PODCAST

Research Translation Podcast

David Newman

Translating Medical and Health Research For All researchtranslation.substack.com

science

All Episodes

17:47

Aspirin and Donald Trump: Schadenfreude Alert

Research Translation Podcast ·

2026/01/06

“Meet Virginia” is, I believe, one of the great rock singles of recent decades. It opens with a blue-sy, core-bending bassline and a thirsty guitar riff, as Pat Monahan etches a fantasy vamp. You will not forget Virginia.“Train” is the band’s eponymous first album, and with other tracks like “Free”, “I Am”, “Egglpant”, and “Rat”, it does not falter. Incredibly, it’s nearly matched by “Drops of Jupiter”, their second album. “She’s on Fire” and “It’s About You” are lyrically brilliant curtains of

21:06

Flu Vaccine and Dog Park Etiquette

Research Translation Podcast ·

2025/12/24

I wrote and posted this last year, but with the respiratory season now gripping local and national stats—and me spending time with my family, including two boys with the flu—I thought I’d repost this for anyone interested. Turns out no new flu research has changed anything below. And for a list of prior dives into flu-related studies (including a treatment that works!) see the links at the bottom of the page. Happy Holidays, everyone!My boys found our dog, Jazz, earlier this year. She was eating out

22:52

Does Reducing Blood Sugar Prevent Heart Disease?

Research Translation Podcast ·

2025/12/19

More than a decade ago, large data reviews found that using drugs to tightly control blood sugar in people with type 2 diabetes does more harm than good. In careful studies, it didn’t save lives, reduce heart problems, or prevent kidney failure. And while on rare occasions it helped to avoid or delay limb amputations (1 in 250 people), forty times more often it caused life-threatening episodes of low blood sugar (1 in 6 people).These findings, and the fact that newer drugs prevent heart problems and

15:12

The Deception of Absolute vs Relative: Once You Get...

Research Translation Podcast ·

2025/12/10

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9:57

The Arterial Line and the Illusion of Knowing

Research Translation Podcast ·

2025/11/26

Every generation of medicine has its totems—high-tech gizmos that measure, promising mastery over the human form if we can just capture the numbers precisely, continuously, and in triplicate. For my teachers the Swan–Ganz, a fancy catheter snaked into the hearts of ICU patients, held this role.It offered heart and capillary pressures, saturations, and cardiac outputs to two decimal places. More numbers than any mortal clinician could use. And yet, even with the full force of physiology, the

19:30

Masks, Crocodiles, and Meds: How a Prestigious...

Research Translation Podcast ·

2025/11/21

During the pandemic we were treated to a common, but curious site in traffic: A driver gliding by, alone in the car, windows up—wearing a mask. Like Covid was hiding in the glove compartment. It’s tough to count the things that went wrong to make such a moment possible. For starters, masking during Covid wasn’t to protect the wearer. It was to protect people from the wearer. Masking alone, in a car, protects exactly no one. Also, research suggests that at best, masks probably do very little. To

8:34

The Elaborate, Expensive Act We Call Cancer Screening

Research Translation Podcast ·

2025/11/10

As you can probably tell I’m frustrated with modern medicine’s apparent immunity to evidence, so I hope you’ll suffer my rant-y, short essay this week.Research Translation is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.“Modern medicine tells its own story, one that always begins with control and ends with rescue.”— Arthur W. Frank, The Wounded StorytellerSometimes modern medicine is less a science than a theater of control

31:21

The Myth of Early Detection

Research Translation Podcast ·

2025/10/30

Imagine a weatherman who’s wrong 97% of the time he predicts rain. Picnics and ballgames canceled, flights rerouted, bikes garaged. Yet somehow, he has fans—devout ones—who revel in warning their neighbors about coming storms.“Stock up!” they cry, taping their windows.“Oh my! Thank you!” the neighbors reply.Worse, this weatherman also misses a third of real storms, sending his fans to the beach just as the cats and dogs start flying.Research Translation is 100% reader-supported. If you dig it

64:25

Tylenol and Autism—The Deep Dive

Research Translation Podcast ·

2025/10/07

On September 22nd the most important figures in US government and health performed a bit of research translation at a podium in the White House. That, of course, compelled a new issue of Research Translation. It’s all audio this time, folks, sorry to my dedicated readers but this one was too big to write. Enjoy!Research Translation is totally reader-supported . Maybe consider becoming a free or paid subscriber, so I can keep doing it. Get full access to Research Translation at

33:46

Are CAT Scans Causing Cancer in Kids? A Prelude to...

Research Translation Podcast ·

2025/09/25

This week we saw something new: A president of the United States behind a podium, and flanked by the heads of the FDA, the Department of Health, and the NIH, and they were all doing research translation. Well that’s my job, dammit. So today we’ll do a prelude and prep session for our next episode, which will be a review and discussion of the six studies that underpinned that press conference. We’ll translate those studies so readers and listeners can decide for themselves. This week, however, we

45:21

The Birds, The Bees, and The COVID Vaccine

Research Translation Podcast ·

2025/09/09

Son, I’ve been avoiding this conversation. But it’s important. It will be difficult and I realize you don’t want to hear it, least of all from me. But there are things you have to know. Please try not to think of this as personal. It’s not about your thoughts or feelings. It’s about the future, how to make decisions, and how to understand our bodies and how they interact with the world. So, here goes.In March of 2020 the Covid pandemic hit hard. The virus was new, leading governments and companies

43:24

Should Young Kids Be Vaccinated Against Covid? The...

