Stuff You Should Know - Will computers replace doctors?

Episode Date: February 4, 2014

With savvy and health-conscious people taking control of their wellbeing through apps and sites, technology is meeting the desire for individuals' responsibility for their health. But is the day coming soon when doctors will be obsolete, replaced by computers that read our health-related data to treat us? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Munga Shatikler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-Pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too.

Just a Skyline drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Our guest producer, Noel, is here. Yeah, Jerry needs a buffer day from her Christmas break. I can't say that. Sure I can.

No. She's at home on her buffer day in the freezing cold because we record these somewhat in advance. We are in the midst of the polar vortex and everyone's just talking about how cold it is. We're back. This is our first recording after the holidays. It's literally freezing cold out.

So welcome back, buddy. Thanks. Welcome back to YouTube. Even though this will be late January, it'll be a balmy 16 Atlanta. I think the end of January is when this one comes out. All right. Well, happy new year anyway. Happy new year to you too and happy holidays to you.

Thanks. Chuck. Yes, sir. You feeling good? You loose? You ready? I'm loose. So you see this?

You've seen this before. Yeah, your Fitbit. My Fitbit. Is that buzz marketing? Not really. It's just a really good example. I feel like Fitbit. I'm not necessarily loyal to it or anything like that.

Oh yeah. They don't pay me money to mention them on the podcast. Sometimes I'll just be like, stop staring at me Fitbit. Yeah. But no, I like it. I'm happy with it. I point it out though, because it's part of this, to me, and I don't think it's over confirmation bias.

It seems like there really is a growing desire among just average ordinary people to be able to track their health, their well-being, their activity and to do it easily. Yeah. We have tools now that make it like that thing super convenient. Yeah. Fitbit's not the only one. There's Nike FuelBand. There's Jawbone is another really good one.

There's others that track your galvanic response, so they're able to put that together with respiration and heartbeat and come up with a pretty good assessment of how many calories you're burning at any given time, which is like kind of a holy grail with this kind of thing right now. There's others that track your sleep. There's apps out there that let you track your mood. There's sites like Quantified Self, which are basically like people trying to push wearable technology like this further into the future.

There's entire websites like sharecare.com that are dedicated to health information and health support. Yeah. Self-advocacy. Yeah. It seems to me, this desire to kind of say, hey, this is my health. This is my body. Yeah.

I want to know more about it. Totally. I don't want to necessarily cut out doctors, but I want to decide if I should go to the doctor if it's time or not, and I want to use data to do that. Yeah. I imagine I have frustrated a lot of doctors because I'm one of those obnoxious people that goes in and is like, well, here's what I think I have based off my research. There's nothing wrong with that.

Yeah. But you're an informed patient. That's exactly what you're supposed to do. And if you're getting on your doctor's nerves, then go see another doctor. Yeah. I agree. I actually am in search of a new GP right now for those reasons and others. You got on his nerves.

Yeah. Other reasons too. Oh, really? Cold hands? No. Like poor bedside manner. Yeah. Never seen the doctor.

Like, here's my intern from Emory. Yeah. Which are great. I love them getting experience, but I would like them both to be in there, not just like smell you later and the doctor leaves. Well, that's another thing too. It's kind of like a doctor, okay, let's just lay it out on the table here. Yeah.

What you've just mentioned and what I was talking about, if you put it all together, the medical field physicians in particular are currently in a, what's the beginning of what's possibly a really pickle of a state for them. I think a transition period. Yes. But they may be transitioned right out of existence in large part. Yes. Some may for sure, depending on who you talk to.

There's like this whole question now, like what is the future of medicine and more specifically in the case of this episode that we're talking about, do human physicians factor largely into that future? Yeah. And the answer is, no, no, no. Yeah. Depending on who you ask, like I said, there's this one guy, Dr. Kent Bottles, who he feels that GPs might go the way of the dodo and be replaced by diagnostic computers, maybe

with avatars. Then there's other people like Farhad Manju, who's a technical writer, his wife is a pathologist. He thinks, no, no, no, the GPs are the ones that are going to be in business. The specialists are going to be out of business because computers are really good at specializing on one single thing, not maybe so good at a general practitioner thing. So there's lots of opinions out there on how much they'll be replaced and who might be replaced. Right.

