5. How to Solve a Medical Mystery
A woman comes to the emergency room with back pain. She’ll leave with an unexpected diagnosis. How does her doctor figure out what’s wrong? Listen as host Bapu Jena puts master clinician Dr. Gurpreet ...
3 Sep 202119min
4. What Do Grocery Store Prices and Heart Surgery Have in Common?
Humans are hardwired to focus on the left digit in numbers. It’s why products are priced at $3.99 instead of $4.00. But does this left-digit bias also affect medical decisions? Host Bapu Jena is joine...
27 Aug 202116min
3. Why Are Kids With Summer Birthdays More Likely to Get the Flu?
After struggling to schedule a flu shot for his own toddler, host Bapu Jena went down a research rabbit hole. He discovered that the time of year kids are born has an unexpected and dramatic effect on...
20 Aug 202118min
2. Do As Docs Say, Not As They Do
Does having more health information actually change behavior? To test this question, host Bapu Jena explores whether doctors make healthier choices than the rest of us (and he fesses up to an unhealth...
13 Aug 202119min
1. Covid and the “Birthday Effect”
Host Bapu Jena is an economist and medical doctor whose latest research measures the link between birthdays and Covid. He explains his team’s findings, explores the role that kids’ parties may have pl...
6 Aug 202118min
Introducing “Freakonomics, M.D.”
How can a marathon be dangerous even if you don’t run the race? Does your doctor follow medical advice any better than you do? Just how dangerous was it to go to a birthday party at the height of the ...
21 Jul 20213min
Marathons Can Be Deadly — But Not For the Reasons You May Think
In this pilot episode of a new “Freakonomics of Medicine” podcast, when host Dr. Bapu Jena misses his wife’s 5K run, he sets out to study how road closures and detours on big race days affect people w...
10 Jun 202122min
