Today's episode is an interview with Dr. Saurabh Jha, an Associate Professor of Radiology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, on the importance of debate and dialogue both historically and in today's modern context.

This is the second episode in our experiment in breaking our content up into bite-sized, single-topic episodes. What do you think? Do you prefer a shorter, single-focus episode, or do you prefer our old format?

Now that we are nine months into the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, we invite Dr. Alasdair Munro, a pediatrics infectious disease expert, back on to the show to discuss recent developments in public health policy concerning the spread of COVID-19, the risk of it, and children. We also talk about the rigorously policed echo chamber of Twitter, specifically #medtwitter, and finding an audience for controversial opinions. This week is also the start of an experiment in breaking our content up into bite-sized, single-topic episodes. What do you think? Do you prefer a shorter, single-focus episode, or do you prefer our old format?

This week we return to our roots of oncology and dissect the recent results from KEYNOTE-177. We also have an in-depth interview with mathematician Dr. Wes Pegden of Carnegie Mellon University on a mathematical approach to the COVID-19 pandemic.

We have a short and sweet episode for you this week -- no monologue, just two deep-dives with two stellar guests. Our first interview is with Dr. Zubin Damania (known as ZDoggMD) and we cover everything from making original music to the artistry of professional oratory to the pain of electronic health records. Our second interview is a return to our popular segment Journal Club with a Fellow: We invite on Dr. Karine Tawagi of the Oschner Clinic in Louisiana to discuss the JAVELIN 100 study.

Our first guests this week are Drs. Adam Cifu and Scott Stern and are on to discuss their new podcast Symptom to Diagnosis -- based on their book of the same name -- about clinical reasoning. Next we bring back political scientist Dr. Vlad Kogan (from episode 3.13) to discuss the need to re-open schools in the context of rising COVID-19 cases and a changing political landscape. Finally we interview Dr. Carycruz Bueno on her critical research into the harms of fully virtual schooling

First up this week we interview constitutional law scholar Leah Litman, an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, on Dr. Norman Wang and the intricacies of the laws on affirmative action. Next, we talk with Dr. Patrick DeMartino, a pediatric hematology/oncology fellow at Oregon Health & Science University, on his new paper out now in JAMA Internal Medicine: "Potential Cost Implications for All US Food and Drug Administration Oncology Drug Approvals in 2018". Finally, we sit down with Dr. John Mandrola for an in-depth discussion on the intersection of medicine, politics, and advocacy.

We have a multitude of interviews for you this week. We start by interviewing Dr. Julia Marcus of the Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute on messaging around public health interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic. We continue talking about COVID-19 with Anne Sosin and Dr. Elizabeth Carpenter-Song, both of Dartmouth College. They join us on the podcast to discuss how the Northeast region of the United States has uniquely handled COVID-19. Finally, we bring back the Journal Club with a Fellow segment and interview Dr. David Russler-Germain of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis on a new paper out now in The Lancet on CAR T-cell therapy in DLBCL: TRANSCEND NHL 001.

We talk this week with Dr. Monica Gandhi, Associate Division Chief of the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases, and Global Medicine at UCSF/ San Francisco General Hospital, and medical director of the HIV Clinic at SFGH. Speaking from decades of experience treating HIV/AIDS patients, she gives us her take on the public health policies enacted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We then conclude this week's episode with a Classical Hematology Chat with Dr. Sven Olson of Oregon Health & Science University.

This week we have two fantastic interviews for you: The first is with Dr. Ben Mazer on the interplay between social media and news; the second is with Dr. Tem Bendapudi on whether Caplacizumab should be the standard of care for thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP).

This week we sit down virtually with Dr. Atle Fretheim, Research Director of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, to talk about how Norway has responded to the COVID-19 crisis - specifically, how they've handled it when it comes to public schools. We also have an interview with Dr. Anthony "Tony" Letai of the Dana Farber Cancer Center on cancer biology.