Then Ezra Klein wrote a column who basically, he basically said like, no, like we will still need humans. Sure. But we mainly need humans to communicate to the other humans and facilitate the interaction between the robots and the humans, and we already have those, they're called nurses or nurse practitioners. Yeah. But he kind of, Ezra Klein is the one that thought that a computer avatar might have

a better bedside manner than a doctor. Well, let's give that one example. There's an example I kept finding while we were doing research for this, and it's actually in the article on how stuff works. There was a medical kiosk during a panel called Manmade Minds, colon living with thinking machines. When there's a colon in there, you know it's serious stuff. And it was at the World Science Festival in 2011, and basically this computerized avatar

interacted with a woman whose baby had diarrhea, and the woman said, hey avatar, my baby has diarrhea. What are you going to do about it? And the avatar said, well, tell me all the symptoms and all this stuff, and the avatar decided that the baby's diarrhea while present wasn't severe enough to warrant immediate medical attention, so it went ahead and made an appointment with a human doctor for later on that week. And the mother said that she preferred the treatment by the avatar to the real life nurses

at the hospitals where she lived in New York. Yeah. So, it is possible to create computers with better bedside manner than, say, your GP. Well, at the very least, it'll be consistent, and that's one of the things that I'm not poo-pooing doctors or nurses. There are many, many, many, many great ones, but I've also had some pretty bad experiences in emergency rooms and with doctors and nurses. With a computer, at least, it's a consistent, you know, their program to display empathy

no matter what. Right. You know, they're not too busy and they're not, you know, having a bad day. Exactly. They don't, you know, they don't have any prejudices against you personally or anything like that. They're a computer. They don't hate diarrhea.

But humans respond to even programmed empathy, even synthetic empathy from a computer. I could see that a little bit. Like I've dove into the gaming world enough to know that, you know, the realism of a avatar can be convincing, and it's not like you think, oh, it's a real person, but it helps to put a human face on it, you know. Exactly. Literally. Yeah.

They, I saw a reference to a study that found people who are being treated for anxiety disorders and tended to share more about their experiences and themselves with an avatar than with a human psychiatrist. Oh, it's interesting because they're like not embarrassed to tell a real person. Yeah. That makes sense. I might open up more to a computer. Right.

So, so we've got that part like bedside manner. It is possible that we can create machines now and our creating machines now that have at least equal, if not better, bedside manner than some physicians. Yeah. It's a bedside manner. One of the big things that doctors bring to the table, check. Computers have that. Yeah.

It's, it's different now than it was in the old days. I feel like just the whole quality of personal care has gone down. It's not necessarily the doctor's fault. There's a lot of reasons to place the blame, but it's not like when you were a kid and you feel like you had your family doctor who knew you maybe even gave birth, not gave birth to you. You're my son. Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah, just invested, like you got to stick with the same doctor if you want that kind of care, I think. Right. And there's another benefit besides bedside manner that comes with that, that kind of care, that kind of personal care is an awareness of your medical history. Yeah. Sure.

Not just that, but oh, well, your dad died of congenital heart disorder or something like that. Yeah. So, you may be at higher risk of it. Totally. Just that kind of awareness has been typically lost too, even though we have medical histories and they're in our charts and they're in our files, and intimate knowledge of a patient's medical history is pretty much lost in today's modern practice of medicine.

Yeah. That's another thing that computers could conceivably top doctors on, which basically falls under the umbrella of diagnosis or diagnostics. Yeah. I mean, there's two sides to this. There's diagnoses and treatment. And some programs, a little bit of the history, this goes back to the 1970s at the University of Pittsburgh.

