The 19th century biologist Ernst Haechel had flamboyantly false ideas about race but discovered thousands of species and coined the terms ecology, phylum, and stem cell. How do we reconcile his errors and his contributions? A conversation with two marine scientists at the American Museum of Natural History about being wrong. Music from Robert Duncan … Continue reading »
Category Archives: Science & Medicine
Episode 207: Dr. Eduardo Rodriguez
A face transplant is disturbing in a way that a kidney or heart transplant is not. Is it because our face is so key to our identity? Nobody has thought more about this than surgeon Eduardo Rodriguez, an authority on the procedure. Plus music from Solange Prat and Gregorio Uribe. Surgery and song. PERSON: … Continue reading »
Episode 199: Peter Staley
Relationships can begin with affection and end in misery. The divorce courts abound with examples. The opposite vector is less typical. When AIDS activist Peter Staley encountered Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of The National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, Staley says that he and his cohort “put a bullseye on him, and we … Continue reading »
Episode 196: Dr. Mary Travis Bassett
She is New York City’s health commissioner, and she sees her work as part of a broader fight for social justice, not surprising given her family history: her parents are lifelong activists who met at a demonstration against a segregated restaurant, my idea of a love story. We spoke at the Van Alen Institute … Continue reading »
Episode 185: Dr. Richard Besser
He trained in pediatrics, was the acting head of the CDC, the chief medical editor for ABC News, and is now the CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Some people just can’t hold a job. Along the way, he’s had a run-in with deadly tainted apple cider and courteous but critical Diane Sawyer. … Continue reading »
Episode 170: Siri Hustvedt
Much admired for her novels, essays, and poems, she currently lectures in psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College. During our conversation at the Brooklyn Historical Society, she spoke about “the Invisible College,” the mind-body problem, and her love of Virginia Woolf, despite Woolf’s lamentable ignorance of 17th century science. With music from Niall Connolly. … Continue reading »
Episode 156: Max Krohn
Among life’s most liberating experiences is finding yourself unambiguously wrong: your mind is cleared of cant, and the world is transformed. (This requires the wit to perceive your error and the courage to acknowledge it, apparently not presidential qualities.) Max Krohn, a cofounder of SparkNotes and OKCupid, had such an experience as an undergrad … Continue reading »
Episode 123: Dr. Thomas Farley
The commissioner of health for New York City under Mayor Bloomberg, he battled cigarettes, transfats, and the fifty gallon vats of cola traditionally sold at movie theaters. He is the author of Saving Gotham and recently became the health commissioner of Philadelphia. We convened at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health with musician Kevin … Continue reading »
Episode 93: Sandeep Jauhar
Dr. Sandeep Jauhar, director of the Heart Failure Program at L.I. Jewish Medical Center, is that rare combination: a physician who is both skilled at his profession and able to reflect on it eloquently, as he does in two books, Intern: A Doctor’s Initiation, and Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician. We spoke at … Continue reading »
Episode 73: Martin Chalfie
The chair of the department of biological sciences at Columbia, in 2008, Martin Chalfie shared the Nobel prize in chemistry for the discovery of green fluorescent protein. It is a matter of conjecture whether such intellectual gifts run in families, but it is confirmed that his paternal grandmother was a cook at the Manischewitz Company, … Continue reading »
Episode 66: Diana Reiss
A member of the psychology department at Hunter College, Diana Reiss is an expert in dolphin cognition who has conducted ingenious experiments to demonstrate that these creatures recognize themselves in mirrors: that they are self-aware. She is, incidentally, our first guest to postpone her visit until she returned from a marine mammal conference which, I … Continue reading »
Episode 40: Alexandra Horowitz
A professor of psychology at Barnard, Alexandra Horowitz is the director of that school’s Dog Cognition Lab. What we particularly admire about her: she is one of a very few scientists who can write about current ideas in her field in a way that a lay audience finds not only comprehensible—dayanu—but intriguing, which she did … Continue reading »