This commentary was adapted from episode 145 of the Health & Veritas podcast. Trachoma is a disease I am certain I learned about in medical school and probably forgot sometime after I took part three of my boards in 1990. Why? Because it doesn’t occur in the United States—or at…
Q: What is space law right now and what developments can we anticipate? Space law is a very underdeveloped field of international law. That’s understandable because until recently, activities in space were quite limited and primarily state led. The boom in commercial space companies and the plans by a number…
Q: What questions have guided your career? The question I began with was, “What drives inequality in society?” Early projects led me to believe that the way organizations structure themselves and manage their employment relationships has a significant impact on why some people get ahead and some people don’t. At…
How do different emotions impact everyday life? And what are the kinds of experiences we want and need—in the classroom, at work, and in our own developmental trajectories—to be able to deepen our emotional wisdom so we can make better decisions and have healthier relationships? In this episode of Learning…
Harlan Krumholz: Welcome to Health & Veritas. I’m Harlan Krumholz. Howard Forman: And I’m Howie Forman. We’re physicians and professors at Yale University. We’re trying to get closer to the truth about health and healthcare. This is a very, very special episode. It’s our nation’s surgeon general—and our alum—joining us…
Following her latest economic policy speech, Vice President Kamala Harris and Stephanie Ruhle discussed Harris’s economic plan, including her controversial pledge to pass a new federal law against price gouging. When pressed on how this matches her belief in the capitalist system, the vice president responded, “I am never going…
In July, student protests in Bangladesh grew violent when the country’s longtime and increasingly autocratic prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, initiated an aggressive crackdown that killed hundreds of demonstrators. This brutality caused what had started as discontent about unemployment among the country’s most educated young people to bloom into a wider…
Harlan Krumholz: Howie, it’s great to see you, and welcome to Health & Veritas. Howard Forman: You’re Harlan Krumholz. Harlan Krumholz: And you’re Howie Forman. And we’re sitting together today. Howard Forman: Exactly. We’re in the studio. We’re physicians and professors at Yale University. We’re trying to get closer to…
This commentary was adapted from episode 142 of the Health & Veritas podcast. Polio is back in the news, again. Over two years ago, we talked about a serious polio threat in the New York area, when one person developed paralytic poliomyelitis and wastewater detected the virus in several adjoining…
At our Yale CEO Caucus last week, we surveyed approximately 60 top CEOs in attendance on a broad range of economic issues. While our anonymous straw poll was informal and unscientific, the results suggest that CEOs are increasingly and broadly optimistic about the economy—in fact, much more bullish than just…
As a young finance scholar, one of the first topics Professor James Choi tackled was how automatic enrollment in retirement plans affects Americans’ saving. Two decades ago, putting employees into a 401(k) by default, rather than requiring them to proactively opt in, was a novel idea. Choi and his collaborators…
This commentary was adapted from episode 141 of the Health & Veritas podcast. H5N1 remains a major public health story, even if the press rarely covers it. We have had a concerning outbreak of H5N1 bird flu, also known as highly pathogenic avian influenza, since early this year. When I…
How can we overcome change and learn to create a better experience at work—for ourselves and our teams? To launch us into Season Three of Learning Through Experience, my first guest explores with me the pedagogy of hope and transformation, focusing on interpersonal and group dynamics. As Dr. Lisa Lahey…
Welcome to a new season of Learning Through Experience! This season will echo the cadence and pedagogy of one of my popular courses here at Yale. My conversations are with brilliant guests who help us think about how we learn through interpersonal and group dynamics. This podcast is not just…
Howie and Harlan are joined by Ania Jastreboff, a Yale endocrinologist and an expert on obesity medication, to talk about the remarkable range of diseases treated by drugs like Ozempic, Mounjaro, and Wegovy. Harlan discusses new Apple devices with the ability to detect sleep apnea and aid in hearing; Howie…
There’s a reason charity advertisements often revolve around a specific person: an upsetting picture or story is more likely to elicit donations than are statistics or depictions of a group’s collective plight. Psychologists refer to our tendency to open our hearts and wallets wider for specific people than we do…
This commentary originally appeared in Fortune. The news that the International Monetary Fund will become the first major international financial body to officially return to Russia since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 underscores the systemic pro-authoritarian impulses of the IMF and its tolerance to blunt violations of international…
Harlan Krumholz: Howie, we’re back. Welcome to Health & Veritas. I’m Harlan Krumholz. Howard Forman: And I’m Howie Forman. We’re physicians and professors at Yale University, and we’re trying to get closer to the truth about health and healthcare. Our guest today is Dr. Margaret, or Peg, McGovern, but first…
For decades, the Business Roundtable, a professional association and lobbying organization formed by CEOs from many of the largest companies in the United States, asserted that companies exist to create value for shareholders. So, it was noteworthy when, in 2019, the leaders of 181 companies signed onto the organization’s revised…
Joan Tabachnick ’86 has worked in the field of child sexual abuse prevention for more than 30 years and developed widely used educational tools and programs. She serves on the advisory council of Stop It Now, and recently retired as the executive director of MASOC—the Massachusetts Society for a World…
