The Podcast by KevinMD

Primary care, bloodletting, and what medicine got right

May 22, 2026

Robert C. Smith is best known for arguing medicine lost its mind. This episode he explains why he is still proud to be a doctor. Primary care physicians deliver 75 percent of the nation's mental health care without training for it, and Smith has spent his career trying to fix that. But before the fix, he makes a case that may surprise his own readers: modern medicine has been astonishingly effective at what it was built to do. This episode is based on his article "How the mind-body split in m...

DOT ruling protects peanut allergies but not eggs, sesame, or milk

May 21, 2026

A federal agency recognized food allergy as a disability, then limited boarding protection to one allergen category. Lianne Mandelbaum, a leading advocate for airline safety measures to protect food-allergic passengers, returns to explain how the March 2026 DOT ruling created a hierarchy within a single medical condition, leaving passengers with egg, sesame, milk, shellfish, and wheat allergies without the same pre-boarding rights granted to those with peanut and tree nut allergies. This epis...

2 a.m. is a biological stress test no one talks about

May 20, 2026

What happens to your body and clinical judgment when you're managing a code blue at the exact hour your biology demands deep sleep? Chinyelu E. Oraedu is an academic hospitalist and nocturnist with 17 years of post-residency experience who has dedicated her career to understanding the science and human reality of night shift medicine. In this episode, based on her KevinMD article "How night shift medicine exposes the reality of physician stress," she breaks down why the 2 to 3 a.m. window is ...