Episodes

Originally broadcast April 22, 2025

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that the U.S. will phase out the remaining eight artificial food dyes from America’s food supply within two years. This is a move that leading nutritionist and author Marion Nestle, Ph.D., has long advocated for.

“Conversations on Health Care” hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter spoke to her before today’s news conference. She says, “I’m all for getting bad chemicals out of the food supply, or questionable chemicals…but I don’t think that goes nearly far enough. If he’s going to be serious about making America healthy again from a food standpoint, he’s going to have to do something about changing the food system to one that focuses on public health rather than corporate health. And he’s going to have to do something about the food industry’s inappropriate marketing, especially to children.”

Click now to view the entire interview, including Dr. Nestle’s reactions to the food industry’s pushback to her concerns.

Originally broadcast April 17, 2025

The U.S. healthcare system could save up to 500,000 lives and $1.5 trillion a year by embracing the right technology, says Dr. Robert Pearl, a Stanford University professor and a noted healthcare influencer.

Pearl, who co-authored his new book “ChatGPT, MD” with the help of generative AI, says the tech’s strength lies in its access to the entirety of medical knowledge. “We shouldn’t think of [generative AI] as just another AI tool. This is as … different from what’s come before as the iPhone was from the telephone that was in most people’s kitchens attached to the wall.”

For clinicians and patients alike, that access can be transformative. Parents might use it to uncover what’s wrong with their child when traditional medicine is still searching for answers. A doctor might identify rare diagnoses in minutes, work that would have taken days in a library.

Hospitals already collect massive data — about a terabyte per facility annually — but 97% of it is never reviewed, Pearl says. The key is narrowing it to specific diseases or trends.

Pearl tells “Conversations on Health Care” hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter that Gen AI will gain widespread medical acceptance when studies compare outcomes with and without the technology

“We’re going to find that the technology is 10% better than the average clinician … or the average nurse in a chronic disease management program…or, for that matter, potentially even the average physician doing inpatient care when there are five or six different doctors taking care of the same patient and they’re not effectively communicating.”

Click now to hear his take on the technology’s other benefits.

Originally broadcast April 10, 2025

Eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes founded his eponymous Medical Institute over 70 years ago devoted to “unlocking the fundamentals of biology and building an open, inclusive future for science.”

Some say Howard Hughes Medical Institute is bringing its founder’s vision into the future with its one-of-a-kind Janelia Research Campus in Ashburn, Virginia. On this 281-acre parcel of land, integrated teams of lab scientists and tool-builders pursue a small number of scientific questions with potential for transformative impact. To drive science forward, they share their methods, results, and tools with the scientific community.

Nelson Spruston, Ph.D., the executive director at HHMI’s Janelia research campus, also tells hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter about AI@HHMI, its new $500 million initiative to embed AI systems throughout every stage of the scientific process.

Spruston says, “Our approach is to identify people who have a very strong track record of making important discoveries in biomedical research and letting them pursue their best ideas without asking for our permission. What we’re trying to do at HHMI is to use the deep bench of talent … to come up with ideas for problems [and address] long-standing open questions in the biological sciences.”

Originally broadcast April 3, 2025

Roughly 85% of respondents to a survey cited by Michael Sapienza, CEO of the Colorectal Cancer Alliance, say they would rather do their taxes than get a colonoscopy.

“We need to do a better job of talking to the public about the barriers,” Sapienza tells “Conversations on Health Care” hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter.

Sapienza, whose mother died of the disease at age 58, says people may be less than excited to do the preparation, or colon cleanout, necessary for a screening. Or that they don’t want the hassle of taking time off from work. But he emphasized that 45 is the recommended age that people begin getting regular screenings for polyps that, at some point, could develop into cancer.

“45 is the new 50,” says Sapienza, whose alliance was instrumental in lowering the recommended screening age and, in 2022, recruited actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney to have their colon screenings filmed.

Originally broadcast March 27, 2025

Two young innovators are leading a movement that proves food isn’t just fuel—it’s medicine. In this episode of “Conversations on Health Care,” Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter talk with Christian Heiden, founder of Levo International, and Alissa Wassung, executive director of the Food is Medicine Coalition, about how their work is shaping the future of healthcare through food.

For Heiden, hydroponic farming offers an innovative way to get fresh, nutritious food into the hands of people who need it most. “We’ve seen case studies where diet alone has prevented people from needing multi-million dollar surgeries,” he shares, emphasizing how access to healthier food can directly improve health outcomes.

Wassung, whose coalition delivers medically tailored meals to patients with serious illnesses, highlights the broader impact. “Researchers at Tufts found that if every eligible patient received medically tailored meals, we could save $13.6 billion—with a B—in just one year,” she explains. “This is a tremendous opportunity to build a more efficient and effective healthcare system.”

But this movement isn’t just about numbers—it’s about people. Heiden and Wassung embody a generational shift in how we view food and medicine, bringing fresh energy to solutions that could transform healthcare. Their work demonstrates that investing in food-based healthcare solutions isn’t just good for patients—it’s good for communities and the economy, too.

Join us as we explore how hydroponic farming, medically tailored meals, and cutting-edge research are proving that the right food can prevent disease, improve outcomes, and lower healthcare costs.

Originally broadcast March 20, 2025

Mary Bono has left the halls of Congress, but she’s still winning with her efforts to stop the misuse of both prescription and illegal drugs. Bono, co-founder and chair of Mothers for Awareness and Prevention of Drug Abuse, wants to see a focus on solutions from lawmakers. With a greater presence of fentanyl in the drug supply, “everything [has] changed because there’s no longer time for experimentation,” Bono says. “‘One pill can kill’ is a [Drug Enforcement Administration] slogan, and it’s true.”