When I graduated from college, I was chosen as one of the commencement speakers. In my speech, I pretended to be reading a letter I wrote to my father. My dad came to the graduation, completely unaware of my speech. When he heard me start reading the letter, he put his head in his hands…
Here is a great graphic from the Center for Science in the Public Interest laying out how supermarkets lay out food to encourage impulse purchases: So much for “free” markets!
I had the great pleasure of talking about out-of-pocket healthcare costs at Periodic Tables: Durham’s Science Café, a speaker series run by The Program for Science and Society at Duke University. The crowd was absolutely awesome, and much larger than I expected, given that I was speaking at the same time that Duke’s number one…
African Americans make up 13% of the country’s population, but only 4% of American physicians are black. This lack of racial diversity in the profession is tragic, denying this prestigious career to many worthy people and undermining the health of many African Americans, who are more likely to receive important medical services when they’re cared for by black…
Advertising is about persuasion. Companies spend billions of dollars per year trying to convince us to buy their products. But sometimes, rigorous philosophical training can help us avoid that influence. Consider the following ad: Only deep immersion in Immanuel Kant helped me recognize the flaws in this reasoning!
Imagine you have been struggling for eight days with a bad cough, with what feels like a lifetime’s worth of secretions in your upper airways. When you called your primary care physician’s office, she wasn’t available, so you got an appointment with a nurse practitioner, who prescribed a course of antibiotics. Would you fill the…