Freakonomics Radio
For 50 years, the healthcare industry has been trying (and failing) to harness the power of artificial intelligence. It may finally be ready for prime time. What will this mean for human doctors — and the rest of us? (Part four of “The Freakonomics Radio Guide to Getting Better.”)
- SOURCES:
- Bob Wachter, professor, chair of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
- Pierre Elias, cardiologist, assistant professor of biomedical informatics at Columbia University, medical director for artificial intelligence at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
- RESOURCES:
- A Giant Leap: How AI Is Transforming Healthcare and What That Means for Our Future, by Bob Wachter (2026).
- “Epic Systems (MyChart),” by Acquired (2025).
- “Detecting structural heart disease from electrocardiograms using AI,” by Pierre Elias and Timothy Poterucha (Nature, 2025).
- “What Are the Risks of Sharing Medical Records With ChatGPT?” by Maggie Astor (New York Times, 2025).
- “Will Generative Artificial Intelligence Deliver on Its Promise in Health Care?” by Bob Wachter and Erik Brynjolfsson (JAMA, 2023).
- The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age, by Bob Wachter (2015).
- EXTRAS:
- “The Doctor Won’t See You Now,” by Freakonomics Radio (2025).
- “How to Stop Worrying and Love the Robot Apocalypse (Update),” by Freakonomics Radio (2024).
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
How to Make Meetings Less Terrible (Ep. 389 Rebroadcast)
In the U.S. alone, we hold 55 million meetings a day. Most of them are woefully unproductive, and tyrannize our offices. The revolution begins now — with better agendas, smaller invite lists, and an embrace…
419. 68 Ways to Be Better at Life
The accidental futurist Kevin Kelly on why enthusiasm beats intelligence, how to really listen, and why the solution to bad technology is more technology.
418. What Will College Look Like in the Fall (and Beyond)?
Three university presidents try to answer our listeners’ questions. The result? Not much pomp and a whole lot of circumstance.
417. Reasons to Be Cheerful
Humans have a built-in “negativity bias,” which means we give bad news much more power than good. Would the Covid-19 crisis be an opportune time to reverse this tendency?
416. How Do You Reopen a Country?
We speak with a governor, a former C.D.C. director, a pandemic forecaster, a hard-charging pharmacist, and a pair of economists — who say it’s all about the incentives. (Pandemillions, anyone?)
415. How Rahm Emanuel Would Run the World
As a former top adviser to presidents Clinton and Obama, he believes in the power of the federal government. But as former mayor of Chicago, he says that cities are where real problems get solved…
414. Will Covid-19 Spark a Cold War (or Worse) With China?
The U.S. spent the past few decades waiting for China to act like the global citizen it said it wanted to be. The waiting may be over.
413. Who Gets the Ventilator?
Should a nurse or doctor who gets sick treating Covid-19 patients have priority access to a potentially life-saving healthcare device? Americans aren’t used to rationing in medicine, but it’s time to think about it. We…
412. What Happens When Everyone Stays Home to Eat?
Covid-19 has shocked our food-supply system like nothing in modern history. We examine the winners, the losers, the unintended consequences — and just how much toilet paper one household really needs.
411. Is $2 Trillion the Right Medicine for a Sick Economy?
Congress just passed the biggest aid package in modern history. We ask six former White House economic advisors and one U.S. Senator: Will it actually work? What are its best and worst features? Where does…