They developed software to diagnose problems. Mass General since the 80s has been working on their DX plan, which provides ranked list of diagnoses, whereas the, what's the computer? The Watson? Watson, who won a Jeopardy. Yeah. It's based, it looks like, on treatment options than diagnosis at this point. It's both.

Well, yeah. But they said it's not, they haven't, I don't think they want to leave it alone with diagnosis yet. No. And to do its thing. There's already something out there for diagnosis that's meant to support physicians. From what I understand, with Watson, if there's a doctor of the future, it's Watson. He has a lot of advantages over not just human doctors, but other artificial intelligence

healthcare machines, I guess, so you could clumsily call it. He has a knack for natural language. So let's say there's like a structured formula or formulaic type of language that the medical field is supposed to use, right? Yes. Okay. Well, health records don't always necessarily contain that language. They might contain natural language, which is really confusing for computers to take

in and absorb. Yeah. You know, humans can pick up on meanings of things that robots and software cannot. Right. Like inferences. We might be using sarcasm, although there's probably not going to be any sarcasm in your medical records. Yeah, but like figurative language and stuff like that, computers, a language is a big

part of the problem. Or more to the point, with the diagnosis, patient says he feels like he has a hive of bees in his stomach. Yeah. Like, that might mean something that you or me, but to a computer, it's like patients swallow a bunch of bees or something, right? Watson has the advantage of saying, oh, okay, well, there's a sensation of bees in the stomach. There's not actually bees in the stomach, so let's figure this out.

Even Watson, or anything that he eventually becomes, will be able to go through medical records, current medical research, the patient's medical history, diagnostic tests that were done, blood work, instrument tests, and put it all together and then spit out a list of diagnoses with different confidence levels. So the one at the top is the one that Watson says is he is 98.997 percent sure is what's wrong with this patient. And as a diagnostician, that's pretty impressive, and that's using all the available data that's available also to human physicians, but they simply don't have the time to take it all

in. Yeah, some research said that 80 percent of doctors spend less than five hours a week reading medical journals. A month. A month? Yeah. Yeah. So these things can read thousands in seconds.

So it's sort of a matter of efficiency, really, and if doctors don't have time to read all this stuff, I know we looked into this one sort of a savant diagnoser, is that a word? I don't know. Diagnostician? Yeah. Dr. Daliwal in San Francisco, he's sort of legendary for diagnosing things to the point where he does it on stage as almost like a parlor trick. I'd love to see it.

I would too. They give him 45 minutes and a bunch of symptoms basically, like really confusing because they were trying to stump him. And generally, he comes out on top, but he even uses a program, a diagnostic program called Isabel. Right, that's the one I said earlier that's already here. Yeah. So doctors are using these to help themselves out, but he says that he's never had Isabel

offer diagnosis that he has missed. Right. But he's like the dude, though. Yeah. And he also admits that he's like, I'm a freak of nature. Right. Go ahead. Quiz me.

Exactly. Yeah. He also reads like case histories, like for fun, that kind of stuff. He's not a normal physician. He's a complete and total outlier. Yeah. So if every physician were like this guy, then there probably wouldn't be this conversation going on right now.

Yeah, you're right. But most physicians aren't. And it's not just with current medical research that they're just not aware of because they haven't had time to pick up the Lancet the last few months. But it's also their training too. Like if a doctor's in practice for 20 years, the human brain tends to create habits because it likes to expend as little energy as possible. It's trying to be as efficient as possible.

And I think the same thing happens with medical practice. You're trained. You understand. You come out of medical school with a lot of book learning. And then you put it to practice and you kind of find your niche. And along the way, you forget a lot of the stuff that you haven't done in 20 years or haven't learned about in 20 years. So it's not just current stuff.

