First Opinion podcast

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1:14:43

Artificial intelligence is evolving at an unprecedented pace—what does that mean for the future of technology, venture capital, business, and even our understanding of ourselves? Award-winning journalist and writer Anil Ananthaswamy joins us for our latest episode to discuss his latest book Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI . Anil helps us explore the journey and many breakthroughs that have propelled machine learning from simple perceptrons to the sophisticated algorithms shaping today’s AI revolution, powering GPT and other models. The discussion aims to demystify some of the underlying math that powers modern machine learning to help everyone grasp this technology impacting our lives, even if your last math class was in high school. Anil walks us through the power of scaling laws, the shift from training to inference optimization, and the debate among AI’s pioneers about the road to AGI—should we be concerned, or are we still missing key pieces of the puzzle? The conversation also delves into AI’s philosophical implications—could understanding how machines learn help us better understand ourselves? And what challenges remain before AI systems can truly operate with agency? If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Sign up for our newsletter at techsurgepodcast.com for exclusive insights and updates on upcoming TechSurge Live Summits. Links: Read Why Machines Learn, Anil’s latest book on the math behind AI https://www.amazon.com/Why-Machines-Learn-Elegant-Behind/dp/0593185749 Learn more about Anil Ananthaswamy’s work and writing https://anilananthaswamy.com/ Watch Anil Ananthaswamy’s TED Talk on AI and intelligence https://www.ted.com/speakers/anil_ananthaswamy Discover the MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellowship that shaped Anil’s AI research https://ksj.mit.edu/ Understand the Perceptron, the foundation of neural networks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptron Read about the Perceptron Convergence Theorem and its significance https://www.nature.com/articles/323533a0…

First Opinion Podcast

A weekly podcast about the people, issues and ideas that are shaping health care.

125 episodi

#News #Opinions

First Opinion Podcast

updated circa un anno fa

Pagina principale della serie•Feed

A weekly podcast about the people, issues and ideas that are shaping health care.

125 episodi

#News #Opinions

सभी एपिसोड

1
118: Dr. Glaucomflecken uses humor to spotlight the darkness in medicine 32:04

11 weeks fa32:04

32:04

You’ve probably come across Will Flanary, aka Dr. Glaucomflecken, the internet’s most famous physician/comedian. For more than four years, the ophthalmologist has been gently roasting medicine by playing a rotating cast of characters — the emergency physician clad in cyclist gear, the “ortho bro,” the pediatrician in a unicorn headband. But he's also used his comedy to skewer the business of health care, including the confounding bureaucracies of insurance — with a special emphasis on UnitedHealthcare. First Opinion editor Torie Bosch spoke with Flanary about punching up in comedy and the reaction to the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.…

1
From the archives: The power, and limits, of the placebo effect 26:59

12 weeks fa26:59

26:59

Have you ever taken phenylephrine for a stuffed-up nose and then felt better? If so, you might have been perplexed when Food and Drug Administration experts said last year that that the drug — which is in some versions of DayQuil, Sudafed, and other medicines — is no more effective than a placebo. On this episode of the “First Opinion Podcast,” we talk with professor and researcher Michael Bernstein about the placebo effect and its counterpart, the “nocebo effect” — if you tell patients something will make them feel worse, it generally comes true.…

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117: ADHD is this scientist’s ‘superpower’ 45:58

13 weeks fa45:58

45:58

Biomedical engineer Jeff Karp’s famous lab has created medical tape inspired by spider webs, waterproof adhesive bandages that take inspiration from geckos, needles reminiscent of porcupine quills. But as an elementary school student, Karp told me on the “First Opinion Podcast,” he struggled. His second-grade teacher wanted to hold him back a year. “I was getting all these labels from teachers like ‘lazy’ and ‘lost cause,’ ” he said. But according to Karp, what made him struggle — undiagnosed ADHD — also became his “super power,” giving him an ability to hyper-focus, connect emotionally in different ways, and think creatively. Now, he emphasizes the importance of neurodiversity and interdisciplinary approaches in his own lab, and he also tries to talk to students and parents about how ADHD can be a strength.…

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116: How chaplains help to heal 'spiritual injury' 27:05

14 weeks fa27:05

27:05

About 75% of U.S. hospitals use chaplains, who are either employed by the health care center or are spiritual leaders from the local community. Physician Robert Klitzman and chaplain Molly O’Neil Frank join today’s podcast to discuss why chaplains are a critical part of patient care. Perhaps counterintuitively, they say, chaplains' roles have become even more important as religious affiliation has declined in the country.…

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115: Paying a visit to ‘Mom & Dad’s Nipple Factory’ 37:31

15 weeks fa37:31

37:31

When Randi Johnson was undergoing treatment for breast cancer, her husband, Brian, often felt at a loss to help. But then, when he and Randi met with a surgeon to discuss reconstructing her breast, he was struck by something he could do. The Midwestern father of five, a lifelong tinkerer, decided to make his wife the best possible prosthetic nipple. “The nipple solution is actually very elusive,” Randi said. “Surgical nipples tend to flatten. Tattoos fade. Or they still don't have dimension. The … prosthetic nipples that were around when we started, they looked really fake, and they'd fall off. And that's really kind of a deal breaker.” After Brian made one for Randi, the two of them decided to offer the service to others. Today, they make affordable, realistic nipples for dozens of people a year, largely reaching potential customers through word of mouth. One of their sons, Justin, recently chronicled their work in his new documentary “ Mom & Dad’s Nipple Factory ,” now available for rent or purchase on streaming platforms. (Watch the trailer here .)…

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114: Getting creative with health care in a new Trump administration 29:56

16 weeks fa29:56

29:56

Torie speaks with Carmel Shachar, an assistant clinical professor at Harvard Law and health policy expert, about how the second Trump term might differ from the first, how the health policy world is preparing, and her work on reproductive health, telehealth, and vaccines.

