Emily Oster Doesn't Mind the Haters

Mary in America · Sep 17, 2026 · 41m

Emily Oster is not a doctor. She’s an economics professor at Brown University, and for years she’s been applying her economics lens and ability to read studies and analyze data to help decode health research. Her conclusions sometimes produce runaway hits – as in Expecting Better, her book upending the “conventional pregnancy wisdom” – and at other times are wildly unpopular – as with her recommendation to re-open schools while the pandemic was still raging. Emily tells us about the gaps that open up as science progresses, and how people jump into those gaps with theories, political agendas…