It's old stuff too. And if you feed the physician's desk reference in the Watson or one of his compatriots, like all of that knowledge can be quickly indexed in research to try to spit out a more accurate diagnosis. Yeah. I think that's a great idea. It's like a partnering up with computers, not necessarily replacing. But what they're doing with Watson is very much moving toward replacing doctors in that

sense. Well, here's a scary stat. One in five diagnoses in the United States are incorrect or incomplete. One in five. A lot of times it's not that the doctor's a jerk or not any good, but like you said, they just maybe haven't seen these cases that were written about in some obscure medical journal that the computer has scanned and indexed. Right.

Yeah. And Dollywood, Dr. Dollywell himself at Freak Diagnostician. Dollywood? Yeah. Pretty close. Which is a wonderful place, by the way. I know. You love Dollywood.

And Dollywood, Dollywood, Dollywood, he says a lot, even with me, a lot of it is intuition. Yeah. And intuition can be wrong. That's a criticism, though, of computers as doctors. They lack intuition. Like, there's kind of even larger than these computers replacing doctors' conversation going on. It's kind of a conversation or a debate over whether intuition or data trumps one or the

other. Which one is the right way to go? Yeah, this one stat too. It says, according to an expert, I'm not sure what that means. It sounds hinky. But they said only 20% of the knowledge physicians use to diagnose is evidence-based. So that means 80% is intuition. Yeah, which also jibes and dovetails with that one in five being wrong. I mean, or one in five being right. I'd like the idea of intuition to a certain degree for sure. But there's also got to be like data backing it up.

Sure, right. You know. So in your perfect world, and it sounds like we still have physicians, but they go back and double-check themselves using a program. Yeah, but I could also be down with simple, what do they call it in here? Something-based diseases. Rules-based chronic diseases. Yeah, like minor things that are pretty easy to diagnose. Well, they're not even necessarily minor. We just understand them so fully that we

say type 2 diabetes is going to behave and present itself like this. Yeah, but I wouldn't mind going like, it seems like once a year I get like an upper respiratory infection. It's been three or four years in a row. And I know what the treatment is. I know how it feels. It'd be great to go into a machine and have them take some stats and blow into it and hear my wheezing and give me a steroid shot and a Z-Pak and a breathing treatment and send me on my way. Right. That's always what clears it up.

Would you care if it was a robot that gave you that shot? Not at all. But I definitely would want more personal care if it was something- What if it was a robot with a nice avatar? Sexy avatar. Maybe, or just a friendly one. Yeah, that was a little, it would touch your forearm here or there. Yeah, well, that might be a little creepy.

Oh, really? Yeah, I feel like it was an old-timey doctor who like gave you some IpaCac if you had diarrhea and just sent you on your way to drink a Coke. But it wouldn't send you on your way to give you IpaCac and then it wouldn't let go of your forearm? Yeah. It's so strong. Well, surgical robots, that's a thing. I mean, we're kidding around, but they've been performing

robotic surgery since the early 80s. After assisted until 2010 when they were in Montreal, they performed the first fully robotic surgeries when they removed a prostate with a fully robotic surgeon and a fully robotic anesthesiologist. Dr. McSleepy. Dr. McSleepy. Yeah, and that's the real name. The robot surgeon was Da Vinci, which is like the basically gold standard for robotic surgical

robots. Yeah, they had in 2013, 350,000 robotic surgeries performed in the U.S., so it's big. It is. But the Da Vinci is a doctor basically sitting in a little, it looks like an arcade game, and using robotic arms to mimic his or her movements on more microscopic levels. Right. The robot has more precise movements and can make smaller movements than the doctor. What's the opposite of telescoping, like going downward in scale?

Whatever that is, it's taking the movements of the doctor and reducing them in scale. Let's call it reverse telescoping. Reverse telescoping, those movements, which is a pretty awesome achievement in and of itself, the doctor's being fed 3D graphics of what the robot is seeing and just kind of working from there. What we're moving towards, apparently, is fully roboticized surgeries. I was talking to Joe McCormick from Forward Thinking, and he was saying that there's something called the Raven 4, I believe.

