First Opinion Podcast

Today, we’re sharing a special episode from the new miniseries “The C-Word: Stories of Cancer” from Say More, a podcast from The Boston Globe Opinion. In the first part of this series, host and award-winning columnist Shirley Leung talks for the first time about her breast cancer diagnosis. She opens up about the personal and professional impact of her illness, and why now felt like the right time to tell her story. Follow Say More wherever you get your podcasts: https://link.chtbl.com/SayMore?sid=stat [https://link.chtbl.com/SayMore?sid=stat]

Paul Knoepfler of the UC Davis School of Medicine has a bit of a hobby: keeping track of stem cell clinics operating in the U.S. He estimates that there are 1,000-2,000 in the U.S. alone, offering unproven treatments using adult stem cells. On the season finale of the podcast, he and Torie discuss how to balance safety and efficacy, why Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is such a fan of stem cells, how the FDA can support the biotech industry, the forceful marketing of cord blood banking companies, and much more — including how to build a dragon using CRISPR [https://basc.ucdavis.edu/news/nature-reviews-how-build-dragon-or-die-trying].

Anna and Jordan Rathkopf met in Prague at an ’80s nightclub. While music brought them together, another creative outlet soon became central to their relationship: Anna began teaching Jordan about photography, which later became his career. Years later, they were living in Brooklyn with their young son when Anna was diagnosed with breast cancer. The morning after the phone call that changed their lives, “We saw cameras on the table, looked at each other, and I think we both just understood instantly that this was something we both were going to need to lean on to help get through it,” Jordan told me on this episode of the “First Opinion Podcast.” This conversation was inspired by their dual First Opinion essays [https://www.statnews.com/2025/05/21/breast-cancer-her2-photographs-anna-jordan-rathkopf-book/], in which each discusses how the photographs said what they could not put into words.

From our friends at KFF Health News [https://kffhealthnews.org/news/tag/what-the-health/], Chief Washington Correspondent Julie Rovner gathers top reporters to discuss the latest health and health policy news.  Check out this episode and if you like it, be sure to give them a follow.

Pretty much everyone in the U.S. agrees that the American health care system is not working for patients. The disagreement comes over what to do about it. On this episode, law professor Charles M. Silver proposes that the U.S. should have a market-based system, just as we do for many other sectors of the economy. Insurance would still play a role, but a far more limited one. He discusses with editor Torie Bosch what this system would look like for health care consumers, how Social Security offers a model, and how realistic the proposal actually is.