How the placebo effect went mainstream

06/27/23 • 28 min

Sloppy by modern standards — and maybe even those back then — a 1955 article on the placebo effect by Harvard anesthesiologist Henry K. Beecher was nonetheless remarkable and influential. It paved the way for sounder drug trials and pushed scientists to better understand how we process pain. To explore its significance, Host Charlotte Stoddart enlisted the help of Ted Kaptchuk, director of the Program in Placebo Studies at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, who knows the paper well.

Find the transcript and additional resources at knowablemagazine.org/podcast.

Find the transcript and additional resources at knowablemagazine.org/podcast.

Previous Episode

The fossil that launched a dinosaur revolution

The fossil Archaeopteryx forever changed our understanding of dinosaurs and the origin of birds, but it took a century after its discovery and a one-page paper to shift scientific consensus.

Here’s the story of that landmark 1973 article by American paleontologist John Ostrom, and published in the journal Nature, describing the bird-like features of Archaeopteryx and convincingly arguing that birds were descended from a group of dinosaurs called theropods.

Host Charlotte Stoddart speaks with paleontologist Julia Clarke of the University of Texas at Austin, whose own research focuses on the early evolution of birds and the origin of flight.

Find the transcript and additional resources at knowablemagazine.org/podcast.

Next Episode

Quantum entanglement’s long journey from ‘spooky’ to law of nature

Quantum mechanics has always included mind-bending ideas. But the concept of quantum entanglement, famously termed “spooky at a distance” by Albert Einstein in a 1947 letter, seemed to challenge the limits of belief. It remained well on the edges of modern physics until John Stewart Bell’s 1964 paper suggesting a way to actually test the baffling idea that two particles can somehow share a measured property even when well separated.

Host Adam Levy chats with Nicolas Gisin of the University of Geneva about Einstein’s quote, Bell’s test and why it took so many decades for entanglement, the focus on the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, to go mainstream. Plus, how the phenomenon could help secure communications with your bank.

Find the transcript and additional resources at knowablemagazine.org/podcast.