And basically, you just say, this is going to be a gallbladder surgery on a six-foot, six-male, aged, whatever, and here's the CAT scan of his abdomen. So go removes gallbladder, and you press enter, and the thing goes in there and removes the guy's gallbladder and slows him up. That's fully robotic, like fully autonomous robotic surgery. It's like you press a button and it does it. You're not actually controlling a machine that does it. Exactly.

The machine's doing it at your behest, but you're not controlling it. And we're right on the cusp of that, and apparently it's already happening. Yeah, but there are some issues. I looked into it and found that a lot of injury reporting and robotic surgery is not being reported. It's substandard. And this woman, Sheena Wilson, had robotic surgery for a hysterectomy in 2013. And apparently, this intuitive surgical system, there had been a bunch of injuries that she

didn't know about, and she had her rectum burned badly and said, if I would have known that this system had these issues, I would not have elected to take part in it. So there's a lot of underreporting. The FDA, they have no authority to force a doctor to do this. And apparently, there's every reason in every link in the chain not to report these things. And the FDA not enforcing this kind of thing, not enforcing reporting is ridiculous. The thing is that things like that happen and there's underreporting with human surgeons as well.

It's not just robot. It's like overall, apparently, surgical injury and accident reporting is not compulsory. Yeah. And here's a few points, though, counterpoints, I guess, is, one, it's not always the robotic component of the surgery that was the cause. Yeah. That's a good point. Two, a lot of times they say they don't know about this until like a lawsuit is filed.

So it could be weeks or months later. What the physician doesn't know about it or the patient? The FDA might not report on it. And like six months later, you file a lawsuit and that's how it comes to light. But the FDA is definitely concerned and are supposedly working to improve this fast. Very concerned. They're very concerned. And another problem, too, in that same article, a lot of these robotic surgical systems, you

still have to have the correct amount of training. And the feeling of some experts is that, or at least this one guy, Enrico Benedetti, he's the head of surgery at the University of Illinois, Chicago, says a lot of it just comes back to training. Some of these doctors aren't getting adequately trained in these machines enough to perform the surgery. Yeah. Like what happens when I do this?

Oh, that happens. It's not good. I've got another alarming stat for you, too. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Before that, let's do a message break real quick. I'm Mangesh Atikular and, to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking.

You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Patrick Curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down.

Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change, too. There's a skyline drive in the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Attention, Bachelor Nation, he's back, the man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new Tell All podcast, the most dramatic podcast ever with

Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all, and now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward,

and letting everybody hear from me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this, and I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day. Truly, every day of my life, I think about this and what I want to say. Welcome to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Okay, tell me your alarming stat. All right. John Hopkins did a study that found as many as 40,000 patients die in intensive care each year in the US due to misdiagnosis. 40,000. Man. And another study found that system-related factors like lack of teamwork and communication or just poor processes were involved in 65% of diagnostic error, and cognitive factors

in 75% with premature closure is the most common, which is basically just sticking to that initial diagnosis and not being open-minded to other second opinions. Yeah. So there's this thing called anchoring bias that was in that New York Times article, Dr. Dollarwall, the guy who created this program that's now around to support diagnostics where a physician will say, I think it's this, but let me put in the symptoms and ask Isabelle, which is the name of the program, and it's named after the guy who created the program's daughter.

Oh man, that story is rough. Yeah. When she was three, he took her to the hospital and the doctor said, well, she has chicken pox, and she did indeed have chicken pox, but that's all they looked at. They completely missed a pretty nasty case of necrotizing fasciitis. Yeah. Which we've talked about before. Oh yeah.

Flush-eating bacteria, and she almost died from it. It was disfigured from it as a result. So her father, who is a money manager, said, I'm going to take whatever computer programming skills I have and put it toward this program, Isabelle, which is meant to say, yes, you're right with this diagnosis, I agree with you, or have you considered these other diagnoses? Yeah. And he said, had Isabelle been around and his daughter's doctors consulted it, they would not have missed the necrotizing fasciitis.

