Complicating The Narrative

In this podcast, hosted by Dr. Salma Abdalla—Assistant Professor and Director of the Healthier Futures Lab at Washington University in St. Louis—we provide rigorous, evidence-based analysis of complex population health challenges. In a time of social, economic, and political upheaval—marked by eroding public trust, polarized narratives, and growing uncertainty—this podcast aims to challenge oversimplified narratives about the forces that shape the health of populations.Salma engages guests from across disciplines in rigorous, evidence-based conversations that challenge conventional wisdom. The conversations sometimes pose uncomfortable questions, seek nuanced perspectives, and question not just what we think, but how we arrive at our conclusions in public health.We explore the inherent complexities, real-world tradeoffs, and unintended consequences of public health interventions. Our goal is to empower listeners with nuanced understanding, helping them navigate these multifaceted iss

Complicating The Narrative is a science podcast hosted by Salma Abdalla, with 37 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Salma Abdalla hosts Complicating The Narrative, a science show with 37 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #37

  Closing the know-do gap in global public health with Kumanan Rasanathan

  Aug 18, 202647 min

  In this last episode of the Building Better Ways of Knowing (BBWK) mini-series, Kumanan joins Salma to discuss knowledge systems and their articulations with public health practice in the global context. They begin the conversation by reflecting on knowledge systems, how they have privileged and excluded different forms of knowledge, and how they have lagged behind transformations across other dimensions of society. They then touch on Kumanan’s experience working for a meningococcal B vaccine randomized control trial (RCT) in New Zealand to depict how some forms of knowledge generation don’t reflect real-world scenarios. They then shift course to discuss the emergence of The Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research in 1999 and the functions it serves in the global health scenario to close the “know-do gap”: supporting high-quality research in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), building research capacity in LMICs, and advocating for and building the field. Finally, they discuss the changing global power dynamics with increased within-country inequities and rising health sovereignty, Professor Wasi’s concept of "The triangle that moves mountains” to describe what is needed for long-lasting change, and the expected future of universities and healthcare with the rise of artificial intelligence. This closing conversation sums up the interdisciplinary conversations hosted during this BBWK summer mini-series and invites you to comprehensively reflect on how knowledge generation intersects with real-life scenarios. About the guest: Kumanan Rasanathan is the Executive Director of The Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. He is a public health physician with a strong background in health policy and systems research and extensive experience working at different levels of the World Health Organization and within the wider UN system. As part of The Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research, Kumanan and his team lead the global learning component of the Building Better Ways of Knowing initiative. Notes: Acronyms mentioned in this episode include: AI = Artificial Intelligence LLM = Large Language Model RCT = Randomized Controlled Trial SAS = Statistical Analysis System WHO = World Health Organization Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla Editors: Catalina Melendez Contreras Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri Music: Helmut Schenker / Omnia from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/music/tracks/60e14d61-23ca-4899-9c56-9a9018634986/ The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.

