The Healthland Podcast: AIDS, Behavioral Economics, and the Psychology of Morality

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Welcome back. This week we have a special guest, Rana Foroohar, TIME’s assistant managing editor for business and economics. She discusses why the global economy could be diagnosed with schizophrenia. But first, Belinda updates us on the state of the global HIV/AIDS fight. And John plays a mind game, asking whether you would kill one person to save five. Click the play button below to hear the show immediately, or listen on iTunes and subscribe for free.

Belinda talked about the interview that our boss, managing editor Rick Stengel, conducted with Bono about why he thinks we should be optimistic about the global fight against AIDS. John was a bit skeptical, but you can decide for yourself here.

During Rana’s segment, we delved into the work of psychologist Daniel Kahneman, and talked about why the stock market behaves like it’s got a mental disorder.

Finally, John mentioned a new Michigan State study on the “trolley problem,” a moral dilemma in which you have to decide whether to redirect a train so that it would kill one person in order to avoid killing five.

In our Field Notes, Sora talked about arsenic in apples, which our own Meredith Melnick covered. Belinda discussed Bonnie Rochman’s depressing story about how early children attempt to commit suicide. And John ridiculed a new study alleging that men in college think about sex only 19 times a day.

Comment on these discussions below or on our Facebook page. You can also e-mail John directly at john_cloud@timemagazine.com.

Thanks for listening!