Well, it makes sense. As an assist, there's this company called Lifecom that said in clinical trials that if you use a medical diagnostic program as an assist, those engines were 91% accurate without using exams or imaging or labs even. Really? Just symptoms? Yeah. That's crazy.

That's really, really, really good. Yeah. That's an A. That's an A. That's a low A. It's still an A. But as an assistant, I think it's kind of a no-brainer, don't you think? Oh, yeah. I think so. I don't know why.

All I can think of is possibly worrying about feeding the beast that will take your job or just having too much of a case load to take the time to double check your work on a computer would be the only reasons why doctors aren't using that. Well, the smartphone is becoming a potential self-diagnoser. There's all these cool things on the horizon that you can use your phone for. There's one called Alivecore, which you can take your own ECG test. And potentially, for the cost of getting one ECG in a hospital, you could send a year's worth of daily ECGs you took yourself to your doctor.

Right. And you carry all that info and all of your other medical info from all of your apps that will eventually be integrated into one or two apps that will probably become pre-loaded on your iPhone in the next couple of years. And you've got your medical history right there. Yeah. I mean, most of these require a little clip-on, something called Cell Scope that's like you clip it onto your little camera lens, essentially.

And it's like, what are the little magnifiers with the lights that doctors use to look in your ears and eyes? Yeah. So it's clipped onto your iPhone. And it produces, you can do imaging for skin moles and rashes and ear infections. They have one called iNetra that you could potentially give your own eyes, get your own like glasses prescription done. That's neat.

And then you just order it online. Just order it online. You just upload the information to some website and they send you your glasses. And then there's one called Adamant that smells your breath, that smells gases in your breath. Yeah. And it could detect like lung cancer even. Yeah. Apparently you have real metabolic changes to the smell of your breath when you have different

types of cancer, not just lung. Like bees can detect breast cancer. If you breathe into like this special glass sphere with bees around it, they can be trained to detect lung cancer. And they come back with the correct results a lot of the time. Wow. So a lot of these are on the horizon. They're not like in heavy rotation yet.

No, but it's pretty neat. All of them reveal this idea that no one cares about your particular health and well-being more than you. Unless you're one of those dudes who doesn't really care, then your wife does. Yeah. Or your mom. Emily probably cares more about me than me. Right.

And the point is the doctor, the insurance company, the hospital, while they're all in the field because they do care about your health, they can't possibly care about it more than you or your loved one does. So the idea of giving you the ability to keep all of that information yourself and easily hand it over to them or potentially down the road, a computer version of them, I can't think of any better revolution in medicine right now than that. Agreed. I think it's pretty exciting.

Yeah. I think we're going to live into the triple digits, buddy. Yeah. And I think there will always be a need for doctors and nurses. I don't think anyone will be wholly replaced, but a little robot assist. Yeah. Yeah, okay. I'm bad.

Let me make one more point. All right. So you've heard of genomics? Yes. There's also this thing called protonomics, which is basically your protein version of your genome. And it's all of the proteins in your body that you have, that you're manufacturing, that you're losing, and all the changes and fluctuations in them.

And the idea is that you can get a full workup of your protonome and your genome. And eventually, you can add that to your medical history as well, what your EKG readings been over the past year, any weight you may have gained or lost or anything like that, what your breath smells like metabolically speaking, and not only have your current state of health, but personalized, your version of that personalized down to your genes and proteins in your body. So a treatment could be specifically tailored to you. Wow.

That's going to be really tough for a human physician to do that on their own. To top that. Yeah. The amount of data available already is overwhelming human doctors. When you add this other kind of stuff on it, it's just pulling away from them more and more. Yeah, and medical record keeping is, I know there's been issues with that, and digitizing that and keeping up with medical records, and if you could be your self-advocate and

keep up with your own medical records, it might be kind of nice. So I feel like we answered the question. Which is? Yes. No more doctors? I don't know. I think in the future, I will always have humans to interact between us, I think. Because we're always going to want somebody to yell at or be like, what is this robot doing?

