History Taking

History Taking

History Taking is a podcast that digs into the outbreaks, missteps, breakthroughs, and quiet shifts in thinking that shaped modern medicine. Each episode uncovers a story from the past to reveal how it changed the way we understand illness and care today.

Episodios

  1. HACE 2 DÍAS

    Who Moved My Cheese?

    The US government had two problems: Americans were getting sicker, and there was too much cheese. By the late 2000s, federal dairy subsidies had left the country sitting on hundreds of millions of pounds of surplus cheese — while childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes were climbing with every generation. The Obama administration launched Let's Move to get kids eating healthier. At the same time, the USDA helped Dairy Management Incorporated partner with fast food chains to move that cheese — stuffed crusts, triple cheeseburgers, cheese-filled everything. One arm of the government said 'eat better.' The other made cheap, calorie-dense food the default. When health policy and agricultural policy pull in opposite directions, who's really responsible for what ends up on your plate?

    9 min

  2. 25 FEB

    When Life Gives You Lemons

    In 1747, the cure for scurvy was sitting in a barrel of lemons — and almost nobody believed it. On the HMS Salisbury, sailors were bleeding from the gums, old wounds were reopening, and men were too weak to stand. Naval surgeon James Lind had an idea no one had tried: test the remedies side by side. Twelve sick sailors, six pairs, six treatments — cider, sulfuric acid, vinegar, sea water, a spicy paste, and citrus. The results were obvious. The response from the medical establishment? Silence. Lind’s discovery was ignored for decades, dismissed as anecdotal, and nearly buried when he accidentally destroyed his own proof. How one shipboard experiment created the logic of the clinical trial — and why good evidence still isn’t enough to change minds.

    9 min

  3. 18 FEB

    The War on Terror, The War for Trust

    What happens when a government turns a vaccination campaign into a spy operation? During the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the CIA launched a real hepatitis B campaign in Abbottabad, Pakistan — not just to immunize children, but to collect DNA from a walled compound where bin Laden was suspected to be hiding. The operation worked. The raid followed in May 2011. But when journalists exposed the campaign's true purpose, the Taliban had proof that Western medicine could be a Trojan horse. Vaccination workers were targeted and killed. Polio rates collapsed across the region. One covert operation shattered something no intelligence agency could rebuild — the trust that makes medicine work.

    13 min

  4. 11 FEB

    Dance Till You Drop

    In 1518, a woman named Frau Troffea walked into the streets of Strasbourg and started dancing — no music, no reason. She didn't stop for days. Her neighbors laughed, then worried, then joined in. By August, as many as 400 people were dancing uncontrollably, collapsing from exhaustion, some reportedly dying of heart attacks and strokes mid-step. Doctors blamed "hot blood" and prescribed more dancing. The city hired musicians, opened guild halls, and paid people to hold up the collapsing dancers. It made everything worse. Similar outbreaks surfaced in medieval Italy, and again at a Tanzanian schoolyard in 1962. The cause wasn't a virus or a curse — it was something stranger: an illness that spreads not through biology, but through the stories a community tells itself.

    10 min

  5. TRÁILER

    Announcement trailer

    History Taking is a podcast about stories that have shaped modern medicine from the outbreaks, missteps, breakthroughs, and ideas that have quietly changed how we understand illness and care.

    1 min

Tráiler

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History Taking is a podcast that digs into the outbreaks, missteps, breakthroughs, and quiet shifts in thinking that shaped modern medicine. Each episode uncovers a story from the past to reveal how it changed the way we understand illness and care today.

Información

  • Creador
    History Taking
  • Años de actividad
    2 k
  • Episodios
    5
  • Clasificación
    Apto
  • Copyright
    © 2026 History Taking
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