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  Episode #36

  Purple Public Health episode—Research funding and incentives with Michael Lauer

  Aug 14, 202658 min

  Almost nothing about how the United States government funds health research was chosen. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) began with leftover penicillin money and a letter to medical school deans. The decision to fund projects rather than people came from a foundation protecting itself during the Depression. The paperwork came from a congressman who was annoyed in 1962. Michael Lauer spent nearly two decades at the NIH, serving as Deputy Director for Extramural Research from 2015 until 2025. He joins Salma to trace how these accidents hardened into a system that leaves scientists dependent on grants for their salaries, concentrates most of the money in a small number of hands, and does not grant most researchers independence until their mid-forties. They discuss what could be done differently, and the question that has gone unanswered since the 1940s: who should decide what science gets done. Dr. Lauer suggests that the current situation being faced by the NIH and researchers is the result of these structural problems and highlights that while there is a crisis, it is also an opportunity to restructure funding and research incentives. This episode asks whether the current inflection point in research funding might be the opening needed to rethink a system that was never quite designed to work. Notes: Acronyms used in this episode include: CTSA = Clinical and Translational Science Awards IACUCs = Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees IRB = Institutional Review Board MIRA = Maximizing Investigators' Research Award NASA = National Aeronautics and Space Administration NCI = National Cancer Institute NHLBI = National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute NIAID = National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases NIGMS = National Institute of General Medical Sciences NIH = National Institutes of Health NSF = National Science Foundation PCORI = Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute R01 = Research Project Grant Fact checks: Glenn Seaborg was Chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley between 1958 and 1961 About the guest: Michael Lauer is a cardiologist and physician-scientist who served as the Director of the Office of Extramural Research and the Deputy Director for Extramural Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) between October 2015 and February 2025. As Director for Extramural Research he led the NIH funding processes for universities, medical schools, and research organizations outside of the United States government. Useful resources: Bush V. Science, The Endless Frontier - 75th Anniversary Edition. National Science Foundation. Published online 2023. https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/2023-04/EndlessFrontier75th_w.pdf Kratsios M. Science, A New Golden Age. Office of Science and Technology Policy; 2026. https://www.whitehouse.gov/science/ Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla Editors: Catalina Melendez Contreras Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri Music: Eden Avery / Melting Glass from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/2fqOXWpHab/ The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.

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  Episode #35

  With, not for: communities as public health co-designers with Sara Bannoura and Darren Jackson

  Aug 11, 202643 min

  Sara and Darren join Salma to discuss Civic City’s community-first model. They start the conversation by exploring how Civic City uses knowledge, narrative, and design to co-create solutions with communities. To make this tangible, they delve into the Food City STL initiative, which started off by deep community listening and led to a city resolution declaring food as a human right. Pertaining to the role of academic research and knowledge generation, Sara and Darren talk about their collaboration with University of Missouri St. Louis, which began as something transactional and evolved to a true co-creation partnership. They also highlight the value of data, acknowledging that “data is gold”, and argue that communities sit on valuable knowledge that institutions often extract without returning value instead of sharing the findings back with the communities. Finally, they emphasize that knowledge, agency, and capacity are the three things needed to move from knowledge to action, and underscore the importance of creating new spaces to foster interaction and collaboration between academia, journalism, and community. However, they note that these interactions must acknowledge that knowledge generation and co-creation processes are scalable, but the solutions that result from them are not. If you’ve wondered what true community involvement in research looks like, and how it can evolve to ensure true co-creation of knowledge, this episode will give you concrete ideas to help catalyze this shift. About the guests: Darren Jackson is Founder of Civic City, a community-first civic venture studio in St. Louis that works with communities, industry, and government to build solutions and opportunities to public challenges. He is a civic innovation leader specializing in human-centered design, applying data, empathy, and creative problem-solving to help communities and institutions build cities for all. He previously served as Executive Sourcing Partner and Advisor to Meta, Adobe, Block, and IDEO, aiming to bridge innovation with civic impact. Sara Bannoura is Co-Founder of Civic City, where she helps lead the Food for All campaign. She is a journalist and civic systems leader who explores how storytelling, community knowledge, and lived experience shape public systems and policy. She previously served as senior producer in local television news, produced a feature documentary on the fentanyl crisis in St. Louis, and led coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic and reported daily on public health data and disparities while documenting the lived realities of communities navigating unequal access to essential resources. Notes: Acronyms mentioned in this episode include: CDC = Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CEO = Chief Executive Officer COO = Chief Operating Officer DRC = Democratic Republic of Congo USML = University of Missouri, St Louis Useful resources: 1.For the Sake of All: A Report on the Health and Well-Being of African Americans in St. Louis and Why It Matters for Everyone. Washington University in St. Louis and Saint Louis University; 2015. https://bpb-us-e2.wpmucdn.com/sites.wustl.edu/dist/3/1454/files/2018/06/FSOA_report_2-17zd1xm.pdf Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla Editors: Catalina Melendez Contreras Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri Music: Eden Avery / Melting Glass from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/2fqOXWpHab/ The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.

