Health & Medicine

"This climate that we're in right now with our polarizing political views in this country, it was very similar in South Africa," the star of The Old Guard says. Originally broadcast Dec. 16, 2019.

In her new book, Waiting for an Echo: The Madness of American Incarceration, Christine Montross writes that in the U.S., people with serious mental illnesses are far more likely to be incarcerated than they are to be treated in a psychiatric hospital — despite the fact that incarceration often makes mentally ill people worse.

New Yorker writer Jane Mayer reports on conditions at a Delaware poultry processing plant owned by a major Trump donor: "No matter what's going on, they've got to keep those chicken lines running."

In psychiatrist Julie Holland's new book, Good Chemistry, she explores how psychedelic drugs, including LSD, psilocybin, MDMA and marijuana, might be used more widely in psychiatry to make treatment more efficient and effective.

"Since the very first day of this pandemic, I don't think [we've been] in a more confused position about what's happening," epidemiologist Michael Osterholm says. "We just aren't quite sure what [the coronavirus is] going to do next."
Osterholm is the founder and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

In The Turnaway Study, Diana Greene Foster shares research conducted over 10 years with about 1,000 women who had or were denied abortions, tracking impacts on mental, physical and economic health.

As millions of people remain socially isolated and anxious about COVID-19, several U.S. governors are at least making plans to relax controls in their states and revive economic activity — against the advice of many public health professionals.

New York Times science and health reporter Donald G. McNeil Jr. warns that the push to reopen is premature. "We're nowhere near getting on top of this virus," he says.

Kramer, who died May 27, was an early advocate for aggressive research into the HIV virus. He co-founded both the Gay Men's Health Crisis and the protest group ACT UP. Originally broadcast in 1992.

Of the roughly 100,000 Americans included in the official COVID-19 death count, 20,000 died in New York City in a period of two months. Time magazine reporter W.J. Hennigan recently spent several weeks looking into the practical challenge of how a city deals with so many bodies suffused with a deadly pathogen.

COVID-19 has transformed home life — turning kitchen tables into home offices and classrooms and putting a spotlight on the countless household tasks typically performed by women. Brigid Schulte says the pandemic has laid bare the "grotesque inequality" that exists within many families. Schulte is the director of the Better Life Lab, a work-life, gender equity and social policy program at the New America think tank.

Dan Harris says he's taken to saying, "if you're not anxious right now, you're not paying attention." Thru his daily online coronavirus meditations, he's been trying to help people quiet their anxiety with meditation and mindfulness techniques. Dan Harris wrote a memoir about how meditation helped calm the negative voices in his head, and he has an app.

John Barry, author of the 2004 book, The Great Influenza, draws parallels between today's pandemic and the flu of 1918. In both cases, he says, "the outbreak was trivialized for a long time."

David Fajgenbaum was diagnosed with Castleman disease as a medical student. In Chasing My Cure, he recounts crowd-sourcing his own treatment with a global network of doctors, scientists and patients.

Chef Tom Colicchio is one of the many restaurateurs wondering what will be left of the industry after the COVID-19 pandemic has run its course.

For much of his life, humorist John Moe has dealt with clinical depression that's triggered by stress. Now, faced with the COVID-19 crisis, he says, "my depression wants to flare up."

Fashion expert Tim Gunn used to bemoan what he called the "comfort trap" — clothes that prioritized comfort over style. Now, after weeks of self-isolation in his New York City apartment amid the COVID-19 pandemic, he's reconsidering his stance.

Growing up in San Francisco in the '70s, Alia Volz's family ran a booming weed-laced brownie business. "I had this understanding of my family as an outlaw family from the very beginning," she says.