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113: How your genetics could determine your politics 42:12

17 weeks fa42:12

42:12

No matter who wins the 2024 presidential race, one thing is clear: Political anxiety and division will remain high for the foreseeable future. So just before Election Day, Torie spoke with Kevin Smith, a professor of political science at the University of Nebraska who studies the intersection of political attitudes, biology, and evolution. In 2019, he and colleagues published a study that found almost 40% of Americans reported experiencing stress over politics, 11.5% thought their physical health had been affected, and 4% reported suicidal thoughts. They talked about political anxiety, tribalism, and how much our political attitudes might be driven by biology rather than environment.…

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112: Abortion is just another part of medicine 33:19

18 weeks fa33:19

33:19

This close to Nov. 5, we are being battered with promises that this race will determine the future of the country. But Christine Dehlendorf wants people to remember that as important as Election Day is, it won’t be the end of discussions about reproductive health. Dehlendorf is a family physician and professor of family and community medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and directs the Person-Centered Reproductive Health Program. Recently, she co-authored a First Opinion arguing that primary care providers and family physicians should have more training in providing abortion care.…

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111: No one wants to talk about Medicare policy 27:16

19 weeks fa27:16

27:16

Medicare policy has been conspicuously absent from the 2024 presidential race. Health policy scholar Paul Ginsburg thinks this is because both Democrats and Republicans understand that the reforms needed in the Medicare system are not going to be popular.

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110: Mark Cuban has no doubt he can disrupt health care 36:59

20 weeks fa36:59

36:59

Mark Cuban, co-founder of Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs, joins the podcast along with STAT's Matthew Herper. They talk with Torie about pharmacy benefit managers, the 2024 presidential campaign, and how the health care industry should work. "This is literally the easiest industry to interrupt, to disintermediate, that I’ve ever been involved with, Cuban said.…

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109: Why a science magazine went political 41:29

21 weeks fa41:29

41:29

For several years now, newspapers have been moving away from a longstanding tradition: endorsing candidates for political office. But Scientific American is bucking the trend. In 2020, for the first time, the 179-year-old magazine endorsed Joe Biden for president. They followed suit this year, endorsing Kamala Harris . Both times, the move spurred a great deal of discussion about scientific objectivity, journalistic objectivity, and the point of endorsements. To learn more about the decision to endorse and the process behind it, Torie spoke with Scientific American editor-in-chief Laura Helmuth and opinion editor Megha Satyanarayana (formerly of STAT).…

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108: How the 2024 election gets mental health right — and wrong 34:13

22 weeks fa34:13

34:13

Every four years, someone says “This is the most important election ever.” But it’s hard to question the long-term impact Election Day 2024 will have — from the top of the ballot on down. So the first five episodes of the fall 2024 season of the “First Opinion Podcast” will grapple with the campaign and its intersection with health, medicine, and the life sciences. I’ll speak with experts on issues that have come up on the campaign trail, topics that candidates should focus on, and what a second Trump or first Harris administration might hold. Think of it as “First Opinion Podcast Hits the Trail,” perhaps, except I’m staying home in the swing state of Pennsylvania fending off campaign texts. For the debut episode, I spoke with Kathleen Kelly Daughety, vice president of campaigns and civic engagement for Inseparable, a mental health advocacy organization with a strong focus on policy.…

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107: Empathy should be the first response to people with vaccine injury, fears 32:57

33 weeks fa32:57

32:57

For scientists and medical professionals well versed in the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, it is often too easy to write off the concerns of people who fear them, or feel they have been injured by them. But vaccine expert Kizzmekia S. Corbett-Helaire argues that professionals should be more empathetic when it comes to listening to these concerns, and that understanding them may help developers make better vaccines. Corbett-Helaire, an assistant professor of immunology and infectious diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston and a Freeman Hrabowski Scholar at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, joins "The First Opinion Podcast" this week to discuss her experience helping roll out the first Covid-19 vaccines in the midst of the pandemic. She also addresses her desire to close the gap between public health experts trying to end disease and people who genuinely fear harm from vaccines.…

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106: Anthony Fauci on presidents, bird flu, and turning down a multimillion-dollar job 52:28

34 weeks fa52:28

52:28

In a special edition of the "First Opinion Podcast," STAT executive editor Rick Berke and senior writer Helen Branswell interviewed the country’s former top infectious disease expert about some of the insights and revelations from his new memoir, "On Call: A Doctor's Journey in Public Service." Conversation topics include when Fauci knew that Covid-19 was a real threat; when AIDS activist Larry Kramer called him "the consummate manipulative bureaucrat" in an interview with STAT ; how quickly national health risk can skyrocket when it comes to pathogenic viruses; and which former president Fauci has the most affection for.…

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105: Why is eugenics still alive and well in scientific publishing? 37:16

35 weeks fa37:16