America Dissected

Millions of Americans work inside our homes–as carers and cleaners–taking care of the people and places we value most. Though they do the most important work in our lives, work that we would only entrust to few others, they are some of the most marginalized workers in our economy–and the work they do continues to be undervalued and underappreciated. Abdul breaks down the consequences of that for o...

Millions of Americans live with chronic pain. But we have yet to fully contend with the impact pain has on people–and our ability to treat pain remains limited. In fact, our failure to engage with the complexity of pain is, in part, what led to the opioid crisis, which took over 100,000 lives last year. One of those people living with chronic pain is Dr. Haider Warraich, a physician who’s written...

Food insecurity affects millions of Americans — a disproportionate number of them are Black. What are the consequences of the way we produce food in our society — and how do they shape who gets healthy, accessible, affordable food, and who doesn’t? Abdul reflects on our food system and speaks with Malik Yakini, co-founder and Executive Director of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network....

Nearly four million people have left Ukraine since Putin invaded their country. They need housing, food, and work. But so do the million who’ve fled war in countries like Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. Abdul breaks down the public health consequences of forced migration. He then speaks with David Miliband, President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee about the refugee crisis in Uk...

Menstruation is a fundamental part of the physiology of nearly half of the people on Earth. But we don’t talk about it that way–it’s taboo, unspoken, and ignored. Period stigma has left state governments across the country taxing period products as “luxury” items, failing to provide access to period products as the necessities they are for low-income menstruators. In this episode, Abdul talks abou...

Online sports betting has exploded over the past few years as 18 states have legalized it. Already a $70 Billion market, it’s projected to double in the next five years. But what does the rise of online sports betting mean for people with gambling disorder? We speak with Prof. Tim Fong, a gambling addiction expert, about the consequences of online sports betting–and how we can protect vulnerable p...

Spring forward has taken all the spring out of my step. It’s even worse from my four year old who’s super confused about why she has to wake up an hour earlier every day. But beyond the annoyance and the lack of sleep, what are the long term health consequences of Daylight Savings Time? We speak with Dr. Adeel Rishi, lead author of a position paper from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine on Da...

COVID really is over this time, right? Abdul reflects on the fact that public health is about what we do in the background when no one is paying attention–and how now is not the time for public health leaders to take a breather, but to get ahead of the next variant. Abdul sits down with Dr. Don Burke, a global infectious disease expert, to walk through various scenarios for where we go from here....

Who knew “take a hike” was really powerful health advice? Abdul reflects on the power of one of the most basic things humans can do. Then he speaks with Neuroscientist and author Shane O’Mara about his book “In Praise of Walking,” about the power of a walk, and why so many of us rediscovered it during the pandemic. For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/americadissected .

Too often, we focus on the disease that affect people rather than the people those diseases are affecting. That failure to pay attention to people lets the disease take more than their health, it lets it take their identities. But we can stop it. Prof. Celeste Watkins-Hayes studies the ways that women with HIV negotiate their illness and how it shapes their lives. She joins Abdul to talk about her...

Public health requires us to believe that there is “a public” above and beyond ourselves as individuals. But who belongs to that public may matter even more for what we’re willing to do provide that public. In her book “The Sum of Us,” author and organizer Heather McGhee shows how racism has destroyed collective efforts–from swimming pools to insurance pools–in America. She joins Abdul to talk abo...

One of the most galling examples of inequity in America continues to be the stunningly high rate at which Black mothers die in pregnancy and childbirth and Black babies die before during their first year of life. Abdul reflects on how structural inequity continues to take mothers’ and babies’ lives. Then he talks to Rep. Lauren Underwood, Chair of the Black Maternal Health Caucus and sponsor of th...

Your right to swing your first ends where my face starts. That principle captures the limits of our freedoms in this country. And the Supreme Court has long held the precedent that people could be required to be vaccinated to protect the public from disease. But a recent ruling against workplace vaccine mandates may upend that. We speak with Prof. Melissa Murray, NYU Law professor and host of “Str...

President Biden ran on the idea of offering Americans a “public option” for health insurance — a government managed healthcare plan that would operate in parallel to private insurance. But what if we extended “public options” beyond health insurance to, say, pharmaceuticals or increased public investment in clinics and hospitals? Dana Brown is the Director of Health and Economy at the Democracy Co...

The CDC is the nation–perhaps the world’s–most preeminent public health agency. But it’s taken quite the beating throughout this pandemic. From flawed tests to unclear guidance to political tampering, the agency’s mistakes continue to mount. How did this happen, and how do we make sure it doesn’t happen again? Abdul talks about how public health mistakes happen and speaks with Dr. Tom Frieden, for...

Marginalized communities–including low-income and Black and brown folks, and women and LGBT people–are less likely to have reliable healthcare access in America. But it’s not just that, they’re less likely to have treatments tailored to the health challenges they’re more likely to face. That innovation gap, that’s a function of the way we fund research and the process by which innovations go to ma...

Abdul and Guest Host Tre’vell Anderson answer everything you wanted to know (and maybe didn’t know you wanted to know) about public health, COVID-19, and the year ahead. For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/americadissected .

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has promised action on President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, a sweeping package of legislation that would transform the American social experience. Along with critically important investments like universal childcare and paid family leave, the version that passed the House includes a slew of healthcare reforms. Abdul speaks to Jonathan Cohn, National Corr...

Imagine someone could patent your arm, or your mouth. Well, for a long time, someone could patent a part of the human body, a DNA sequence. That all ended in 2013 with a landmark supreme court case. But it illustrates how science, business, and law intersect—in ways that shape our health today. Abdul speaks with Prof. Jose Contreras, Law Professor and Author of the new book, The Genome Defense. Fo...

Omicron has now made landfall in the US. We are learning more about the variant every day—good, bad, and ugly. We turn to Dr. Angie Rasmussen, America Dissected’s resident virologist to get into the nitty-gritty and help us understand what it means for us and the future of the pandemic. For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/americadissected .

Because of an accident of history, we think of our teeth as being wholly separate from the rest of our bodies. They even have different doctors. But teeth really are the entryway to the body, and the state of oral health in America says a lot about our inequities in general. Abdul talks to Mary Otto, journalist and author of Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health...

The movement to legalize cannabis has marked some major wins, helping us better understand its benefits and addressing the way it's been used to systematically over-police and incarcerate Black and brown people. And yet cannabis is big business, as venture-backed companies have swooped in to monetize newly legal cannabis, putting their bottom line ahead of public health concerns. Abdul talks to Pr...

Our health is inevitably tied to the health of our planet. At COP26, the world’s leaders tried to save it—but did they do enough? We speak to Prof. Jisung Park, an environmental economist, about how climate change is shaping inequality, and about what we hoped for and what we got from COP26. For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/americadissected .

Were we set up to fail? And how does our failure affect the most vulnerable people in society? Abdul reflects on the nature of prevention itself. He speaks with Prof. Sandro Galea, Dean of the Boston University School of Public Health and author of the new book “The Contagion Next Time.” For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/americadissected .

Decades of public health efforts turned America’s young people against smoking. And then JUUL made it cool again. Abdul speaks with Lauren Etter, author of “The Devil’s Playbook,” about how a tool designed to help people quit hooked a whole new generation to nicotine. For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/americadissected .