Measured medicine, policy, and evidence.
NEJM Interviews is a careful interview series from the New England Journal of Medicine, centered on clinical research, health care, and policy decisions. Recent episodes examine graduate nursing loan limits, vaccine guidance, private equity, trainee billing, influenza, and contested evidence around leucovorin.
PRESS PLAY
NEJM Interviews is the audio counterpart to careful medical reading: structured, direct, and built around questions that matter in clinics, hospitals, and policy rooms. The show favors explanation over velocity. A typical episode begins with a defined pressure point, such as a federal loan policy, a vaccine recommendation, or a shift in hospital ownership. From there, the guest is given room to explain origins, mechanisms, tradeoffs, and consequences. The recent run is broad but coherent. One conversation examines proposed caps on graduate nursing loans and asks what evidence-based policymaking should mean for workforce education. Another looks at family physicians trying to address social determinants of health and the cumulative harms of discrimination through practical tools and community-clinical linkages. A discussion of corporate health care asks how organizations affect physicians’ intrinsic motivation when much of high-quality care cannot be measured at scale. The show also pays attention to training. Competency-based medical education becomes a billing question when senior residents deliver real care under supervision that Medicare rules may not fully recognize. Public health episodes are equally grounded. Childhood vaccine-schedule changes are treated as a communication problem for parents and clinicians, not simply as a political fight. Influenza coverage links pediatric illness, vaccination rates, global surveillance, egg-based production, and newer vaccine technologies. The series is comfortable with uncertainty. In the leucovorin episode, the conversation separates a rare cerebral folate deficiency indication from broader autism-related use where evidence remains limited. Private equity coverage connects ownership practices to staffing cuts, service closures, access, and quality of care for disadvantaged communities. The tone is measured and institutional, but not cold. It works because the questions are concrete and the answers are allowed to develop. NEJM Interviews is best for listeners who want the machinery behind medical headlines: laws, incentives, evidence standards, clinical judgment, and the people affected when those forces collide.
Made for: For clinicians, health policy watchers, medical trainees, researchers, and serious general listeners who want calm context on current health care debates. It rewards attention to systems, evidence, and bedside consequences.
What sets it apart: The series pairs journal-level subject matter with concise, question-led interviews that keep returning to practical consequences. It is less about opinion and more about how policies, evidence, and institutions shape care.
Insightful conversations with leading experts in the field of health care, medical research, policy, and more from the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Each episode examines the many complexities found at the junction of medicine and society.
Based on 4 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Careful interviews connect changing medical evidence to the regulations, payment systems and public-health decisions that determine how care reaches people.
NEJM Interviews follows medical decisions past the evidence and into the systems that put them into practice. Conversations led by Harleen Marwa or Stephen Morrissey ask how clinical tools, regulations and public programs acquire authority, then press guests on what happens when…
A lung-function equation enters the clinic; you follow its consequences into workers' compensation.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
How anemia standards changed says as much about medicine as the lab numbers do.
The piece follows how anemia diagnosis moved away from race-based standards, and it explains why that shift took so long. Dr. Jones gives the history room to breathe, and the strongest moments come when he treats the older race-specific tools as sincere efforts, made by people…
A clear, state-level look at how H5N1 response turns public guidance into practice.
It treats H5N1 as a public-health problem that is still mostly animal-driven, with limited human infection, and it keeps that frame steady throughout.
A clear policy conversation on how elections can shape coverage, Medicare costs, and whose health needs reach government.
NEJM Interviews frames the 2024 U.S. elections as a health policy hinge, following how the next president and Congress could shape insurance coverage, access, affordability, and health equity. Jose Figueroa, of the Harvard T.H.
A measured look at race-free PFT equations and the uneven occupational rules still shaping their use.
Pulmonary function tests have long carried race-based assumptions from clinical training into decisions about occupational impairment. NEJM in Studio follows Dr.
Practical anesthesia safety, one case at a time.
Surgery, mentorship, and life in training.
Clear conversations on bones, joints, and recovery.
Dr.
The interview asks how the 2024 U.S.
Dr.
This interview discusses recent federal actions undermining harm-reduction programs for substance use disorders, with expert Joshua Barocas explaining the definition, evidence, and benefits of such interventions.
This episode discusses the H5N1 outbreak in Indiana with Dr.
This interview with Dr.
Stephen Morrissey interviews Danielle Jones about the American Academy of Family Physicians' Every One Project toolkit.
Stephen Morrissey opens by resetting what H5N1 currently looks like.
NEJM Interviews examines an Andes hantavirus outbreak aboard the MB Hondias, where 10 cases and three deaths were reported by May 13.
This interview discusses new federal loan caps for graduate students, focusing on how nursing students are categorized differently from medical and dental students under the proposed policy.
This interview discusses the development of the AAFP's EVERYONE Project Toolkit to help family physicians address social determinants of health and advance health equity through community clinical linkages.
This interview explores how corporate structures in healthcare affect physician motivation and care quality, focusing on unmeasurable aspects like timely diagnosis.
This interview discusses recent changes to the childhood vaccine schedule by the U.S.
This episode discusses the gap between competency-based training for medical residents and fellows and outdated Medicare billing rules that affect hospital revenue.
This episode discusses the shift to race-free equations for interpreting pulmonary function tests, exploring historical, clinical, and regulatory contexts, and strategies to address inequities in occupational health evaluations.
This episode features an interview with Dr.