Hey there. It's Stephen Dubner. We just finished a two-part series that looked at the very long-lasting opioid crisis.

It's horrible. It's horrible.

It's absolutely horrifying.

We learned why the opioid epidemic has endured

and we learned about the billions of dollars in settlement money

and how that should be used.

Don't spend any money on anything some other funding stream covers.

Today, we wanted to play for you a bonus episode.

This is an update of a piece we published in early 2020, a piece

that was also about the opioid crisis. As you will hear, the crisis seemed to be leveling off

back then, but as it turned out, it wasn't, it continued

to worsen, especially during the pandemic, although there are signs that now it really

is leveling off. In this episode we spoke with some University of

Pennsylvania physicians about an addiction treatment that they thought should

be universal. They can get it as part of routine medical care,

just like they might get their insulin for their diabetes

or their blood pressure medicine.

So is this treatment now universal?

That's, that's probably a no.

You'll also hear a bit more from Stephen Lloyd,

the Tennessee physician who was featured in our new series,

and stick around to the end of this episode

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