Random Acts of Medicine, with Freakonomics MD Anupam B. Jena, MD, PhD and Christopher Worsham, MD, MPH

HealthCare Focus

Guests: Freakonomics, MD host, UChicago-trained economist, and Harvard medical school physician Anupam B. Jena, MD, PhD, and Harvard physician, Mass General critical care doctor, and healthcare policy researcher Christopher Worsham, MD, MPH on their singular work of popular science, RANDOM ACTS OF MEDICINE (published by Random House), on sale July 11, 2023, and available for pre-order on Amazon.

Book Summary

Why do kids born in the summer get diagnosed more often with ADHD and the flu? How are marathons harmful for your health, even when you’re not running? And what do surgeons and salesmen have in common?
As a University of Chicago-trained economist, Harvard medical school professor and doctor, and host of the Freakonomics, MD podcast, Anupam B. Jena, MD, PhD is uniquely equipped to answer these questions. And as a critical care doctor at Massachusetts General who researches health care policy, Christopher Worsham, MD, MPH confronts their impact on the hospital’s sickest patients.

In RANDOM ACTS OF MEDICINE, Jena and Worsham show us how medicine really works—and its effect on all of us. In the spirit of Freakonomics, Cribsheet, and Noise, this singular work combines popular topics like behavioral science, health, and medicine through the lens of economic principles and big data insights to reveal the unexpected but predictable events that profoundly affect our health. Relying on ingeniously devised natural experiments—random events that unknowingly turn us into experimental subjects—Jena and Worsham do more than offer readers colorful stories. They help us see the way our health is shaped by forces invisible to the untrained eye. Is there ever a good time to have a heart attack? Do you choose the veteran doctor or the rookie? Do you really need the surgery your doctor recommends? These questions are rife with significance and their impact can be life changing. RANDOM ACTS OF MEDICINE will not only help readers gain a better understanding of how medicine is practiced or what motivates human behavior; it will empower them to see past the white coat and find out what really makes medicine work—and how it could work better.