Chima Ndumele: Reinventing Medicaid

Howie and Harlan are joined by Chima Ndumele of the Yale School of Public Health to discuss his research on structural changes to Medicaid that could keep vulnerable populations healthier. Harlan reports on the remarkable abilities of Google's latest medicine-focused AI; Howie reflects on a study showing the impact of…

Use Russia’s Frozen Assets to Rebuild Ukraine

This commentary originally appeared in Time. Recent battlefield reverses in Ukraine, with Kherson under increasing attack, are powerful reminders that Ukraine needs every penny of support it can get urgently. Yet Western governments still refuse to seize Russia’s $300 billion in frozen assets, even though the idea of making Russia…

Find A Way… Letting Life Experience Call You in

This season we've been taking on HOW to learn through experience which fundamentally challenges the brain-bound assumption that learning starts and stays in the brain. We aren't so great at honoring the wisdom, expertise, and leadership that emerges from lived experience, but our own life may guide us – especially…

Is Space Becoming the Next Front for War—and Traffic Jams?

Q: Are national security issues showing up in space? National security issues have shown up in space since the Cold War. Militaries around the world are enabled by space. They’re applying space technology for communications, for positioning—when you drop a bomb, you want to be able to precisely hit a…

CEOs Invest Less in Corporate Social Responsibility When Their Own Money Is At Stake

Should corporations invest in green production methods, offer employees generous health benefits, or allow employees time during the work week to volunteer? Whether and how for-profit companies should invest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and other forms of socially motivated spending is hotly debated. Some argue that companies have a…

The Primary Care Crisis and Other News

Howie and Harlan discuss health and healthcare headlines. From flatlining telehealth to Walmart closing retail clinics to months-long waits for healthcare appointments, they try to untangle the challenges in delivering healthcare. Also considered, H5N1 bird flu increasing the risks of drinking unpasteurized milk, promising research on open-source moderation of misinformation…

CEOs Need More Face Time, Not FaceTime

This commentary originally appeared in Chief Executive. From the 1960s through the 1970s, AT&T advertised its long-distance service as “the next best thing to being there,” suggesting phone calls were a good substitute for seeing family members in person—but that might not work for the boss. Virtual meetings that save…

Arthur Caplan: Medicine’s Toughest Ethical Questions

Howie and Harlan are joined by Arthur Caplan, Drs. William F. and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor of Bioethics and founding head of the division of medical ethics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, to discuss the ethical failings of the pharmaceutical industry and how a community-focused ethos prioritizing justice and…

Speaker Mike Johnson’s ‘Profiles in Courage’ Moment

This commentary originally appeared in Newsweek. This weekend’s political leadership case study felt like a Frank Capra film script of a chapter from John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage, as House Speaker Mike Johnson reversed course and stared down threats from extremists in his party, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene,…

The Best Leaders Use Intuition

When you’re making decisions, should you listen to your gut or only lean on reason? Research suggests we should do both. Lynn Tilton lost her father as a teenager and experienced firsthand what the loss of the main income provider can do to a family. She got herself into Yale…

What Did the Last Four Years Teach Us about Managing Inflation?

Q: There’s tremendous attention on inflation these days. But the Federal Reserve and other central banks have been dealing with extraordinary circumstances for more than four years. Would you walk us through the challenges, the responses, and what we have learned, starting with the shutdown from the COVID pandemic? While…

Reimagining the U.S. healthcare system

Teresa Chahine: Welcome back, everyone. I’m here with Peter Hagan, the Digital Health Director of Commonwealth Care Alliance, and he’s here to talk to us about his former role in Iora Health, which was one of the startups that really pioneered the value-based care model in public health. Thank you…

To Make Greener Buildings, Try Innovating around the Edges

“If you care about climate change, you have to care about buildings,” said Jessica Bailey, CEO of Nuveen Green Capital. Her work scaling a financing mechanism called C-PACE (Commercial Property-Assessed Clean Energy) has helped building owners fund over $7 billion in clean energy and efficiency projects. Yet, she added, “I…

Scott Berkowitz: Value-Based Care and Population Health

Howie and Harlan are joined by Scott Berkowitz ’03, cardiologist and chief population health officer at Johns Hopkins Medicine, to discuss the necessity of moving from fee-for-service to value-based care delivery to improve outcomes for all. Harlan highlights the dangers of misinformation about Ivermectin. Howie reports on the potential conflicts…

Learning through The Extended Mind

Since this season of the podcast is all about the HOW of learning through experience, I wanted to talk to Annie Murphy Paul who basically wrote the book on learning outside the brain. She’s the author of several books, and I love to talk with people after they have had…

How to Build a Space Station

Q: Nanoracks was founded in 2009. What was it like to launch a space startup at that point? There were very few space startups and credibility was low. Nanoracks was one of the first, if not the first company, knocking on the door at NASA saying, “Hey, if you give…

How Universities in Israel Keep Going

(This opinion essay was originally published on Newsweek on March 29, 2024.) We represent a group of 25 Yale faculty who have just returned from a five-day visit to Israel. Our mission was to learn from and make meaningful academic connections with our Israeli counterparts. Much of what we learned…

Atheendar Venkataramani: Opportunity, Hope, and Health

Howie and Harlan are joined by Atheendar Venkataramani, a physician, health economist, and director of the Perelman School of Medicine’s Opportunity for Health Lab, to discuss the powerful role of economic opportunity in population health outcomes. Harlan reports on two studies where treatments’ unexpected benefits leapt ahead of understanding why…

A Whole-Person Approach to Mental Health

Q: What is the scale of the mental health need in the U.S.? It’s estimated that more than one in five adults live with a mental illness. And if you add addiction—substance use disorder—that number gets much larger. It’s also pretty alarming that 55% of adults with mental illness go…

Understanding the Economics of Education

Q: What project are you undertaking with your academic career? I study the economics of education. My goal is to understand how education shapes big-picture outcomes like inequality, upward mobility, and economic growth. I’m looking across educational levels from early childhood through college to think about the value of education…

Kate McEvoy: How Medicaid Is Driving Healthcare Innovation

Howie and Harlan are joined by Kate McEvoy, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, to discuss the programs’ underappreciated advances in holistically addressing health, housing, and food security. Reflecting on the upcoming election, Harlan notes that facts matter, whether in medicine or politics. Howie reports on the…

Who Is the Leader to Put Boeing Back on Course?

