The Ira Glass audio takes an hour looking at health care costs and the context of the rises in cost. Glass here provides an easily digestible hour of listening.

Deeply informative, at a human level. In this first poddcast of a two-part radio special on health care, Ira Glass and his team speak candidly with doctors, patients and experts, about concrete examples of how we practice medecine in the U.S. today. They discuss why American doctors order so many unnecessary tests or interventions - partly because a lot of us like it that way. Factual, fair, well-sourced, but most importantly, intelligent reporting about an overwhelmingly complex issue.

First in a two part series about the health care industry. It's an hour long, but worth every minute.

One of the best analyses of the reasons for high health care costs I've found. In a different formate, they would have included the food industry and school recess/PE, but I believe that they've covered these issues in other stories. There will be another program on health care issues next week.

As usual "This American LIfe" brings fresh perspective to a contemporary problem--in this case the national debate on health care. Learned a great deal, and will never again look at the problem in quite the same way. I particularly enjoyed the fact that host Ira Glass completely transcends partisanship in this wonderful presentation.

In this unbiased review of health care cost drivers, no one escapes blame. It provides an in-depth and unvarnished look at the roles of doctors, patients, insurance companies and health care companies. Per Pogo, "We have met the enemy and they are us."

Fairly well researched investigations into corners of healthcare that need to be discussed today, but mostly aren't.