Health & Medicine

For more than two decades, trauma surgeon David Nott spent several weeks each year volunteering in some of the world's most dangerous conflict zones, including Syria, Afghanistan, Congo, Iraq, Yemen and Sarajevo. Now he's in London, applying some of what he learned in war zones and disaster areas as he treats patients with COVID-19.

Two years ago, science writer Ed Yong wrote an article for The Atlantic in which he warned that a new global pandemic was inevitable — and that the world would be unprepared for it when it arrived. Now, with the outbreak of COVID-19, much of what Yong warned about in his reporting has come true.

Benjamin Wittes says Trump has changed the presidency fundamentally — and we're seeing the impact during the COVID-19 pandemic. He is the author, with Susan Hennessey, of Unmaking the Presidency.

Apocalyptic novelist Max Brooks is something of an expert on planning for pandemics and other disasters. The author, whose books include World War Z, Germ Warfare and the forthcoming Devolution, has toured the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and has reviewed government response plans related to various emergency situations — all in the course of research.

Marc Maron wants you to know that he named his Netflix stand-up special, End Times Fun, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Politico reporter Dan Diamond says infighting at the Department of Health and Human Services and the need to flatter Trump impeded the response to the coronavirus.

Four and a half million Americans are on probation or parole — more than twice the nation's jail population. Parolees and probationers are required to check in regularly with officials, who are charged with helping them rebuild their lives.

It has been nearly a decade since actor Claire Danes first appeared as CIA agent Carrie Mathison on the Showtime series Homeland. Now that the show is in its eighth and final season, Danes is feeling reflective about its run.

After wrapping up his book about the potential therapeutic benefits of psychedelic drugs, author Michael Pollan turned his attention to a drug that's hidden "in plain sight" in many people's lives: caffeine.

Eilene Zimmerman's new book is about her ex-husband's death from the effects of cocaine and opiod addiction. He was a high powered, wealthy lawyer, and the father of two children. Until his death she didn't know about his addictions.

Religion scholar Elaine Pagels lost her young son to terminal illness and her husband a year later in an accident. She spoke to Fresh Air in November 2018 about loss and faith.

Dass, who died Dec. 22, was a practitioner of Eastern-inspired philosophy who became interested in the religious potential of LSD in the '60s and '70s. Originally broadcast in 1990.

After writing about the lives of girls for decades, Peggy Orenstein, turns her attention to boys in the #Metoo era. Her new book is 'Boys and Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent and Navigating the new Masculinity.'

Producer, director, and co-writer Todd Phillips talks about his new film which is a sort of origin story for the villain in the Batman series.

This week, we're listening back to some favorite Fresh Air interviews from the past decade. In 2016, Springsteen reflected on how he and his music were shaped by home, roots, family and community.

New York Times investigative reporter Sarah Kliff talks about the costs and challenges of switching to a universal healthcare system — and what it might mean to eliminate private insurance entirely.

"Acting allowed me to channel this neurosis into a character," Harbour says. He plays the skeptical police chief of a sleepy town besieged by supernatural events in the Netflix series.

As a black gay kid growing up in Texas in the 1990s, poet Saeed Jones remembers getting negative messages about his identity from every aspect of his life. It was around the time of Matthew Shepard's murder in Wyoming, and Jones felt alone and unsafe.

Our ears are complicated, delicate instruments that largely evolved in far quieter times than the age we currently inhabit — an early world without rock concerts, loud restaurants, power tools and earbuds.

Writer David Owen describes our current age as a "deafening" one, and in his new book, Volume Control, he explains how the loud noises we live with are harming our ears.

Allison Moorer's talks about coming to terms with the murder-suicide of her parents when she was 14, over thirty years ago, and how music helped.