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Cover image of Freakonomics, M.D.

Freakonomics, M.D.

Each week, physician and economist Dr. Bapu Jena will dig into a fascinating study at the intersection of economics and healthcare. He takes on questions like: Why do kids with summer birthdays get the flu more often? Can surviving a hurricane help you live longer? What do heart surgery and grocery-store pricing have in common?

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Each week, physician and economist Dr. Bapu Jena will dig into a fascinating study at the intersection of economics and healthcare. He takes on questions like: Why do kids with summer birthdays get the flu more often? Can surviving a hurricane help you live longer? What do heart surgery and grocery-store pricing have in common?

77. They Make Minimum Wage. They Could Save Your Life.

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Doctors and nurses get most of the attention — but a new study suggests we can improve health care by raising wages for a group of workers who are often overlooked.

Mar 24 2023

18mins

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76. Is a Spoonful of Sunlight the Best Medicine?

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In hospitals, a softer pillow or a nicer room might be more than just amenities — they could improve outcomes for patients.

Mar 17 2023

17mins

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75. What Is Sugar Really Doing to You?

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Americans eat a lot of sugar — and it’s hard to determine how it affects our health. Bapu explains how a new study uses data from the 1950s to help solve the mystery.

Mar 10 2023

19mins

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74. How Does Playing Football Affect Your Health?

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 It’s not a new question, but it’s a tricky one to study. Bapu explains why, and talks about how an N.F.L. labor dispute helped him get some answers. 

Mar 03 2023

16mins

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73. Who Pays for Multimillion-Dollar Miracle Cures?

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The most expensive drugs in the world are treatments for genetic diseases. And more of these cures are on the horizon. How will anyone be able to afford them?

Feb 17 2023

29mins

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72. What’s Stopping Us From Curing Rare Diseases?

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Breakthroughs in biotech that seem like science fiction are becoming reality. Why aren’t more patients benefiting from them?

Feb 10 2023

31mins

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71. What Do COVID-19 and Cancer Have in Common?

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mRNA vaccines helped bring the pandemic under control. Could they also train the immune system to fight cancer?

Feb 03 2023

26mins

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70. Why Are There Still So Few Female Surgeons?

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Success and failure are hard to measure in medicine. Bapu looks at how surgeons are judged after a bad outcome — and whether men and women are treated the same.

Jan 27 2023

29mins

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69. Home Sweet … Hospital?

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We take it for granted that, when people are acutely ill, they should be in the hospital. Is there a better way?

Jan 20 2023

27mins

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68. The E.R. Doctor’s Dilemma

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Figuring out which patients to hospitalize and which to safely send home can be tricky. Is there a way to make this decision easier for doctors — and get better outcomes, too?

Jan 13 2023

29mins

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What Can We Do About the Hardest Patients? (Ep. 51 Replay)

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A small number of patients with multiple chronic conditions use a lot of resources. Dr. Jeffrey Brenner found a way to identify and treat them. Could it reduce health-care spending too?

Jan 06 2023

30mins

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67. Why Did This 60-Year-Old Man Collapse at the Supermarket?

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Bapu tries to stump master clinician Dr. Gurpreet Dhaliwal with a medical mystery. 

Dec 30 2022

33mins

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66. Does Health Insurance Make You Healthier?

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It’s a surprisingly hard question to answer. Bapu talks with a health economist about a natural experiment that led to some unexpected findings. 

Dec 23 2022

31mins

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65. How Do Pandemics Change Health Care?

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At the start of the 20th century, there weren’t many hospitals in the U.S. That changed in 1918, thanks to the Great Influenza pandemic. Its effects on health care are still being felt today. Which makes us wonder: will the impact of Covid-19 also be felt 100 years from now?

Dec 16 2022

31mins

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64. Is Facebook Bad for Your Mental Health?

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Half the world's population uses social media — and a new study suggests that it causes anxiety and depression. Can anything be done, or is it too late?

Dec 09 2022

31mins

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63. What Medicine Gets Wrong About Race

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Some diagnostic tests give distorted results for Black patients. How are doctors trying to change that?

Dec 02 2022

32mins

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Why Don’t We Have a Cure for Alzheimer’s? (Ep. 49 Update)

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Promising drugs keep failing in trials. Allegations of fraud have cast a shadow over the field. An expert explains why Alzheimer’s treatments have been so hard to find — and why one clue may lie in the Andes Mountains.

Nov 25 2022

32mins

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62. Dr. Ashish Jha Anticipated a Pandemic. He Didn’t Think It Would Look Like This.

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Bapu talks to White House Covid Czar Dr. Ashish Jha about becoming a household name, studying pandemics, and the frustrations of politics. Also, when will he be out of a job?

Nov 18 2022

28mins

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61. Should You Bother Getting a Colonoscopy?

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Colonoscopy is strongly recommended for Americans over 45. But a new study suggests its benefits have been overstated. Should we change how we screen for colorectal cancer?

Nov 11 2022

33mins

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60. The Doctor Is Out. The Physician Assistant Is In.

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Chances are, at some point you’ll be treated by a nurse practitioner or a physician assistant instead of a doctor. Will your care suffer? 

Nov 04 2022

30mins

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