Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, it's a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that at some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?

It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music

when it's out of ice cream.

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Today I might save your life. I'm not a real doctor. I don't have a medical degree, but today I want to

diagnose some medical problems. The problems are not diseases or illnesses. They are

problems of knowledge. But these problems may impede medical diagnosis, result in per medical attention or prolonged

suffering. Before I make my diagnosis, let me start with an idea of medicine that is very common.

It goes something like this. We experience some symptom and may have some idea about what is wrong.

We make an appointment with our doctor.

In the consultation, he or she asks us questions and may conduct some tests.

We then expect the doctor to give us a diagnosis and prescribe some medication or suggest a treatment regimen.

And a really good doctor, we think,

will be one who does all of this with a kindly and warm bedside manner. There's a lot that

is correct about this picture, but it fails to grasp what is interesting and challenging

about medical encounters. I'm going to diagnose three kinds of

issues that illustrate the messiness of what I call the medicine game. So to begin, you may think

that your doctor is wearing a pristine white coat and a stethoscope, but I want to tell you that he or she

is really wearing a dirty trench coat and smoking a cigar. Your doctor is like Lieutenant Colombo,

a detective on a mission to discover what has gone wrong. He will hedge his bets with numerous hunches and instincts, but unlike

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