This commentary originally appeared in Fortune. Writing in the journal Public Opinion 1951, Yale researchers Carl Hovland and Walter Weiss labeled their postwar studies on the trick of persuasive messaging regardless of the truth as “the sleeper effect.” They found that a message lingers through repetition, even if factually unfounded.…
How bad is housing affordability in the U.S.? Is it actually a crisis? There are many ways to define housing affordability, but common indicators point to much higher costs of both owning and renting than what we have seen since pre-COVID times. Average home prices grew more than twice as…
Q: How do workplaces navigate this moment of intense, divided politics? It may be wise to pay attention to, “What do we want to create?” We may be better off focusing on how we talk to each other rather than what we say. A little bit less about content and…
The Fed is expected to cut interest rates in September. What does your research say about whether borrowers should wait to take out a loan? Our research shows that many people make the mistake of waiting to take out a mortgage or other long-term loan if the Fed is expected…
This commentary originally appeared in Fortune. As presidential campaigns race to the close, the electorate moves past gauzy themes and adversarial finger-pointing, which tell us little about candidates’ plans, to examine differences in goals and policies. Previously, we analyzed the paradoxical positions of Donald Trump’s pro-business, laissez-faire, global burden-sharing presumptions—and…
Few people like to consider themselves followers, but when it comes to evaluating goods, services, and even our own colleagues, it turns out many of us are. That matters because collective evaluation processes—whether a restaurant’s ratings on Yelp or performance reviews at work—can play a significant role in sinking or…
This essay was originally published on TIME. The rousing performances by Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz, along with the Obamas, the Clintons, Oprah, and many others, at the Democratic National Convention marked a pivotal moment in the 2024 presidential election. Now that both political parties have formally…
Q: What does it feel like to be launched into space? It’s noisy. There’s so much shaking. But what you really feel is pressure. With the weight of the solid rocket fuel plus all the hydrogen and oxygen, you move slowly off the pad. Relatively slowly, I mean—you’re going a…
This commentary originally appeared in Fortune. Starbucks became a global brand as strong as the likes of McDonalds, Coke, Pepsi, Google, Apple, and Levi Strauss in a record time—but its value as an enterprise has been plummeting in recent years. So, the man who built the brand, Howard Schultz, intervened…
This commentary originally appeared in Time. Having studied leadership across sectors for nearly a half century, I’ve found that power sharing at the top is often harder than delegation and execution down the hierarchy of command. Leadership partnerships across sectors that work well have a secret recipe—which Kamala Harris seemed…
Former President Donald Trump has long regarded the stock market as a barometer for success, constantly touting record highs during his time in office and still bragging incessantly about the “beautiful” stock market on his watch. However, what many commentators miss is not just the 40 record highs the stock…
Q: What are the key questions guiding your work? A driving interest for me is how organizations can change for the better—to be more effective and desirable places to work. I’ve completed several research projects that look at how people who have expertise and knowledge, but not formal authority or…
In recent years, shareholders have made attempts in court to hold companies accountable for failing to uphold commitments to diversity within their workforce or leadership teams. So far, those efforts have fallen flat. Facebook’s board of directors, for instance, won dismissal of shareholder claims that it had breached its fiduciary…
Barry Nalebuff, Milton Steinbach Professor of Management I enjoy watching Olympic table tennis. These are some of the world’s best and least appreciated athletes. Heidi Brooks, Senior Lecturer in Organizational Behavior We see the performances and that’s all we are invited to witness, but I am so aware that it’s…
Harlan Krumholz: Welcome to Health & Veritas. I’m Harlan Krumholz. Howard Forman: And I’m Howie Forman. We’re physicians and professors at Yale University. We’re trying to get closer to the truth about health and healthcare. Our guest today is Dr. Lee Schwamm, but first we always like to check in…
This essay was originally published in Time magazine. President Biden is being celebrated among Democrats for his superb tour of duty and for putting the nation’s interests over his own by stepping out of the campaign. Political pundits, wealthy donors, and prominent fellow political leaders were bewildered as to why…
Howie and Harlan are joined by Joshua Sharfstein, a longtime public health official in federal, state, and local government, to discuss the state of the opioid epidemic, lessons from the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, and our readiness for a bird flu outbreak. Harlan reports on the summer surge in COVID-19; Howie…
As climate change intensifies, homeowners are increasingly looking to retrofit their homes to make them more resilient and energy efficient, with projects such as hurricane-proof windows and doors, or solar panels on roofs. But not everyone can afford these important upgrades that would help them ready their homes against extreme…
Two weeks ago, we wrote that business leaders are not flocking to GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, with no Fortune 100 CEOs having donated financially to Trump this year—a pattern broken only now by Elon Musk’s pronouncement Monday. While we commendably saw a surge of statements of sympathy from business…
Fixed prices for goods and services is a relatively recent invention. In the 19th century, Quaker merchants argued that haggling was morally wrong—it was unfair for two customers buying the same good to walk away having paid different amounts. John Wanamaker, a Quaker and the founder of Philadelphia’s Wanamaker’s department…