The Food and Drug Administration plans to ban employees of regulated companies, including drug manufacturers, from serving on the agency’s advisory committees. The new policy is aimed at combating industry influence and conflicts of interest, but will it make a difference? We are joined by Genevieve Kanter, an Associate Professor at the USC Price School, who has researched conflicts of interest at the FDA as well as the “revolving door” of people moving between jobs in government and regulated industries.

The Los Angeles wildfires were one of the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history, killing dozens of people and destroying thousands of homes and businesses. As catastrophes like this one become more common, we are joined by Research Professor Adam Rose, a leading expert in the economics of disasters. We discuss how these estimates are calculated and what can be done to make disasters less costly.

The opioid epidemic has killed roughly 900,000 Americans since the year 1999 – and one of the factors that fueled the crisis was doctors overprescribing opioids to patients. Jason Doctor, a USC Price School Professor, has been researching a way to curb overprescribing: notifying doctors when their patients fatally overdose. In this episode, we’ll discuss his studies and how they can help policymakers combat this health crisis.