"The most endlessly fascinating specialty in all of medicine."

July 9, 2014 2:05 PM

Dr. Mark Crislip is a Infectious Disease specialist—an ID doc. He's also the master of a vast* multimedia empire, all parts of which are inflected with his insistence upon scientific evidence and many with a dry, sarcastic sense of humor: the president of the Society for Science-Based Medicine, he also writes articles for the affiliated website Science-Based Medicine; he runs the Quackcast, a podcast that reviews Supplements, Complementary and Alternative Medicines (SCAMs) from an evidence-based perspective; the Persiflagers Infectious Disease Puscast, which reviews the infectious disease literature; and his blog on Medscape, Rubor, Dolor, Calor, Tumor, is the basis for the third of his podcasts (and my favorite): A Gobbet O' Pus. As Crislip puts it: "A cool ID case, a stupid joke and a factoid you can use. What more do you need?" *For certain quantities of vast.

And should you be looking for a reference work on infectious diseases, rather than case stories and articles, Crislip has you covered there, too, with the free Infectious Disease Compendium: A Persiflager's Guide.

posted by ocherdraco (14 comments total)

I would love a podcast like that.

Unfortunately the feed seems to be broken.
posted by Jahaza at 2:12 PM on July 9, 2014

That is, the one for "A Gobbet O' Pus".
posted by Jahaza at 2:12 PM on July 9, 2014

Here's another link for that one, then.
posted by ocherdraco at 2:18 PM on July 9, 2014

And similar links for Quackcast and Persiflagers Infectious Disease, just in case.
posted by ocherdraco at 2:20 PM on July 9, 2014

Thanks.
posted by Jahaza at 2:38 PM on July 9, 2014

Dr Crislip's podcasts strike a nice balance between informative and soporific for me.

I do find his feeds can be a bit tricky - he is clearly fond of learning technology, but he is clearly a doctor first, and a tech guy a distant 5th.
posted by wotsac at 3:06 PM on July 9, 2014

I've listened to Persiflagers, and while it's great, I will say that it is a review of the current literature on infectious diseases, not a general podcast on infectious diseases. Quite good, but it's an area I'm not dedicated to keeping up with in any more than a general sense.
posted by Hactar at 3:14 PM on July 9, 2014

QuackCast 5. Placebo Effect. Alt.med effects are often attributed to the placebo effect. Turns out the placebo effect does not exist. So when the effect of alt.med is equal to placebo effect, it is the same as saying it is equal to nothing. How true, how true. 5/22/06

Hmm, think I'll give this one a listen and see what I think.
posted by Drinky Die at 3:19 PM on July 9, 2014

I find Persiflagers fantastic: when I'm trying to fall asleep and my brain is full of whirling thoughts and won't stop, I listen to it with the volume turned low enough that I have to focus to follow along, and it usually works in knocking me right out.

And if it doesn't work, hey, I've learned something about infectious disease that I didn't know before. (Which is fairly easy to do, admittedly.)
posted by telophase at 3:19 PM on July 9, 2014

I haven't listened to it yet but I would like to thank you in advance for introducing me to my new favorite podpuscast.
posted by iamkimiam at 3:33 PM on July 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ooh. This sounds like something I could sink my teeth into.
posted by Sophie1 at 4:21 PM on July 9, 2014

Now *this* looks interesting. Thank you, ocherdraco!
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:22 PM on July 9, 2014

Quackcast 54. There is no quackcast 54.

Ha?
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:21 PM on July 9, 2014

He's one of my favorite podcasters (along with Vincent Racinello). I never fail to get a chuckle out of them. I had a sleep study done the other night and the tech wanted to know what I was listening to because she thought it was fascinating.
posted by kathrynm at 7:19 PM on July 9, 2014 [1 favorite]