The Spreadsheet of Life and Death

Mary Bateman lived in Yorkshire in the late 18th Century, an age that prized rational thought. Many people still longed to believe in the old ways and Bateman used this to her advantage, selling spells and enchantments to the desperate. Dr Maddy Pelling, co-host of the After Dark ...  Show more

The Herald of Free Enterprise is a new class of ferry that allows cars to drive directly into the ship. The doors must be closed before every departure, or the ship sails with a gaping hole at one end. One black night in 1987, on the freezing waters off Zebrugge, Belgium, a singl ...  Show more

It's hard to put a value on a human life. When you're well, perhaps you don't think about it. But if you're ill, getting access to the right drugs, whatever the cost, is a priority. But the NHS does not have a bottomless pit of money. And some medicines are judged too expensive t ...  Show more

If a cure for cancer was discovered, millions of lives would be saved - and billions of dollars would be lost by the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture chemotherapy drugs. How far would Big Pharma go to protect their profits? Sponsors! BetterHelp - Get 10% off your first m ...  Show more

In this special episode of People I (Mostly) Admire, Steve Levitt speaks with the palliative physician B.J. Miller about modern medicine’s goal of “protecting a pulse at all costs.” Is there a better, even beautiful way to think about death and dying?

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This is a story of desperation, anger, poverty—and triumph over long odds to crack the code of a degenerative disease that had been stealing the lives of children since it was first discovered more than a century ago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices