Podcasts #1

[metaphortunate]

tam_nonlinear introduced me to Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine, and I love it. She's the doctor, he's the doofus, and it makes me laugh out loud at least once per episode.

Now, I am always grateful to live in the era of vaccines, antibiotics, and handwashing. I've always known that we are so damn lucky to have so many actual cures for things, that work. What this podcast is making me aware of is how lucky we are to not have so many damn things that don't work. Like, when you have a fever, Tylenol may or may not help, but at least you don't have anyone demanding that you rub your head with cowshit mixed with honey, eat a frog boiled in oil, then tie some bread to a tree. ("Can I at least skip the tying the bread to the tree?" "God, it's like you don't even want to get better.")

We still have a bunch of expensive shit that doesn't work, but the natural habitat of expensive shit that doesn't work is ailments for which we don't have anything that does work, so every remedy we discover not only cures an ailment but also erases a bunch of bullshit. It's great.

Comments

[tam_nonlinear]

I'm glad you're enjoying it! It's a great podcast, but kinder and funnier than I would have expected from the description, but yeah, there's an awful lot of "WHY did anyone think that would help? WHY?". My favorite on that would be the episode on bloodletting, where they discussed the fact that bloodletting was sometimes used as a treatment for... excessive blood loss. I suspect that didn't work very well.