Or can you help me? This robot just gave me some Ipacac and won't let go of my arm. Or it burned my rectum. Yes. We're always going to need humans. It's just, I don't know, will we need physicians? And if we do, will they be super specialized, like just the Supreme Court of Physicians? Yeah.

Who knows? It's pretty exciting. But we will see this change one way or another in the next 15 years under my prediction. Totes, it's happening. Yeah. Okay. Good one, Chuck. Yeah, man.

I'm going to kick off the new year. Yeah, really. If you want to learn more about computers possibly replacing doctors, you can type those words into the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. And since I said search bar, that means it's time for a message break. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life.

In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology,

my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change, too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Attention Bachelor Nation, he's back.

The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new Tell All podcast. The most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all.

And now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward and letting everybody hear from me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this, and I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day. Truly, every day of my life, I think about this and what I want to say.

Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the I Heart Radio App, no podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay. So what do we have? Listen to Mail Time? Yeah. I have one called, I'm going to call it Fight Club. Okay.

Hey guys, just finished the podcast on deep refrigerating. I think I'll keep my Energy Star certified fridge. Thanks very much. But Josh did mention something about eating weeds and asked a somewhat rhetorical question. What are weeds anyway? What plants we say are bad? Remind me of some of today's common, that some of today's common noxious weeds, how they got their reputation.

Not so long ago, lawns were a perfect blend of Bermuda rye and Kentucky bluegrass. They also included many types of clover, dandelion, and other, quote, weeds. In fact, many seed mixtures specifically included white clover, because it makes an excellent cover in soils where more common grasses won't grow, in steps the Scott fertilizer company. Most World War II America housing treks were popping up all over the U.S. in the new suburbia, and Scott was encouraging returning GIs to take pride in their new lawns and to buy their products to do so. And to wear extremely high-waisted pants.

Right. They produced fertilizers, weed killers, and other lawn care products, some of which had a curious side effect killing many leafy greens that came up to the point that were not considered weeds at the time, including white clover. Instead of reformulating what they did was what any red-blooded American corporation would do, they redefined what was a weed. White clover made that list as the dandelions, when in fact, both are still in use today in cooking and medicines.

Would you call that a noxious weed? No. So thanks for that, guys, and thanks for all the knowledge I've learned and have a great 2014. And that is from Robert Paulson. Oh, yeah, Robert Paulson, he's a sharp dude. That's why I called it Fight Club. Remember that?

Oh, yeah. I think I made a joke to him about that once on Twitter, and he never responded. Yeah, he writes in a lot now, every time I see his name, I think, and his name is Robert Paulson. Yeah. Thanks a lot, Robert Paulson. We appreciate you. And if you're ever shot in the head in the commission of a robbery, we will dispose of

your body. If you want to get in touch with me and Chuck and you have a name that you would like us to poke fun at, bring it on. You can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast. You can post your name on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastatdiscovery.com. You can check us out on YouTube, search Josh and Chuck. It'll bring up our YouTube channel, and you will kick your heels with glee.

And then, of course, go visit our website, make it your home page. It's the coolest place on the web. It's stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Jackthreads has quickly become the online shopping destination for guys. Here's why. Everything on the site is up to 80% off. As a listener of stuff you should know, you can skip the membership waitlist and get instant

access at signup.jackthreads.com slash no stuff. I'm Munga Shatigler, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas

are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, it's Chikis from Chikis and Chill Podcast, and I want to tell you about a really exciting episode. We're going to be talking to Nancy Rodriguez from Netflix's Love Is Blind Season 3. Looking back at your experience, were there any red flags that you think you missed? What I saw as a weakness of his, I wanted to embrace.

The way I thought of it was whatever love I have for you is extra for me. I already love myself enough. Do I need you to validate me as a partner? Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself? No. Listen to Chikis and Chill on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.