Future of the Medical Drama Genre

As Americans, we are obsessed with medical dramas. Since nineteen fifty one, starting with City Hospital , there have been one hundred forty medical TV shows . For two years in TV time, that's two seasons, I worked at a hospital. On the show House, I played Dr. Lawrence Kutner, an enthusiastic, risk taking sports medicine doctor who got fired and refused to be fired and was the most likely cast member to accidentally shock himself with a defibrillator, which did happen . So I knew my way around a fictional hospital. Now let's cut to this season , alone in the United States. there are about twelve medical dramas that have aired across broadcast, cable and streaming. And that by the way, includes Gray's Anatomy, which has been airing for twenty two seasons and has yet to call me to play a doctor. But anyway, we keep coming back to this medical genre, right? Over and over again like clockwork. So the question is why ? How do you keep coming back to that job day in and day out? All the nurses we talk to, we do a residence night and we do a nurse's night with local nurses and doctors here in Los Angeles . And there is not a shift where someone doesn't get attacked where there isn't some kind of not just verbal abuse but physical abuse that they sustain. Simrin Babelon is executive producer and writer of the Emmy winning TV show The Pit. She's also a writer and producer of the Good Doctor , Chicago Med and Royal Paines, and her first job in Hollywood was actually on house, which is how she and I know each other. So if anyone out there knows why we're drawn to the lives that unfold in the ER, it's going to be simmering . Here we go again , again , again . Hey, I'm Kalpen, and this is Here We Go Again, a show that takes today 's trends and headlines and asks why does history keep repeating itself? Here we go This is an IHR podcast guaranteed human Mom, I'm heading out . You're wearing shorts? It's freezing. And where's your coat? I'm good. Bye, mom. 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Pet insurance products offered and administered by Petsbest Insurance Services LLC are underwritten by American Pet Insurance Company or independence American insurance company. For terms and conditions, visit www. pets .b comust back slash policy. Products are underwritten by American Pet Insurance Company, independence American insurance company or MS Insurance Company, and administered by Petsbest Insurance Services LLC. One dollar day premium based on twenty twenty four average new policyholder data for accident and illness plans pets age zero to ten. Yo . Hi . I love that you have a little house swag behind you. My name is Simmering Bad. I'm an executive producer and writer on the pit. Simmer, thanks for doing this. Thanks for coming on the show. My pleasure thank you, for asking me. Of course. So the topic is medical dramas , which is why you're here aside from being my friend . Do you remember how, I mean, we obviously met on house, but do you remember our first actual interactions? I don't remember our first interaction. I do remember meeting you and I remember our one of the first things we talked about was your character ? Yes, yes . Have you met my writing partner Ramen Porcelino? Oh yes, yes. He's the generation just below ours . And so I might be getting this wrong, but basically of the opinion that I can't believe you play characters like Lawrence and Seth and like, why not make the name Bownr and I remember our conversation because when I got on the show, they wanted to, you know, his name was Lawrence Kutner as written, but they wanted an Indian name, at least an Indian last name. Yeah. And they were like, what about Baithwan? And I remember you were really excited about this idea and I like shat on it . Well, you know, it's so funny. They asked me for Indian names because I said, listen, we've cast Cal as Lawrence Gutner and I think it would be a disservice in a certain way if we don't give him an ethnic name unless there's some reason. Yeah. And so they said give us a list of last names. My name was not on that list at all. I would never pitch myself. I mean, I'm not that vain . But then David Shore was like, why don't we just do Bade One? And I was like, oh, okay, great. So they had ID cards made. They did the whole nine yards, right? And then I can't remember if one of the other producers had talked to you on set or something and then you were like, No, I want to go back to the name that it was. I'm like, oh, you know , this is not my monkey, not my circus. Go for it. Look , yeah, I remember being this is by the way before I knew David or the team. So I think had I known now what I know about how talented and wonderful they are, it would have been an easy yeah, of course change it to I mean a change it to whatever but, B yes hundred, per onecent make make him him have an Indian last name. I remember clearly the reason I didn't is that my experience up until that time was when you earn a part