Best Health Care Podcasts of 2022

December 1, 2022

Our annual look back at some of the best health care podcast episodes of the year with help from a few of our podcast host friends.

Listen to the full episode below, read the transcript or scroll down for more information.

If Tradeoffs has been one of your favorite podcasts this year, please consider donating to support our work. Through the end of 2022, your donation will be tripled thanks to the NewsMatch program from the Institute for Nonprofit News.

Top Health Care Podcasts of 2022

It’s been another historic year in health policy, and we’re closing out the year like we always do. We asked some of our fellow health care podcast hosts to tell us what episodes have stood out to them from 2022. (They weren’t allowed to recommend their own shows, but we certainly think you should check them out, and you can do so by clicking on their name or picture.)

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Host of America Dissected

Abdul’s Picks:

Before Roe: The Physicians’ Crusade —  Throughline, May 19

“[In] this episode, they trace the rise of the anti-abortion movement to, frankly, a particular set of doctors who recognized that the rise of midwives and some of the services that midwives provided were a threat to the income of physicians. … And I just felt like they did a great job peeling back the onion in a way that put a puzzle piece into my thinking. I was like, ‘Oh yeah, of course that was.’ And they just did it masterfully.”

The Heartbreak And Cost of Losing A Baby In America —  Consider This from NPR, Sept. 27

“They tell the story … about couples who’d lost their infant children and then were left with hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills. … People regularly go through this experience of losing a child at a higher rate than almost any other high income country in the world, but when they do, unlike in those other countries where this happens less often, they are then hounded by health care corporations who see them as just a dollar sign. … And they did an amazing job in the in the episode of telling a series of stories and interviewing these parents. And you can just hear it in their voices. This sort of sadness, complicated by frustration, complicated by anger.”

Keris Myrick, Host of Unapologetically Black Unicorns

Keris’ Picks:

Racial Equity in Psychiatry and Mental Health – Jessica Isom, MD, MPHDoin’ The Work: Frontline Stories of Social Change, May 16

“The episode that that I really kind of glommed onto and I’ve listened to it many times, is one with a psychiatrist [Dr. Jessica Isom], and there they are, this social worker and psychiatrist talking about mental health equity and as a black person and as a peer, I was just blown away and I was just like, ‘Wow, they’re having the same experience that we’re having as the patient.'”

Anita Dias — GET MAD! With Vesper Moore

“The first episode I was on the floor just pouncing my fist on the floor going, ‘Yes, yes, yeah.’ It was with spoken word artist and poet Anita Diaz, and she talks about her lived experience of being a mental health client. And she wrote this poem about her experience in a psychiatric emergency room. And when she read it, I was like, ‘Yep, yep, Check, check, exclamation point. Oh, yeah. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.’ It was so spot on.”

We reached out to some of the podcast hosts we’ve had on previous end-of-year specials to ask them what they’ve been listening to in 2022.

 

Julie Rovner, What The Health?

  • JacobStrangerville, May 22

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Episode Resources

More Recommendations from the Tradeoffs Staff:

Serum (Grant Hill and Maiken Scott, The Pulse and Local Trance Media)

Healthcare is Hard (LRV Health)

Complex PTSD (The Allusionist, 2/18/2022)

Even with risky survival rate, shortages of ECMO machines cost lives, study finds (Blake Farmer, WPLN, 3/28/2022)

The Mystifying Rise of Child Suicide (Andrew Solomon, The New Yorker, 4/4/2022)

After Roe: A New Battlefield (Throughline, NPR, 6/16/2022)

What overturning Roe v. Wade means for Black maternal mortality in Texas (Elena Rivera and Azul Sordo, KERA, 8/23/2022)

How Safe Injection Sites Can Help Address Our Addiction Crisis (Alan Montecillo, Lesley McClurg and Maria Esquinca, The Bay, KQED, 8/31/2022)

The Pink House at the Center of the World (Maisie Crow, This American Life, 7/1/2022)

ORGANized with Greg Segal (America Dissected, 9/13/2022)

Exit Strategy (Amy Bloom, This American Life, 9/16/2022)

A Little Bit Pregnant and Therapy Ghostbusters (Invisibilia, NPR, 9/16/2022 and 9/23/2022)

The Rise of Guinea Pigs (Revisionist History, 9/29/2022)

How Hunger in America Drives the Obesity Epidemic (In the Bubble with Andy Slavitt, 10/3/2022)

Other “Best Of” Podcast Lists:

Apple announces the 2022 Apple Podcasts Award winner (Apple, 11/29/2022)

The Best Podcasts of 2022 (So Far) (Liam Hess and Emma Specter, Vogue, 11/14/2022)

10 Best Podcasts of 2022 (Eliana Dockterman, Time, 11/14/2022)

The Best Podcasts of 2022 (So Far) (Nick Quah, Vulture, 11/1/2022)

Episode Credits

Guests:

Abdul El-Sayed, MD, Host of America Dissected

Keris Jän Myrick, Host of Unapologetically Black Unicorns

The Tradeoffs theme song was composed by Ty Citerman, with additional music this episode by Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions.

This episode was produced and mixed by Andrew Parrella. It was produced for the web by Ryan Levi.

Special thanks to Stacey Richter.

Additional thanks to the Tradeoffs Advisory Board and our stellar staff!