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  Episode #34

  The future of higher education with Mitchell Stevens and Sandro Galea

  Aug 4, 202639 min

  This episode is a re-run of the Ideas Matter podcast episode “The Future of Higher Education” hosted by Dean Sandro Galea—Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Initiatives at WashU and Co-Director of the Building Better Ways of Knowing initiative—in conversation with Professor Mitchell Stevens. The original episode was released by Ideas Matter on May 26, 2026. In this episode, Dean Galea and Dr. Stevens discuss the current state of higher education, and the challenges and opportunities that result from thismoment of institutional change and fourth industrial revolution. Looking back, Dean Galea and Dr. Stevens examine the values that have sustained higher education throughout its history, the historical role of education as a service, economic, civic and moral provider to the nation, and the main pathway towards economic mobility. They highlighted that the majority of the nation does not access or complete college, which has resulted in the economic, cultural, and political splits that have contributed to current polarization levels. They unpack challenges related to unaffordability, unrestrained costs, and the student-debt crisis; the moral/civic question of who should be responsible for the lifelong employability of American people; the threats posed to current higher education by the shrinking pool of youth and young adults, technological leaps, and the “casualization” of faculty. Looking forward, they discuss the challenge that AI poses to the long-held idea that expert knowledge lives irreplaceably in human minds and Dr. Stevens suggests that a paradigm shift, moving away from school-centric logics of human capital towards new hybrid models and the investment in people’s capabilities across the life course, should be adopted. If you wonder what higher education will look like amidst the fourth industrial revolution catalyzed by AI and the demographic shift, this episode will offer a clear framework to understand how we got here and how things might unfold. About the guest: Mitchell Stevens is Professor at the Graduate School of Education and Faculty Affiliate at the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) at Stanford University, where he also convenes the Pathways Network and the Futures Project on Education and the Learning Society. His research focuses on educational sequences, lifelong learning, alternative educational forms, and the formal organization of knowledge. Notes: Acronyms mentioned in this episode include: - AI = Artificial intelligence - K-12 = Kindergarten through 12th grade - MOOC = Massive open online course Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla Editors: Ryan Rhea and Catalina Melendez Contreras Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri Music: Eden Avery / Melting Glass from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/2fqOXWpHab/ The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.

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  Episode #33

  The inherent values of science and public health with Anya Plutynski

  Jul 28, 202632 min

  How do values shape the actions and agenda of public health science? Anya and Salma begin their conversation by discussing how values are inherently embedded in every decision that scientists make, but cannot be considered a contaminant of science, as they are an unavoidable part of how research is designed and conducted. To elaborate on this point, Anya explains the concept of inductive risk—the risk resulting from a value-laden choice—and highlights how it constantly shapes science, for example by setting the standard of evidence of p-values or the guidelines to classify mental health disorders. From there, they also discuss the current debate about the politicization of public health, acknowledging that science is inherently political and highlighting the importance of transparency about values to promote objectivity in research. Finally, they reflect on the factthat the public health field continues to ask meta-science questions that philosophy of science has been addressing for decades rather than engaging with other fields. About the guest: Anya Plutynski, PhD is Professor of Philosophy at the Washington University in St. Louis. Her research focuses on the philosophy of science, with an emphasis on the research conducted by biologists and biomedical researchers. Notes: Acronyms mentioned in this episode include: DSM = Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders HAM-D = Hamilton Depression Rating Scale HITOP = Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology NIH = National Institutes of Health RCT = Randomized Controlled Trial RDoC = Research Domain Criteria Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla Editors: Catalina Melendez Contreras Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri Music: Eden Avery / Melting Glass from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/2fqOXWpHab/ The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.

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