Lynn Thoman
speaker
1,507 appearances
28 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2026
last heard 6d ago
Lynn Thoman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 28 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 4.
Appearances
Close to a million Americans and even more around the world suffer from kidney failure.
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Many are waiting for a kidney transplant and thousands or tens of thousands die every year.
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Why aren't there enough kidneys for transplant?
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One thing that strikes me about your work is that you don't try to change people, you change the rules.
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Is that the real lesson?
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Well,
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Kidney exchange is one example, but you've also helped redesign the way new doctors are matched with hospitals and influence school admissions.
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Once you learn to look at the world this way, do you start seeing broken systems everywhere?
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What's really fascinating to me is that many people attribute many of our problems to bad people, but you're essentially arguing they're caused by systems that weren't designed as well as they could be.
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It's such an empowering idea that sometimes solving a problem doesn't require changing human nature.
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It just requires changing the system that people operate in.
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Our instinct is simple.
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If something is harmful, ban it.
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You believe that's sometimes exactly the wrong thing to do.
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Why?
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So a ban doesn't necessarily eliminate demand.
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Often it pushes an activity underground where there's less transparency, fewer protections, and greater opportunities for abuse.
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So the question isn't just is this right or wrong?
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It's also what actually happens after we ban it.
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One of the most surprising examples to me comes from Rhode Island where indoor prostitution was accidentally legal for several years.
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Showing 281–300 of 1,507 · page 15 of 76
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