that wasn't written specifically ethnic and then they changed the name . Generally my experience was that in a writer's room that is not ethnically diverse , suddenly everything about your character becomes ethnically relevant. Yeah , like the dude likes tacos because his Indian mom loved Indian tacos. Like it's the most boring shit in the world. So I just remember being like, no, I earned the part of Lawrence Kutner and I want to play a guy has motivations that are independent of his ethnicity. Obviously, that would have been the case anyway because of the incredible writers and David, but I didn't know that at the time, so I just was like, no That was your lived experience. You had been doing it for what? Like twenty odd years at that point? I mean, I don't know. I feel like you were like a child actor sometimes. Like, no at that point like trying for ten . Yeah, for sure . How many seasons were you there before, by the way? Because we came in at like season three three or. was there I as an assistant midway through season two and then I believe I left midway through season five or six . Okay because I got safed on royal paints. Right. I remember that. Did you realize that that writers assistant kig that that your first job in Hollywood? That was my third job in Hollywood. My first job was as an assistant on a show called Judging Amy as you know, things happen, it got canceled. Then I went to go on a show, a very short lived reboot of night soccer that Frank Spotnets had done. Frank Spotnitz of Exiles Pade . And then that got cance lled midway through, you know, the first five or six episodes. Yeah. And then Dan Sackheim, who is in house director producer for there , he ended up getting an offer to go back to house because he was with House season one . And he said, You're the best assistant I've ever had. Please don't leave. I'm gonna see if I can get another job . And it was like mid January. He's like, okay, I've secured my deal. I'm going back to house. You should come with me. And at that point, I'll be very honest. I never' evend watched House . I didn't know what it was. I felt like I watched the commercials and the commercials made it seem very eerie and kind of sci fi, which wasn't my jam necessarily. Yeah. So I'm like, this feels like this is like house a like a haunted house. Like, I mean, I was such a dollar . And so I didn't so when I showed up there, I was like, oh, it's a medical show. What's going on? And then again, Dan to his credit was like you should take this time to actually watch all the episodes because at that point it only been like a season and a half or so that it aired. And I got like, oh the show is brilliant. It's really funny. It's really smart , you know, and yeah, so that was my introduction to the show. And then obviously as a director's assist ant, I was in every production meeting. I was on set all the time. . Man. And you were a writer and producer on Chicago Met, the good doctor , Royal Paines. You're now an executive producer and writer on the Emmy Award winning and one of my favorite shows, The Pit on HBO Max . Did you purposefully lean into a love of medical dramas or did it sort of organically happen this one? It totally organically happened . I have no medical degree whatsoever . The closest my parents will ever get to having a doctor as a child is me writing on this show or any medical college show much to every Indian parent's chagrin, right? Like there's no doctor . But yeah, it was it was really happenstance back when I started writing , we used to write spec scripts of existing shows . And so at the time when I was, you know, trying to, you know, get my foot in the door. Gray's anatomy was this hot news show and I loved it. Shonda Rhimes did a brilliant job, still does a brilliant job. And you know, that show has got season twenty four or something now. But yeah, I fell in love with it. And I was like, oh, okay, this is great. I'm gonna write this show, write what you love. And so I remember watching it and really pausing my tivo back in the day and like writing a beat sheet and trying to figure out how, you know, not to say that there's a formula, but you know what the structure was of that show. And I was like, I can do this, you know? And I'd also been working at house at the time. And so I was like, I've already been doing medical research. And yeah, that 's really what it did. I wrote the art of Braze anatomy spec script, got me into the CBIS Paramount Writing program, got me my agent, and got me on royal paints. I think Royal Paints also liked the fact that I come from house, you know, and done a little bit of research there and I knew what that, you know, world involved. When you look at all of these have there have there been some that are more special than others? Were there things that felt like if Royal Payne's was your first? Is it like now that was my first baby? Or you know, well, obviously the pit is insanely special, you know, it's it's what I'm doing right now. And I will say that after I left Good Doctor, I really was kind of like, I'm done doing medical shows, you know , I had done so many. I didn't I was wanting me pigeonholed into that, you know, into that world . And honestly, when the meeting came up for John Willis's team to, you know, go meet on the pit, they just said, Hey, would you ever be interested in staffing? Because I was trying to do a development project with them. I said, sure. And then my agents call me and they say, Hey, John Wells team wants to meet you to meet on a show. I said, Okay, great, do you have a script? No. Do you have a log line? No. We think it's a medical show. And I was like, medical show, guys. And then I want to do another medical show. But who's going to say no to a meeting with John Willis's team? Yeah, totally. So I go and I meet with Scott Gemmel, the creator and Noel Wiley and I'm like, okay, what's going on? And they pitched me , you know the, story. They pitched me, you know, Pittsburgh in fifteen hours, you know, it was in an emergency room and like all of these, you know, Dr. Robbie's character, all this stuff, and it was like, it was really a room full of whiteboards. I mean, they were really , you know in, the throes of like breaking it. And we just had really candid conversations about what worked for us in past medical shows, what did it, what we would like to see different, like why would we come do this again, especially the two of them as well . And forty five minutes I was like, that's it. Like we just kind of shot the shit about stuff that we liked and didn't like and talked about what we thought of the state of the healthcare system and you know, the kinds of stories we wanted to tell. And two weeks later they' likere, yeah,, come come play with us because you know, you have something important to say. That's amazing. Since the meta question I'll ask you first, which is just goes into medical dramas, right? Like medical dramas have been coming and going since nineteen fifty one and many a talented writer and showrunner are living proof that kind of the genre doesn't die. You know, yeah m,entioneday Gr's Anatomy twenty two seasons . We wanted to talk about why Americans are so obsessed with medical dramas as a when you think about medical dramas that really shaped our obsession with them. What comes to mind for you aside from Gray's anatomy, obviously, were there others that were big influences or that you sort of thought this is such a great show ? As far as medical shows, honestly, I think Gray's was the first one that I was like , Oh, this is appointment TV. I have to watch it. You know, I wasn't really into watching them before . I was more of a law and order person, which speaks to why maybe I wanted to go to law school . Did that. But I mean, I remember watching other stuff like it here and there, but nothing that really struck me. I mean, I'm now since then obviously very well aware of like saying elsewhere and ER and you know, the multitude of other, you know, incredible shows Chicago Hope , but I think that yeah, it wasn't something that struck me that I really wanted to do or that I really wanted to lean into . Yeah. Did you know Noah's work on ER or had you just he ard of it before? No, I knew very peripherally like in the sense that like I knew his character name, but like, you know, I didn't know his whole story . I remember I felt like he was a new character and you know a rich, kid and that's the extent of what I knew about his character . ER was my medical drama. That's the one that I grew up watching. And then and this is such a ludicrous story. So also by the way, okay, I'll tell you the story that sort of ties into our name convers ation about why I was opposed to Lawrence Cutner having an Indian name at first . So I remember when, you know, I grew up watching ER as a kid and then I moved out to LA and there was a director at LMU, a grad director, Asian American guy who I did a short film for . And we were talking about, oh, there are, you know, limited opportunities, and I had just started out doing commercial s and things trying to really work my way up. And I said, Yeah, but at least there's a show like ER and they don't even have any Asian or Indian doctors. They have no Filipino nurses. There's definitely an opportunity there, right? Yep . And he goes, actually , you're not going to like this, but the casting director from ER came in to do a talk at school, and I asked him this question , but he apparently asked it a little more competitively. He was like, Oh, come you don't have any Indian Eurasian doctors and Filipino nurses. And I guess the casting director was like, I'm aware that the reality of Cook County, Illinois is that this is the majority of the doctors that make up these hospitals , but I was told not to cast that way. Wow , because we're making a TV show. And so nobody wants to nobody wants to see that sort of a thing. And I was like, No, don't tell me this. I'm twenty years old trying to make a living and