Dr Ben and Friends

A pea plant grew inside a man’s lung, and that sentence is not a punchline. Our friends kick things off with a round of Headline Or Hoax, putting two outrageous-sounding “medical headlines” in front of Marianna Barksdale and Herb Coleman and asking them to trust their gut, their brain, or both. You get to play along too, and the twist is a reminder that real life medicine can be stranger than anything you see on your feed. Once we reveal the real story, we dig into the how: inhaling a ...

He chased quarterbacks for a living, then he switched careers and started protecting patients instead. Herb Coleman joins us in Nashville to talk about the real work of an operating room tech, what it means to be a “patient champion,” and how an OR runs on trust, preparation, and tight teamwork long before the surgeon makes the first cut. If you’re curious about behind-the-scenes healthcare jobs, patient safety, or how surgical teams stay coordinated under pressure, you’ll get a c...

A lot of people hear medical jargon and instantly tune out, but we think the fastest path to understanding is laughter plus a great story. We’re playing “What The Heck,” where our ER physician, Dr Domenic, brings real emergency medicine terms and our Nashville comedian, Kristan Barczak, takes her best shot at guessing what they mean before we translate them into plain English. Expect mispronunciations, a brief international apology tour, and the kind of explanations you’ll remembe...

You’ve laughed at a comedy special and thought, “I could never do that.” We get it, and we also know there’s a real process behind the magic. Stand-up comedy looks effortless from the crowd, but the truth is messier, funnier, and way more human. From Nashville, we sit down with Kristan Barczak, a rising comedian and writer, plus Dr. Domenic, an emergency medicine physician and chief medical officer who loves comedy but cannot imagine stepping up to a mic. The big question driving everyt...

How many “ailments” can you remove in 60 seconds without buzzing? We ran a surgical showdown with Kristen Barczak and a patient named Garth with a cowboy boot blister. What would your theme song be? Before the chaos, we go full operating-room theater with a surgical timeout, a named patient, and a procedure serious enough to deserve a chart but silly enough to spark instant jokes. Meet Garth, who rolls into our makeshift OR with a cowboy boot blister and a whole lot of problems that nee...