As the former head of the State Health Benefits Program within New Jersey's Department of the Treasury - one of the largest public health plans in the country - Chris Deacon unmasked the machinery of healthcare and didn't like what she saw. Now a nationally recognized voice for health plan transparency and employer empowerment, Chris joins us to talk about her new book "The Great American Healthcare Heist: Why We're Paying More and Getting Less".

You read that correctly. Sometimes we have to look outside of medicine to be reminded why we love it so much. National Book Critics Circle Award-winning journalist Sam Quinones joins us to talk about "The Perfect Tuba", his new book about people creating something bigger than themselves, hard work, practice, dedication, and community. Sound familiar?

Dr. Carlos Cardenas knows rock n' roll (and gastroenterology). A practicing physician in the Rio Grande Valley, Dr. Cardenas has been playing music for decades as a balm for his heart and soul, and as it turns out, for his patients. In the words of Dr. Cardenas, when it comes to healing people, "music is at the core of it all".

Are we living in The Gilded Age of medicine? So many of the challenges we face in healthcare today are rooted in the motivations of the people holding the purse strings, and unfortunately for us (and our patients) those motivations aren't always aligned with the Hippocratic Oath. Wendy and Matt dig into the history of corporate greed in this country, and how that history may be repeating itself.

Few medical dramas have resonated as deeply with physicians as HBO's The Pitt. Emergency physician Dr. Jacob Lentz, a medical consultant on the series, takes us behind the scenes of the critically acclaimed show and explains how - and why - The Pitt gets ER medicine so right.

Credit: Audio clips from The Pitt courtesy of HBO Max.

For over twenty years, Dr. Jeff Goldstein was part of a successful, thriving cardiology practice in central Illinois. And then he wasn't. Dr. Goldstein and his wife, Dr. Kemia Sarraf, join us to share their personal story of how a change in the structure of his practice led to him feeling blocked at every turn, overworked, and underappreciated, and what the two of them did to change it.

We talk to a lot of people. We hear a lot of stories. But for every person who shares their story publicly, there are ten more who hold off because they're afraid of blowback. And we get it. Speaking up is risky. We often think about the costs of speaking up, but what has our silence cost? In this episode, Wendy and Matt talk about the risks of not acting, and what their experience has taught them about how to speak up - and be heard.