blah blah blah anyway, then cut to like the following year and I had an audition for ER. And I was like, so I go in, deliver a good audition. It's only two lines, and I get the job on ER and the it's like one of the worst experiences. Oh no . I was so excited. I grew up watching the show. I walk in and my character had to stitch up Eric La Salle's character's son , his son's head. He had like a cut or something. So I just had two lines. And I just remember the camera was like there was a close on the kid on the kid whose head I'm stitching up . And I remember my elbow was tucked out a little bit and the director just started yelling and just go and I didn't know who he was talking to and he goes Uh hello I'm talking to you tuck in your fucking elbow . And I was like, Oh, I'm sorry . It goes, yeah, people are watching the show to see the kid, not you. And I was like, Oh my God, okay okay so I tucked and then you're scared 's. like That then you're t errified that you're going to do something wrong. It was horrible. The whole scene only took a couple hours, right? And Eric was perfectly kind by the way . And then that's it, right? And so the show airs and I'm thrilled that I'm on a year old. I had a horrible experience doing it. I was like, oh man, to go from like being told that they don't want somebody like me there to then being yelled at. I was like, I just feel like I didn't get to enjoy anything. Anyway, cut to this is very long. I'm sorry Simon, this is not about at all about you. But then a couple years ago, Eric directed an episode of Designated Survivor . And he goes, Hey, man, can we take a selfie? One of the ER directors is a huge fan of yours. And I was like, really? Well, do you I know don' ift you remember Er ic, but I was on an episode with you actually and he goes, Oh, holy shit, you were that doctor. You were the med student. And I go, yeah, I go, well, that's the director who's like a huge fan of yours. And I was like, we're taking a selfie. Please tell him I said fuck you . And he goes, why? What happened? So I tell him the story and he was basically like, oh, that guy's always been a hot head blah blah blah. I was like, no, come on, man. You don't talk to anybody that way . That ruined me for a good six months . But the point of all of that was it was I loved DR, I still love ER. That's just an aside conversation. Also at a time where I think yelling was probably the status quo for directors in the late nineties . I'm sure, I'm sure . Yeah, that your experience there, which I cannot speak to because I was not present, is the antithesis, frankly, of what my experience has been with on the pit. And it was actually in that first conversation with Scott and I was saying, like, you know, we're talking about like what works, what doesn't work, you know, these kinds of things . And I said, honestly, I said, You can go to any hospital in America , and I defy you not to find a South Asian doctor. I don't care if you're in Western Kentucky. I don't care if you are in , you know, in some rural part of Oregon, North Dakota, wherever it is. And I said , And Tier White, where the Filipino nurses? How do you not have Filipino nurses? How do we not have Latinx, you know, nurses? And so a lot of it became my , you know, just, you know, airing of grievances of things that I wish I saw more of, you know , and in that way of like there doesn't just have to be one, you know, like I mean, I don't know about your experience, but when I was coming up, it was like I was the sole person of color in some writer's rooms, you know, and they checked a box, stick, you know, and it was done. So I never wanted it to feel like that because that's not the way the real world looks or operates. And much to Scott and John and Noah's, you know , you know, I really give them a lot of props that they were like, yeah, we don't want that either. We really want to make this show reflective of what the real world looks like. And I, you know, I don't know the stat s on it, but I think it's fair to say that we have one of the most diverse casts on television streaming anywhere. You know, and our storylines are not about, you know , you know, the favorite taco . Yeah, yeah , exactly . If you're listening to Here We Go Again, chances are you enjoy smart conversations, great stories, and maybe discovering something new along the way. That's exactly what we're doing on my other podcast, Earsay, the Audible and I Heart Audiobook Club. Each episode, I'm diving into some of the most exciting new audio books on Audible, everything from big sci fi adventures and unforgettable fiction to romcoms, thrillers, and laugh out loud comedy. And I'm joined by great guests to help unpack why these stories are such great listens , because there's just something different about listening to a story. When it's really good, it pulls you in, you start seeing it in your head, and when it's over, you immediately want to talk about it with someone. That's what Earsay's all about. Listen to Earsay, the audible and IHR audiobook club on the IHR radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Bethany Frankel from Jesse with Bethany Frankl. I cannot stand to waste time. 