PODCAST · science
The Proto podcast
What ideas will shape the future of medicine? This award-winning podcast explores new trends, biomedical discoveries and medical history. It is a companion to the magazine produced by Massachusetts General Hospital.
Episodes
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Diagnosis, Ep. 4: Diagnosis Through the Bias Filter
Diagnosis is a series about the past, present and future of a medical cornerstone. It examines all aspects of diagnosis, how it happens, how it can be shaped by history or human bias, and how a diagnosis can itself affect a patient's health. In this episode: As Dr. Eric Rosenberg noted in our…
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Diagnosis, Ep. 3: When Diagnosis Hurts
Diagnosis is a series about the past, present and future of a medical cornerstone. It examines all aspects of diagnosis, how it happens, how it can be shaped by history or human bias, and how a diagnosis can itself affect a patient's health. In this episode: In the 2019 movie The Farewell, a...
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Diagnosis, Ep. 2: A Brief History of Diagnosis
Diagnosis is a series about the past, present and future of a medical cornerstone. It examines all aspects of diagnosis, how it happens, how it can be shaped by history or human bias, and how a diagnosis can itself affect a patient's health. In this episode: What happens when two physicians...
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Diagnosis, Ep. 1: Diagnosis, Case by Case
Diagnosis is a series about the past, present and future of a medical cornerstone. It examines all aspects of diagnosis, how it happens, how it can be shaped by history or human bias, and how a diagnosis can itself affect a patient's health. In this episode: Walter B. Cannon was a Harvard Medical...
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Diagnosing the Long Dead
Explorer Ernest Shackleton faced down the Antarctic ice with unmatched physical endurance. Yet he died unexpectedly in his 40s from a heart attack. Writer Edgar Allen Poe invented the detective story and twist ending. Yet his own death was more bizarre than anything he wrote, occurring shortly...
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Young Minds on Cannabis
Does pot affect the teenage mind differently? Experts from the Center for Addiction Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital are looking at that question. Their groundbreaking partnership with a Massachusetts high school helps them examine how marijuana may affect memory and learning. And Dana...
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Eli, Age 11
Eli was born biologically female, but it wasn't long before his family suspected that there was more to the story. Wearing a dress "just seemed physically painful," says his mother, Grace. The family has been working with pediatricians and gender specialists to find the best ways to help Eli…
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The Story Prescription
Terrorist attacks are intended to spread fear, and psychologists have tried to study how these events affect mental health. Psychologist Samuel J. Sinclair talks about his Terrorism Catastrophizing Scale, a tool that may help explain why some people make drastic changes in their routines and...
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The Green Silk Bag
The first lungful of nitrous oxide gas was inhaled in 1799. The subject, Humphrey Davy, described the experience as "a highly pleasurable thrilling in the chest and extremities." The substance—later called laughing gas—would go on to become a critical anesthetic for minor surgery, and it is still...
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The Minutes After
When an act of mass violence breaks out, it dominates the headlines. But little attention is paid to the moments that happen immediately afterwards, when the victims arrive at the door of the emergency room. In this episode, Alasdair Conn, chief emeritus of emergency services at Massachusetts...
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Fire At the Cocoanut Grove
It was Saturday night of Thanksgiving weekend, 1942. The Cocoanut Grove nightclub was filled to capacity. Soldiers were home from the front lines of World War II, football fans were celebrating a game between Holy Cross and Boston College, and a cowboy-movie star, Buck Jones, was there with his...
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Enter the Citizen Scientist
Most breakthroughs in health care come from a network of government-funded institutions, with their trained researchers and expensive equipment. But a few discoveries each year come from citizen scientists, everyday people who have found a better cure or treatment all on their own. The podcast is...
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Mothers in Medicine
Women have been instrumental in some of the most important discoveries in medicine. But many female researchers still face the "motherhood penalty" when they have children—an ebbing of opportunity and resources that often cause them to put their careers on hold. Nancy Tarbell, a noted pediatric...
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The 100 Year Shadow
This year marks the centenary of the Spanish Flu, which killed between 50 million and 100 million people around the world. That outbreak was the most lethal event of the 20th century, and for 100 years it has spurred researchers to get ahead of the next one. "It's always on the mind of today's...