Research Translation Podcast ·

2025/08/27

Media, Substackers, and authorities are screaming bloody murder about the difference between new Covid vaccine guidelines posted by the American Academy of Pediatrics and guidelines from the CDC. For kids under two the AAP recommends the shot. The CDC says not so fast: discuss it with a doctor. Who’s right? Guidelines are written by panels that review the data, then make judgment calls. The only way to know if you agree is to understand the data. And to do that, we must first revisit a fated moment

21:20

What Pills For Mental Health Can’t Do

Research Translation Podcast ·

2025/08/19

In case you were wondering: After you crack a knuckle it’s about 20 minutes before you can crack it again. This was established by a series of experiments in 1947 at a research hospital in London. According to the researchers, “the minimum time was 17 minutes… but never more than 22.”Eureka!This may seem like menial work, but efforts to understand knuckle cracking pepper more than a hundred years of scientific literature, and continued into the 2000s. Then, in 2015, Canadian researchers watched

22:16

The Delusion That Killed George Washington—And Gave...

Research Translation Podcast ·

2025/07/30

This week I've opted for a slightly longer format, which I sometimes like to do—we'll be back to normal next time. Enjoy. On Friday December 13th, 1799, President George Washington was in a chipper mood. He sat by the fire talking politics with Martha and Tobias Lear, his secretary. At age 67, two years after his presidency, Washington was still America’s most popular public figure. Robustly healthy, he had spent the afternoon on his Mount Vernon estate marking trees through a snowfall. Now,

60:50

The Cholesterol Myth, Unraveled For Good

Research Translation Podcast ·

2025/07/20

I learned years ago that people’s beliefs about medical care are often religious. That is, they’re built on faith, not evidence. That’s not always a bad thing. Faith in the patient-doctor relationship can, quite literally, lead to physical and biological healing. Extensive data proves it.But using faith in the absence of good data is more often harmful than helpful. One historical example is bloodletting, a treatment used for hundreds of years without data. A more modern example is Paxlovid, a Covid

11:19

Is Diet Soda Bad For You?

Research Translation Podcast ·

2025/07/07

In Louisiana there is a supermarket chain called Winn-Dixie. They sell their own soda brand called ‘Chek’, which lines the shelves with bright, colorful, retro-style labels. Thinking about it makes me thirsty.On most days Chek sells for about half the price of standard Coca-Cola products, so when it goes on sale I lean in. Hard. This week I brought home a sample (read: 12-pack) of the diet strawberry, grape, and orange flavors. Highly recommend them all, though lemon-lime is still champ.Predictably,

49:17

On Masking: Story Time Is Fun, But It's Not Science

Research Translation Podcast ·

2025/06/23

When I was little, my father read classics to me and my sister. In the evenings after dinner we sandwiched him on my parents’ bed, listening to the schemes of Miss Havisham and the adventures of Jim and Long John Silver. I knew they were stories, but I also knew they held truth. Years later I became a doctor and a data scientist, and my sister became a brilliant television writer. Irony: she packs more truth into 42 minutes of television fiction than I typically find in a week’s worth of biomedical

21:03

The New York Times Says There's Proof Medicaid Saves...

Research Translation Podcast ·

2025/06/01

Perhaps the most important attribute in science and scientists is humility. A scientist must be passionate about finding truth, but dispassionate about judging it. That’s hard to do, particularly with issues like politics or religion. For instance in a recent NY Times piece titled “As Congress Debates Cutting Medicaid, a Major Study Shows It Saves Lives.” We are in a complicated and fraught moment of political history. Things are changing and it isn’t clear where we’re headed in the USA—which means

13:10

Vitamins Don't Work

Research Translation Podcast ·

2025/05/22

In Victoria, Australia from 2003 to 2005 thousands of elderly women were enrolled in a study that researchers thought might represent the future of geriatric health. For five years the women were given a single annual dose of Vitamin D, or a placebo. From earlier small studies experts surmised that Vitamin D, which helps bones absorb calcium, would prevent hip and other fractures, potentially reducing suffering, preserving function, and lengthening lives.When the results were tabulated the

16:27

Can Crosswording And Red Wine Save Your Brain?

Research Translation Podcast ·

2025/05/14

I entered med school in 1994, three years after 60 Minutes’ infamous “French Paradox” segment. In it, Morley Safer traveled to France to investigate why French people live longer and better, despite eating far more cholesterol-rich and fatty foods than Americans. Conclusion? Red wine. Which the French have at lunch, dinner, and as a gargle after brushing their teeth.Like most of America, which saw an instant jump in red wine sales after the segment, my instructors were believers. Perhaps it was the

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