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The plot and the characters are not, I mean this is clear just I mean you're on you're on the writing team. So I would expect nothing less, but the characters are so grounded independent of background and yet they're not devoid of background . Like the cultural relevance is there and it's clear and they still get to be human with in and outside of that. It's not used to confine these characters. And it's just so cool . Yeah. And I think that, you know, our primary goal is to tell a really character driven, human , hopeful story and from the perspective of healthcare workers, right? Everything is to serve the POV of the characters that work in that environment, that high pressure cooker environment. And to do it properly, I feel like you really have to di versify the depth of every character. You have to give them their own stories, their own backgrounds, their own points of view and their own points of view, not just when they're dealing with patients, but with each other, you know, what are their personal lives, you know, what little nuggets and tidbits trickle into your professional environment, you know, what goes home with you, these kinds of things. So it was really we take a lot of time and care in really curating stories of people , even if we don't necessarily see those things reflected on the screen, you know, it really contributes to their performance because we talk to the actress about what we think that, you know, their backstories were . We talked about what we think happened to them in the ten month difference between season one and season two , you know, and how that's going to play out, you know, when it comes to this one day, this one shift . That's very cool that it's that collaborative . When you went in for that first meeting, do you remember like did they pitch you on, oh, here's how this show is going to be or was the conversation? Like I'd be curious to know and I assume you asked this , especially if you didn't want to do another medical drama , why this show and why now? Did they was that ? Yeah, I mean it was. I mean, they are they knew very they were very upfront that they said, okay, you know, it's Pittsburgh. It's going to be one shift. It's going to be fifteen hours. So we're going to play it, you know, kind of like twenty four in that regard. And we're going to be really leaning into, you know, they had like Robbie and Dana, they had a bunch of the characters. And then from there, we really just started talking about the world and what we wanted it to look like. And that's where we really started talking about, you know, representation on screen, you know, and being reflective of what the real healthcare, you know, system looks like as far as hospitals and doctors and those kinds of things. But you know, I think Noah, I mean, he speaks about this, you know, about like how during COVID, there was a lot of people who reached out to him, you know, via D M's and sure through messaging and other platforms , you know, just really , you know, just wanting something a little bit more, wanting a little bit of hope, feeling like that maybe, you know, healthcare workers weren't seen and heard, you know , and really people weren't really understanding the depth of what they were going through during that crisis . And I think it made an emotional impact on him, you know? It really, it really tugged at him. And I think that that really helped, you know , plant the seed with, you know, what maybe there is another version of a medical story to tell . When in those early pitches, what's the conversation about how it's directed? Because it's so fast pac ed and the camera is obviously itself a character not to be cliche, but it really is. It's it's intimate because of that. Things happen simultaneously. I, you know, I have enough house PTSD to remember that because our set was entirely glass , even if someone was doing a scene in the adjacent office, if you needed to be at the hospital, you just had a day of standing around behind glass , but the pit is way more dynamic than that . There's so much blood and exposed organs. Like when you when you have the conversation about directing , does that is that part of it in the initial writer's room? Or is that does that happen separate between the showrunner and when directors come on? I think that was a really symbiotic thing for because John Wells directed our pilot and as a producer and he's such an incredible director and storyteller that, the visual aesthetic was really important to him and to Scott to keep it as grounded and real as possible. You know, and Nedam Ruscia, who's our incredible production designer , was brought on board before we even really started writing scripts to kind of lay a little blueprint of what we wanted the ER