We start this week's episode off with a monologue covering a few current events, notably the recent editorial on the COVID-19 pandemic in the USA published by the New England Journal of Medicine titled "Dying in a Leadership Vacuum". From there we interview Dr. Margaret McCartney on her recent opinion piece in the BMJ titled "We need better evidence on non-drug interventions for covid-19"; we talk about masks, schools, the need for randomized trials, and more. Finally, we interview Dr. Jason Sheltzer on his recent papers on cancer biology and the implications of his findings on clinical medicine.

We start this week's episode by interviewing Dr. Alasdair Munro, a pediatrics infectious disease expert, on the risk of spread of COVID-19 in children and through schools. We end with an interview with Dr. Stefan Baral, a field epidemiologist studying COVID-19, on the nature of public health during a global pandemic.

This week we have a two-hour-long, far-ranging interview with Dr. John Ioannidis of Stanford University on, broadly, meta-research and COVID-19 - including his recent controversies. We end the episode with an interview with Dr. Mary-Elizabeth Percival of the University of Washington on her new paper out now in Haematologica: "Survival of patients with newly diagnosed high-grade myeloid neoplasms who do not meet standard trial eligibility".

This week's episode is all about COVID-19. We discuss general COVID-19 health policy and how spread of SARS-CoV-2 has been managed and should be managed; we discuss whether or not schools should be re-opened; and we discuss Dr. Scott Atlas's views. Our special guests are political scientist Dr. Vladimir Kogan, epidemiologist Dr. Daniel Morgan, and health economist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

We start this week's episode by critically examining the new paper titled "Racial/Ethnic Variation in Nasal Gene Expression of Transmembrane Serine Protease 2 (TMPRSS2)" and asking, is it racist? After that, we discuss advances in prostate cancer imaging with two imaging specialists from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Drs. Anton Becker and Sungmin Woo. Finally, we have a far-reaching interview with Dr. Thomas Newman of University of California San Francisco on clinical epidemiology and his new book Evidence-Based Diagnosis: An Introduction to Clinical Epidemiology.

This week's monologue touches on the credibility of expert speakers, evaluating the COVID-19 lockdown as health policy, and the anti-affirmative action white paper written by Dr. Norman Wang and its controversy. In the second half of the episode we interview Professor Darrel Francis of Imperial College London on COVID-19 cardiology and Vascepa.

We have a number of topics for you this week! Among them, we cover the issue of colon cancer screening, especially in the light of Chadwick Boseman's recent passing. We interview Jonathan Darrow, an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and faculty at Brigham and Women's Hospital, on patent litigation and the recent patent appeal for Vascepa. Finally, we interview Dr. Toby Richards, Professor of Surgery, on running clinical trials and, specifically, the results of his recent trial PREVENTT, out now in The Lancet.

This week we take a deep dive into two recently published studies, their surrounding controversy, and the broader implications. The first study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA and is titled "Physician–patient racial concordance and disparities in birthing mortality for newborns". The second was published in the New England Journal of Medicine and is titled "Oral Relugolix for Androgen-Deprivation Therapy in Advanced Prostate Cancer", commonly known as the HERO trial. We discuss the HERO trial with Dr. Michael Burns of Northwestern as part of our new segment, Journal Club with a Fellow.

This week we take a deep dive into two recently published studies, their surrounding controversy, and the broader implications. The first study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA and is titled "Physician–patient racial concordance and disparities in birthing mortality for newborns". The second was published in the New England Journal of Medicine and is titled "Oral Relugolix for Androgen-Deprivation Therapy in Advanced Prostate Cancer", commonly known as the HERO trial. We discuss the HERO trial with Dr. Michael Burns of Northwestern as part of our new segment, Journal Club with a Fellow.

We have a lot in store for you this week! We start off by evaluating two recently published studies: "Evaluation of Omics-Based Strategies for the Management of Advanced Lung Cancer" (published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology: Oncology Practice) and "The Effect of Advances in Lung-Cancer Treatment on Population Mortality" (published in the New England Journal of Medicine). We talk a bit about tracking down the validity of a reference. We sit down with Dr. Branden Tarlow to discuss his thoughts on PPIs and COVID-19 acquisition. Finally, we conclude the episode by interviewing Dr. Elizabeth Eisenhauer of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada on her career in cancer medicine.