Medicine & Health

Dr. Jessica Nutik Zitter, author of Extreme Measures, discusses the ethics of using medical assistance to hasten death. Zitter is the subject of the Netflix documentary Extremis.

Journalist and former physician Elisabeth Rosenthal on how American healthcare became big business, dysfunctional, and difficult for patients to navigate. Rosenthal is the author of the new book An American Sickness.

Ron Powers has written a personal and historical book about the treatment of the mentally ill in the U.S. He watched his two sons be transformed by schizophrenia. His youngest son committed suicide after struggling with the disease; a few years later his oldest son was diagnosed with the same disease.

Anna Lembke's new book, Drug Dealer, MD, explores the origins of the prescription drug epidemic from a doctor's perspective.

He's helped many people through painful passages in their lives. And he's faced his own: Since a near-fatal auto accident in 1979, he's been paralyzed from the chest down. Gottlieb has had nearly three decades to come to terms with the changed circumstances of his body — but now, he fears, that body may be growing tired.

Writer Arthur Allen describes how a WWII scientist in Poland smuggled the typhus vaccine to Jews — while his team made a weakened version for the Nazis. Originally broadcast July 22, 2014.

Andrew Solomon, the author of The Noonday Demon, discusses the challenges of pregnancy for women who are depressed. The long-term effects of antidepressants taken during pregnancy are unclear.

Dr. Kevin Fong explores how humans survive extremes of heat, cold, outer space and deep sea. He compares the exploration of medicine with the "explorers of the 20th century and every age before them."

In The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, Siddhartha Mukherjee chronicled how our understanding of cancer has evolved. Starting Monday, Ken Burns' three-part documentary will air on PBS. Terry Gross talked with Mukherjee in 2010.

Helene Cooper grew up in Liberia and still has family there. Reporting on the disease last month, she says when she saw a sick, little boy get out of an ambulance, she "completely lost it."