to look like. What does it look like in the real world? How can we do it here so that we have it looks like one giant floor of an of an emergency room? So if you come to stage, stage twenty two at Warner Bros. you will see when you walk in you are walking into an emergency department. It's wild, but in the best way possible. And because of that, you know, John was able to move really fluidly and map everything out and he wanted to feel very , you know fluid like a ballet, you know? And I think the other thing that John did, which was really smart, because of the way our show really lives in this real time kind of capacity . We shoot in order, which is very rare. No way. Yeah. So we shoot in scene order. Very rarely do we shoot out of scene order because there might be a scheduling conflict or we have to do an exterior and come back to an interior. But you have to, like the continuity is just so brutal . And to your point, like, you know, sometimes you know, Dr. Robbie is in the majority of the scene and sometimes Noah is playing deep background and he is doing it across one way and the other. But you know what ? He is really game. He sent out this really thoughtful note and still sends it out to every casting breakdown every time you know we're putting something. He's like, listen, this is a unique experience. It's kind of like doing li theveater and we're all here to play. And if you're willing to come , you know , you know, play in our pond and be a part of this experiment, I hope you will, you know, dive in the way that we all do. And it's not lip service. I mean, that guy is there half an hour before call and he is there to wrap. You know, he is he's there all in all day . Can you walk me through what the writer's room actually looks like ? Because here's what I'm getting at. I've heard it before a single script's written the whole team spends like months meeting with healthcare experts. Is that true? We have an array. So we have three doctors who are writers. You know, they are both they're all like former semi practicing ER doctors. So Dr. Joe Sax, Dr. Mel Herbert, and this year we added Dr. Joshua Trok. So they're all Trok, Trump is gray. Yeah. Yeah, so we're all, you know, they're all in there In addition to that, we have onset, we have a real ER doctor who is there from pre all through shooting. Oh wow. We have real ER nurses who work his background and also sometimes have speaking roles. So they're there to help , you know, they really do the choreography of, you know, some of those especially those really intense trauma scenes because those take a lot of time to prep and prepare and really, you know , to , you know, just rehearse. So we really are trying to find the experts in a variety of fields to really tell, again, the most authentic stories that we can. Healthcare workers feel really seen by this show and it made me think of I just remember hearing on house that they used to get a lot of letters from nurses because our show our show was accurate in a lot of ways but it was inaccurate insofar as the doctors did a lot of work that nurses would actually do in real life. Attacks, everything, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So as someone who has been on multiple medical dramas but now you're on one that's as unique as this, what do you think the pit's getting right? How come healthcare workers actually feel seen by this show as opposed to sort of taking it with a grain of salt the way they have with previous shows? Again, I think what it really does is it really exposes the underbelly of what this kind of a job does to the psyche of healthcare workers. You know, it's really exposing that element that there is a mental health toll that a lot of people experience. And if you're not managing it the way you're managing your physical care, then it's going to take a toll. It's going to reverberate in not great ways. And I think that that's what Dr. Robbie signifies and we see it actually in the other characters as well. It's not just him obviously he has some PCSC from COV ID, the loss of his mentor. We talk a little bit, you know, about like there's, you know, something going on with his family . But you also think about it like with nurse Dana, you know, she's talking about that nurses are underp aid, undervalued. There's such abuses, you know , against nurses and healthcare workers. I mean, she gets punched in season one, you know, and that doesn't that doesn't go away. And these things all the nurses we talk to we, do a residence night and we do a nurse's night with local nurses and doctors here in Los Angeles . And nothing is shifted. There is not a shift, so to speak , where someone doesn't get attacked , where there isn't some kind of kind of not just verbal abuse but physical abuse that they sustain . And how do you keep coming back to that job day in and day out? It's really something that is undervalued , underappreciated. And I think that by us just peeling back the layers of the onion of what, you