On September 29th a medical researcher in Philadelphia fired off a simple, well-meaning tweet, and then barely thought twice about it. Little did she know that by doing that, she was perpetrating covert propaganda on behalf of the U.S. government.

Producer Nancy Updike takes some personal questions about death and dying to a place where they're happening all the time.

Alex Blumberg talks to Shane Dubow about a time decades ago, when Shane went sea kayaking and camping with his friends on the beach in Baja California, Mexico. When Shane’s neck stiffens up on him, he finds himself looking for an unlikely chiropractor, in the middle of nowhere.

Deborah Lott comes from a family that obsesses over health. And when they all get together for dinner, their banter goes on overdrive.

Host Ira Glass tells the story of Sarah Erush, a pharmacist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She was contacted by the Food and Drug Administration and encouraged to examine cases of acetaminophen overdose at her hospital.

How could whispering change your life? Andrea Seigel tells this story about finding out that she is undeniably not alone. She’s a novelist with several books including Like the Red Panda.

Ira Glass talks with Planet Money reporter, Chana Joffe-Walt, about Hale County, Alabama — a place where one fourth of working age adults are on disability. That means the government has determined that due to a health issue, 25 percent of the adults in Hale County are unable to work, qualifying them for monthly payments and health care coverage.

A group called NO/AIDS heads into bars to offer free HIV testing for high-risk people. Writer Nathaniel Rich tells the story of one man's test.

A teenage girl gets bitten by a shark, rushed to the doctor's office, stitched up, and told she'll be totally fine. Crisis averted, right? Not so much.

For a year, Morgan Block saw her pilates instructor, Mary Archbold, twice aweek. She watched closely as Mary demonstrated moves and corrected poses.

Host Ira Glass speaks with various people who regularly eat foods that give them severe allergic reactions, stomach cramping and trips to the hospital.

One day a successful cancer researcher named Jonathan Brody gave a talk at his alma mater, about how people in his field need to think outside the box if they're going to find a cure. Afterward Jonathan's old music teacher Anthony Holland shared an idea that was way out of the box: Killing cancer cells with electromagnetic waves. Gabriel Rhodes tells what happened next.

Nubar Alexanian was forced to give up one thing—and then gave up another thing by choice. This story was put together by Nubar and his daughter Abby, with help from Jay Allison, for Transom.org, with funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

In Malawi, in southeast Africa, not gossiping can be worse than gossiping. Sarah interviews a young Malawian woman named Hazel Namandingo, who explains that because so many people have HIV and AIDS in Malawi, they often rely on gossip to figure out who's safe to date or marry.

Producer Sarah Koenig continues the story Terry Engelder and Dan Volz, their rival calculations about natural gas in Pennsylvania, and how each was treated by his university. She explains how Pennsylvania's universities, politicans and industry have united to develop natural gas.

One night on stage, comedian Julian McCullough had an intense pain in his stomach, which he assumed was food poisoning. But it turned out to be a much more serious internal battle.

In a small west Texas town called Kermit, two nurses were accused of harassment after they complained to the medical board that a doctor was putting patients in danger. The nurses were fired and then arrested, facing ten years in prison.

Planet Money's Chana Joffe-Walt explains why prescription drug coupons could actually be increasing how much we pay, and prevent us from even telling how much drugs cost.

In the wake of the tsunami and nuclear disaster at Fukushima, some people suspected that Japanese government officials have not been forthcoming about the actual level of danger from radiation. No one, however, is suggesting a cover-up as extreme as what happened in the Soviet Union after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Nancy Updike follows up on a Haaretz newspaper story about a sting operation against a medical marijuana supplier in Israel—a case where being giving was not the best idea.