This commentary originally appeared in Fortune. Having known the past six CEOs of Boeing personally across multiple corporate governance crises, my phone has been ringing off the hook since the abrupt announcement of a massive shakeup in Boeing’s leadership ranks, including the retirement of CEO Dave Calhoun at the end…

Margo Harrison: Women’s Health as a Path to Empowerment

Howie and Harlan are joined by Margo Harrison, an OB-GYN and femtech entrepreneur, to discuss how innovative solutions to women’s health problems offer deeper understanding and expanded choices. Harlan and Howie each offer a caveat emptor for lightly regulated, unproven supplements and treatments such as Prevagen and hydration spas. Links:…

Is Uber Strangling the Restaurant Business?

Jiwoong Shin, professor of marketing at Yale SOM, likes to keep in touch with his former students. They tell him about what’s going on in the world and give him ideas for new research. In December 2019, one of those former students, now a restaurateur in New York and San…

What Bob Iger’s Critics Get Wrong about His Performance at Disney

As Disney’s closely watched proxy fight barrels toward the finish line with shareholders casting their votes on April 3, critics of CEO Bob Iger have launched a fuselage of attacks, criticizing Iger’s track record and his plans for turning around Disney. But amidst widespread interest from non-business audiences, these criticisms…

What Have the Bots Learned about Us?

How prevalent are bots as the 2024 election nears? Today’s bots are much more sophisticated, capable of creating and posting original content that makes them seem convincingly real. This technological leap means that, in the current election cycle, bots have the potential to be far more persuasive and impactful than…

Better Sanctions Can Weaken Russia

This commentary originally appeared in Fortune. In the first few months following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, we documented how the voluntary exits of over 1,000+ global companies from Russia (that we helped catalyze), paired with government sanctions such as the G7 oil price cap (that we helped…

Zack Cooper: High Healthcare Costs: Who Pays, Who Benefits

Howie and Harlan are joined by Yale health economist Zack Cooper to discuss his work on surprise medical bills and the impact of high healthcare costs on households, wages, and the economy. Harlan reports on Hippocratic AI’s efforts to develop AI nurses. Howie looks at the global effort to eradicate…

Is AI a Savior or a Peril—or Both?

The wizardry of ChatGPT captured the world’s attention when it was released in 2022 and became the most successful product launch in history. Since then, AI companies and startups have attracted billions in new investments, and the technology has continued to dazzle. Consumer-facing AI programs can now compose love ballads—or…

Customer Data Can Reveal Revenue Fraud at Supplier Firms

Revenue fraud—when a company artificially inflates its revenue to meet investors’ expectations—can wreak havoc on financial markets, which rely on accurate information to function properly. In recent years, scholars have attempted to improve fraud detection methods by using machine learning, statistics, and even vocal emotion analysis software, which analyzes the…

Can Industrial Policy Help Revive Struggling Regions?

Economic inequality continues to widen—and not just between people, but between places, too. The United States, for example, has seen a regional divergence since the 1970s, when the country began transitioning away from heavy manufacturing and toward a service-based economy, resulting in dampened economic prospects and living standards throughout the…

Robert Alpern: Creating an Inspired Medical School

Howie and Harlan are joined by Robert Alpern, a Yale nephrologist and the former dean of the Yale School of Medicine, to discuss the importance of a fiscal base for enabling a medical school to deliver top-quality training, research, and clinical care. Harlan asks whether widespread norovirus is a reason…

Going the Last Mile (with Evidence)

In the spring of 2022, a team of economists and public health researchers led by Mushfiq Mobarak, Niccolò Meriggi, and Maarten Voors spent weeks bumping along rough, gullied roads in rural Sierra Leone. It was hot and humid, but at least it was the dry season: Sierra Leone has the…

Robert Rohrbaugh: Bringing Antiracist Tools to Clinical Practice

Howie and Harlan are joined by Robert Rohrbaugh, professor of psychiatry and deputy dean for professionalism and leadership at the Yale School of Medicine, to discuss his work training doctors in antiracist practices and ensuring the wellbeing of clinicians during the pandemic. Harlan reports on the problematic history of medical…

A Cheating Scandal, Abandoned Research, and Other News

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. Harlan and I have intentionally set aside several episodes each year to cover a broader…

The Best and Worst CEOs of 2023

With the new year comes our annual tradition of recognizing three CEOs for their accomplishments over the last 12 months—as well as three CEOs who are on the hot seat after a year of struggles. Such an effort at accountability can teach us a lot about the future, as glancing…

Business Exodus from Russia Was No Bonanza for Putin

Sometimes, political reporters without a background in business journalism make egregious errors in their coverage of the business exodus from Vladimir Putin’s Russia—and even fall for the strongman’s Potemkin Village-like economic façade. A recent article, entitled “How Putin Turned a Western Boycott Into a Bonanza”, wrongly suggested that the historic…