know, healthcare workers go through , and you know that they're really doing it for the greater good. You have to, you know, it has to be a calling from a higher power , I really believe for you to come in and do that kind of work specifically. And so I think that they feel seen and appreciated. It's a lot of times they can't or don't want to go home and take that home with them and talk to their loved ones about it or to have to try to explain it. Sometimes you just want to disconnect and go to bed. And I think that this what we're hearing from healthcare workers is like they feel sane, but also it's allowed that people in their lives to really understand what it is they do on a daily basis . In season two, the writers really started speaking to what was happening. It felt like in real time in society, right? There were touch points on ICE and AI really drove or AI in tech, how patients are dealing with their health insurance or lack of health insurance, I should say . How does that fit in with like is that a thing that was part of a core mission for the show? Is it more of just we're holding up a mirror to what's happening in society? Was there something deeper that the show was trying to empathize or help audiences feel and relate to if they weren't feeling that in their own lives? Or what was what went into all of those decisions? Because they felt like that was a not a departure from season one. It built really nicely around it, but we definitely saw more of it in season two than in season one. Yeah, I think season one's, you know, like a lot of things you're trying to build the format of a show. You're trying to really lean into the characters in a way and trying to figure out what is at the root of this hero. And the other thing in Season one, we had a mass casualty event. So that really occupied a very big chunk of space , you know, that kind of gets brought in in the last third of the season is really occupied with all of that. So that took up a lot of space. So what we always try to do even in season one is to find stories that are grounded in reality , you know? It's really the ultimate goal. And you know, we hear, like I said, real like stories about what's going on with healthcare workers, what they're seeing day in and day out in the emergency departments and we want to incorporate those stories because I honestly feel it would be irresponsible not to. And so when you talk about immigration, you talk about climate change, you know, food insecurity, the unhoused population, you know, immigration , you know , those we don't see them as political issues. We really see them as humanitarian issues. These are, you know, issues that are every healthcare worker across the country, I would say across the globe are dealing with. And so it just so happened that, you know, when we told our immigration story, you know, we had already shot that before anything in Minneapolis had ever happened. You know, we had written it and shot it way before that. Like same thing in season one, we told this measles story about an antivax family and this child who had measles . And by the time it aired, there was a measles outbreak. Again, so as you know the process, we're riding and shooting months in advance before all that stuff. So it's again, it's not that we were being prescient, it's that we were really listening to the healthcare workers about what was happening in their daily lives. If you're listening to Here We Go Again, chances are you enjoy smart conversations, great stories, and maybe discovering something new along the way. That's exactly what we're doing on my other podcast, Earsay, the Audible and I Heart Audiobook Club. Each episode, I'm diving into some of the most exciting new audiobooks on Audible, everything from big sci fi adventures and unforgettable fiction to romcoms, thrillers, and laugh out loud comedy. And I'm joined by great guests to help unpack why these stories are such great listens , because there's just something different about listening to a story. When it's really good, it pulls you in, you start seeing it in your head and when it's over, you immediately want to talk about it with someone. That's what Earsay's all about. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and I Heart Audiobook Club on the IHART Radio App, Apple Podcast s, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Becca Tilly from Scrubbing In with Becka Tilly and Tonya Rad . Am I the only one who feels like scrubbing out of international travel lately . I mean, why spend fourteen hours sitting on a plane to Lake Como when you could already be having the time of your life at the brand new Caesars Republic and beautiful Lake Tahoe? Caesar R'epsublic Lake, Tahoe has it all , the splendor of Lake Como without all the annoyances that come with international travel , no long flights, no passport hassles, and no jet lag. So why not skip the stress and head to Caesar's Repub lic, Lake Tahoe . 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