Paging Dr. Glaucomflecken: Presenting “The Nocturnists - Conversations: Will & Kristin Flanary (The Glaucomfleckens)”

An Arm and a Leg

Society & Culture, Medicine, Health, Health & Fitness, Documentary

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 19 October 2023

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

First: an update on our recent two-parter with the writer John Green, about the global, decades-long fight to make an important tuberculosis drug more widely available.

Just two days after we posted part 2, the activists waging that battle scored a major victory. John Green was kvelling on YouTube, of course. We’ll get you up to speed.

And for the meat of this episode, we’ve got a guest a lot of you have been asking for: Physician/comedian Will Flanary, AKA Dr. Glaucomflecken.

His punchy videos satirizing the absurdities and cruel complexities of the American health care system have been a fan favorite for years among An Arm and a Leg listeners (and us too).

We’re sharing a delightful and moving conversation with Dr. G and his wife, educator Kristin Flanary (AKA @LadyGlaucomflecken online), from our pals at The Nocturnists, a podcast about the experiences of health care workers.

As the Glaucomfleckens tell Nocturnists host Dr. Emily Silverman, the inspiration behind Flanary’s most biting videos. came from the couple’s experience dealing with health insurance after he suffered a near-fatal heart attack.

Check out the Nocturnists here or wherever you get your podcasts, and Dr. Glaucomflecken’s videos on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.

Send your stories and questions for An Arm and a Leg, or call 724 ARM-N-LEG.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there, this is an arm and a leg, I'm Dan Weissman, and I've got to share something
0:04.5	that happened like two days after our last episode came out, and it looks like holy
0:08.7	movie.
0:09.7	So our last two episodes were about efforts by best-selling author and YouTube legend, John
0:15.3	Greene, and a boatload of international activists who have been working for like 20 years to
0:20.2	get the drug maker, Johnson and Johnson, to ease up on its patent rights to an important
0:24.6	drug for fighting tuberculosis called Bedaquin, so that cheaper generics could save
0:29.8	more lives.
0:30.8	And you'll remember, Johnson and Johnson had said yes, but only kind of.
0:35.4	It would allow cheaper generics to get distributed, but only to certain countries.
0:39.5	Here's John Greene on YouTube, picking up the story a couple days after our episode came
0:43.1	out.
0:44.1	Many countries, including Ukraine and South Africa and tons of others, were left out of
0:49.0	that deal, and so it always felt like a little bit of a win, but a compromise win.
0:54.4	So groups like doctors without borders and partners in health kept pushing for more, for
0:58.4	Johnson and Johnson to agree to not enforce its remaining patents on the drug in any low
1:03.3	and middle-income countries.
1:04.8	And I've always been like, well, I mean, that's probably not going to happen, but it just
1:09.2	happened.
1:10.2	Yeah.
1:11.2	Johnson and Johnson said yes to everything those folks had asked for.
1:14.1	So wow.
	...

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