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Polar Lessons
THE ARCTIC AND ANTARCTIC ARE BARELY HABITABLE BY HUMANS, yet some mammals live there quite cozily. The adaptations of their bodies to the cold are among the most unique on the planet—and hold secrets that medical researchers have been trying to untangle for decades. "I wanted to know their...
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Can AI Save Us from Despair?
RATES OF SUICIDE HAVE BEEN STEADILY ON THE RISE OVER THE PAST 20 YEARS, increasing by more than 30% in half of the states . It is a problem on a desperate scale, and mental health professionals are working hard to turn the tide. They may soon have help from an unlikely quarter: the field of…
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A Battle Plan for Sepsis
EVERY YEAR MORE THAN A MILLION AMERICANS EXPERIENCE SEPSIS—a condition in which the immune system runs wild and damages its own tissues, sometimes with fatal results. Yet while sepsis is the leading cause of death in hospitals, few people outside of the medical profession recognize it by name. "I...
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The Important, Impossible Role of the Chinese Graduate Researcher
MORE THAN 12% OF ALL STUDENTS WORKING TOWARDS A SCIENCE-RELATED PHD in the United States is visiting from China. Their hard work and tuition fees play a major role in the ecosystem of U.S. research. But in the past year, this long-standing relationship has become dramatically more complicated.…
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Medicine on the Mountain
PHYSICIAN STUART HARRIS SPENDS A LOT OF TIME AT HIGH ALTITUDES—at the top of Denali in Alaska, on Mount Everest in the Himalayas and in other cold and remote locations. As a pioneer in wilderness medicine, he is looking not only at how to navigate medical crises in these places, but also at how…
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The Examination of a Poem
WRITING AND MEDICINE ARE BOTH CAREERS that demand years of practice and a passionate commitment. But history is punctuated with people, like poet William Carlos Williams, who have managed to do both. "When I started writing, which was mid career medically, I thought I was 'chasing two hares,'"…
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The Good Life Under Lockdown?
AS DIRECTOR OF THE HARVARD STUDY OF ADULT DEVELOPMENT, Robert Waldinger has some good guesses—and 82 years of data—on what makes humans thrive. He has written extensively about the role that family and friendships seem to play: "We found that relationships and the quality of our relationships…
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A Tale of Two Pandemics
THROUGHOUT U.S. HISTORY, VIRAL EPIDEMICS have disproportionately hurt minority groups. Native Americans died from the 1918 flu pandemic at four times the rate of other groups, and during the H1N1 pandemic in 2009, Latinos in California were twice as likely as whites to become ill and die. The...
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Telemedicine's Moment
THE STATISTICS ON TELEHEALTH DURING THE PANDEMIC have told a consistent story—within the first few weeks of the global pandemic, virtual visits more than tripled in the United States and continued to growth after that. But while telehealth is likely to have gotten a permanent boost from the...
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The Research Year That Was
HOW WILL LABORATORY RESEARCHERS REMEMBER 2020? "We'll remember that we answered the call," says Harry Orf, Senior Vice President for Research at Massachusetts General Hospital. "The work that was done on COVID innovation, the cooperation across our entire research community…That will be the most...
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Do Better by Disabled Patients
MORE THAN ONE IN FOUR AMERICANS live with some form of disability. This leads most of them to have an intimate, but far from untroubled, relationship to the health care system. One persistent source of frustration is a sense that clinicians may not be offering them the same care that other…
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Tiny and Cold
In this episode, the podcast explores the tiny and transformative world revealed by the process of cryo-electron microscopy. By a process of freezing molecules, and bombarding them with electrons, researchers can observe the building blocks of human cells. Luke Chao, a faculty member in the...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
What ideas will shape the future of medicine? This award-winning podcast explores new trends, biomedical discoveries and medical history. It is a companion to the magazine produced by Massachusetts General Hospital.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The Proto podcast have?
The Proto podcast currently has 26 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Proto podcast about?
What ideas will shape the future of medicine? This award-winning podcast explores new trends, biomedical discoveries and medical history. It is a companion to the magazine produced by Massachusetts General Hospital.
How often does The Proto podcast release new episodes?
The Proto podcast has 26 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to The Proto podcast?
You can listen to The Proto podcast on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
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