement's sake — is a relatively new phenomenon in human history. His new book is Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding.

Biographer Janice Nimura tells the Blackwell sisters' story in the new book, The Doctors Blackwell. Nimura says Elizabeth was "greeted with everything from rejection to hilarity" during her years at Geneva Medical College in upstate New York.

Iconoclastic humorist Fran Lebowitz used to be known as a writer. Back in the late 1970s and '80s, she released two popular collections of essays featuring her cutting observations and opinions about life. But that part of her career was cut short by a decades-long case of writer's block — now she's known for talking. The Netflix series Pretend It's a City features Lebowitz in conversation with Martin Scorsese — who directed both the new series and the 2010 HBO documentary about Lebowitz, Public Speaking.

The U.S. has only four percent of the world's population — and yet it accounts for 20 percent of all COVID deaths. New Yorker writer Lawrence Wright discusses America's pandemic year.

Interested in learning a new skill in the new year? CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta says that will also improve your brain health. "The act of experiencing something new — or even doing something that's typical for you, but in a different way — can all generate these new brain cells," says Gupta, a practicing neurosurgeon and associate professor of medicine at Emory University School of Medicine. He has a new book about the brain.

The Netflix limited series tells the story of an orphaned girl who becomes a chess pro in a male-dominated world. Frank talks about consulting with grand masters and maximizing the drama of the game.

Science writer Ed Yong of The Atlantic says the coming months will usher in the most complicated immunization program the U.S. has ever attempted. Yong has been covering the pandemic since it began, writing about nearly every aspect.

Brittany Barnett works on behalf of people serving harsh sentences as a result of the war on drugs. Nine of her clients have been granted clemency. Her new memoir is A Knock at Midnight.

Photographer Bob Gruen spent decades capturing the lives and performances of rock stars of the '60s, '70s and '80s, including John Lennon, the Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry, Tina Turner — and many more. Gruen put in many hours backstage, in studios and on the road, sometimes doing drugs and drinking until dawn with his subjects.