Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour

Guest: Sunita Puri, Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine; Medical Director for Palliative Care, Keck Medical Center of USC, Author of “That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour”

Modern medicine makes it possible to go on living much longer than people would have dreamed even a century ago. If you become very sick, doctors can hook you up to machines that will breathe for you, eat for you, clean your blood for you –it’s miraculous, really. But that also means thatdying often comes with difficult choices most of us are unprepared to make: When do we stop medical intervention? Why wouldn’t we want to do everything possible to save a loved one?  What does a good death look like?

History of Baseball in Ten Pitches

Guest: Tyler Kepner, National Baseball Writer, The New York Times, Author of “K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches”

Baseball pitches, to be precise. They are the DNA of the game, writes New York Times national baseball reporter Tyler Kepner. His new book charts the history of baseball in ten pitches with iconic names –slider, fastball, curveball, knuckleball, splitter, screwball, sinker, changeup, spitball and cutter. And the stories behind them are really fun. even for someone like me who can’t tell a strike from a ball until the ump makes the call.