This weekend I decided that “Currently Listening” is the most difficult section of the blog. I spent a lot of time—like hours—trying to think of some subject-matter that felt perfectly right to write about, and now I feel absolutely lame because a podcast was the best I could come up with.

Here it goes: The Wondery podcast Dr. Death recounts the disturbing story of Dr. Christopher Duntsch a neurosurgeon who—in a period of a year and a half—botched thirty-three spinal surgeries that either killed or maimed his patients. The sickeningly detailed six-episode series focuses on how hospitals and medical boards allowed an incompetent doctor to repeatedly perform failed surgeries. In a way, this is a tale about how long a privileged white man can get away with terrorizing other people before anyone acts to stop him. It’s also interesting to consider the ethics of a journalistic endeavor about an awful reality that at times forgoes clarity and prioritizes aestheticism for the sake of creating a thriller. Either way, this story is definitely a compelling one. I encourage you to binge Dr. Death, and to unapologetically question the advice of even the most charismatic health professionals.

-MC