155. Helping People Die

He’s one of the world’s leading neuroscientists, with a focus on the physiological effects of stress. (For years, he spent his summers in Kenya, alone except for the baboons he was observing.) Steve asks Robert why we value human life over animals, why he’s lost faith in the crim ...  Show more

In addition to publishing best-selling books about pregnancy and child-rearing, Emily Oster is a respected economist at Brown University. Over the course of the pandemic, she’s become the primary collector of data about Covid-19 in schools. Steve and Emily discuss how she became ...  Show more

In the 1980s and ‘90s, Dr. Jack Kevorkian pushed the ethical limits of healthcare with his controversial ideas around death and suffering. What he believed in most was a patient’s right to die with the help of a physician. And for a decade, he assisted in the deaths of over 130 t ...  Show more

Writer and producer Katie Engelhart, author of the new book “The Inevitable: Dispatches on the Right to Die,” speaks with us about the underground euthanasia movement, the differing perspectives on assisted suicide in countries around the world, and the problems with the media’s ...  Show more

Do humans need touch to survive? Do any of us get enough touch throughout our lives? And why doesn’t Angela want to hug anyone for eight seconds?

What makes normal people do terrible things? Are there really bad apples — or just bad barrels? And how should you deal with a nefarious next-door neighbor?