476. What Are the Police for, Anyway?

Like tens of millions of people, Stephen Dubner thought he had a penicillin allergy. Like the vast majority, he didn’t. This misdiagnosis costs billions of dollars and causes serious health problems, so why hasn’t it been fixed? We find out in this update of a 2025 episode. SOURC ...  Show more

Is the oxymoron really “the secret sauce to everything”? That’s the case Ingels makes in this debut episode of our new video show Better in Person, filmed in Stephen Dubner’s living room. If you'd like to see the video version of Better in Person, watch it on YouTube or Apple Pod ...  Show more

Black Americans being victimized and killed by the police is an epidemic. A truth many Americans are acknowledging since the murder of George Floyd, as protests have occurred in all fifty states calling for justice on his behalf. But this tension between African American communit ...  Show more

After a police-involved shooting, there's often a familiar blame game: Maybe the cop was racist. Maybe the person who was shot really was threatening. Or maybe, the bias that leads cops to shoot affects us all. This week on Hidden Brain, we explore how unconscious bia ...

Trevor reflects on the ever-present occurrence of deadly police violence against Black people in the U.S. and the seeming lack of cops willing to rise up and take a stand against it. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/lis ...  Show more

When U.S. police departments didn't evolve out of slave patrols, they tended to form out of a desire to protect the property of the wealthy. In practice, this meant beating, murdering and arresting people who didn't want to work 12 hour days until they died.FOOTNOTES: Krypteia: A ...  Show more