My Iron Lung (Revisited)

On February 12, 1946, a Black soldier was heading home from WWII when he was brutally beaten by a white police officer in South Carolina. No one knew the identity of the police officer. No one even knew the town where it happened. When the famous radio host Orson Welles heard abo ...  Show more

On February 12, 1946, an African American soldier heading home from WWII was attacked by a white police officer somewhere in South Carolina. The soldier's name was Isaac Woodard.No one knew the identity of the officer who attacked Woodard. No one even knew which town it had happe ...  Show more

On this episode of Our American Stories, Daryn Glassbrook of the Mobile Medical Museum tells the story of the iron lung, a device used to keep people with advanced polio alive in the first half of the 20th century. New York Times bestselling author, Harlow Giles Unger, of twenty- ...  Show more

Dr. Paul Farmer, who passed away unexpectedly in Rwanda on February 21st, fundamentally changed the way healthcare is delivered in the most impoverished places on Earth, touched millions of lives, and inspired countless others to follow his example. In tribute to his extraordinar ...  Show more

If you’ve ever lost someone, or watched a medical drama in the last 15 years, you’ve probably heard of The Five Stages of Grief. They’re sort of the world’s worst consolation prize for loss. But last year, we began wondering… Where did these stages come from in the first place ...

As a lifeguard, a paramedic, and then an ER doctor, Blair Bigham found his calling: saving lives. But when he started to work in the ICU, he slowly realized that sometimes keeping people (and their hopes) alive just prolongs the suffering. He wrote a book arguing that a too-la ...