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Prologue

We meet the doctors. Rana Awdish spends hours of each day walking the floors of the ICU checking in on her co-workers, which means that maybe more than any single person in the hospital she knows best what the staff has been going through at each stage of this pandemic. One doctor that has deep ties to Detroit is Geneva Tatem.

Prologue

A staffer at St Joseph Medical Center in Houston finds a patient shot on the floor of his room. He is unarmed, and has been shot by the cops in the hospital.

Act One: Mexican Beach Doctor

Alex Blumberg talks to Shane Dubow about a time decades ago, when Shane went sea kayaking and camping with his friends on the beach in Baja California, Mexico. When Shane’s neck stiffens up on him, he finds himself looking for an unlikely chiropractor, in the middle of nowhere.

Prologue

Host Ira Glass tells the story of Sarah Erush, a pharmacist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She was contacted by the Food and Drug Administration and encouraged to examine cases of acetaminophen overdose at her hospital.

Act One

Reporter Sean Cole tells the history of getting warning labels onto acetaminophen bottles. In 1977 an FDA advisory panel recommended a warning about liver damage.

Act Two

Reporter Sean Cole explains the confusion over dosing for Infants Tylenol and Children’s Tylenol. The FDA could have mandated clearer labels that might have prevented infant deaths.

Prologue

Ira Glass talks with Planet Money reporter, Chana Joffe-Walt, about Hale County, Alabama — a place where one fourth of working age adults are on disability. That means the government has determined that due to a health issue, 25 percent of the adults in Hale County are unable to work, qualifying them for monthly payments and health care coverage.