Knock Knock, Hi! with the Glaucomfleckens
"Knock Knock, Hi! with the Glaucomfleckens" dives into the highs, lows, and WTFs of healthcare. Whether you're in the medical field, live with a healthcare worker, or broke your arm once and are still paying off your medical bills, this is a must-listen. Join Will and Kristin Flanary (aka the Glaucomfleckens) for candid chats with leading healthcare voices like Dr. Mike and Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy. Discover fun facts about eyeballs, hear relatable stories from medical training, and sneak a peek into the U.S. health insurance industry (spoiler alert: it's not great!). We'll share our own perspectives of being a patient or family member experiencing the healthcare system. And, of course, we explore the question on everyone's minds: "Why has Dr. Glaucomflecken never had his eyes dilated?" Combining science with humor and a dash of snark, we unpack the human side of healthcare.
Episodes
January 27, 2026 • 52 mins
Kristin and I read through listener comments, including theories about how I can create characters without an inner monologue, and real-world ophthalmology stories that lead me to beg you, once again, to call your eye doctor before going to the ER.
We also talk about scrubs, fashion, and the fact that someone published a real scientific paper about what patients think doctors should wear. Then we play a game where Kristin has to g...
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January 22, 2026 • 39 mins
This episode we tackle something a lot of people are quietly worried about: virtual residency interviews. Are they here to stay? Are they fair? And how exactly are programs supposed to deal with applicants using AI to help answer questions in real time?
Then we get into the eyeballs. A young woman with hair growing where hair absolutely should not exist. A 78-year-old with “sudden vision loss” that turns out to be anything but. An...
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January 20, 2026 • 52 mins
This episode we head to North Dakota, a place that is extremely flat, very windy, and filled with some of the kindest humans I’ve ever met, including Dr. Erik Heitkamp, a hospitalist in Fargo, and Courtney Koebele, the Executive Director of the North Dakota Medical Association.
Together, we dig into what physician advocacy actually looks like at the state level, not the cable-news chaos, but the real work: drafting bills, educati...
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January 15, 2026 • 47 mins
After surviving Disney motion-simulator rides that nearly ended me, I dive into a question that’s been rattling around my brain all break: if AI replaces doctors… who gets sued when something goes wrong?
We talk AI hype, liability, tech companies discovering malpractice culture the hard way, and why replacing physicians isn’t as simple as Silicon Valley thinks it is. Then we get back to basics: how to actually take an eye history,...
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January 13, 2026 • 46 mins
This episode starts with the important questions, like whether I’m emotionally prepared to return to my ancestral homeland of Big Bend National Park, and whether Kristin would rather share a cabin with a venomous snake or a tarantula.
From there, things take a turn into real life: a med student driving for Uber and Lyft just to make ends meet. That story opens up a bigger conversation about medical school debt, why med students s...
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January 8, 2026 • 44 mins
In this episode of Knock Knock Eye, I start by breaking down Elon Musk’s latest medical hot take. The idea that everyone should get a yearly full-body MRI interpreted by AI. Then I talk about why I finally said screw it and paid cash for my own medical care after insurance insisted my testicles might have magically regenerated.
And finally, a mystery case that starts as blurry vision and floaters and ends with one of the rarest e...
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January 6, 2026 • 53 mins
This week, Kristin and I talk with Jason Pang, Director of EMS, and Joe Stoffolano, Division Chief of Community Risk Reduction in Miami Township, Ohio. These guys take us deep into the world of pre-hospital medicine. We’re talking how EMS is funded, why those funding streams vanish, the future of EMS, and much more.
We also break down how 911 dispatch actually works, how EMS decides what units to send, why response times vary so w...
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January 2, 2026 • 42 mins
Hollywood, we need to talk. If one more movie shows an eyeball dangling from someone’s cheek, I might start mailing anatomy textbooks to Los Angeles. And while we’re at it, can we please stop calling every wandering eye a “lazy eye”?
After a quick rant about my personal ophthalmology pet peeves, I dive into one of the strangest mystery cases I’ve ever seen: a 47-year-old with sudden, complete ophthalmoplegia and normal imaging. Ne...
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December 30, 2025 • 43 mins
This week, Kristin and I answer listener comments about colonoscopy prep, including a truly cursed diet of mashed white vegetables and learn about Cologuard, the screening test where you… mail your poop. Through the actual mail. To a stranger.
We also dive into the ongoing household war known as “Kristin Won’t Stop Sleeping in Her Contacts,” which leads to a horrifying discussion about wrinkly eyeballs, saggy conjunctiva, and what...
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December 26, 2025 • 42 mins
This week, I start by sharing why First Descents, the nonprofit that helped me rebuild community and trust in my body after cancer, deserves a spot on your end-of-year giving list. And then, because it is Christmas, I diagnose the eyeballs of Charlie Brown, the Grinch, Rudolph, and even Jack Skellington.
From aniridia to jaundice to reindeer esotropia, it’s a holiday episode only an ophthalmologist could make.
Takeaways:
...
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December 23, 2025 • 41 mins
It’s Christmas, which means two things: Kristin’s wearing a periodic-table tree shirt, and I’m reminiscing about the worst cafeteria meal in VA history (“brown meal,” may it never return).
But the real adventure this week? Our kid suddenly developed mysterious brown patches on her skin, smooth, painless, and deeply unsettling for two parents whose medical degrees contain zero pediatrics. Cue the panic Googling, the advice nurse, a...
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December 18, 2025 • 41 mins
This week, I’m answering your YouTube questions, including why my histology shirt is back, and then diving into a mystery case straight from the ICU. A sedated teenager with a swollen face, red eyes, and a whole lot of chemosis needs help, and I show up with… my ophthalmologist luggage.
What I found is something every ICU clinician has seen but doesn’t always recognize: exposure keratopathy, the completely preventable eye emergenc...
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December 16, 2025 • 47 mins
This week, Kristin and I break down the kind of healthcare headline that makes you want to scream into a pillow: premiums going up while subsidies disappear. Love that for us. We talk about why insurance always seems to be “oops, more expensive now!” and why families in the middle always get squeezed the hardest. But then we pivot to the good news, we got fact-checked by an actual biochemist. And honestly? It made my whole week. Th...
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December 11, 2025 • 43 mins
This week, I’m diving into one of the weirdest modern medical questions: what actually makes a “top doctor” in the age of TikTok? After an Allure article exposed the rise, and sometimes fall, of social-media-famous plastic surgeons, I have thoughts. Many thoughts. Mostly about ethics, entertainment, and why the operating room should never be a live-streaming studio.
Then we shift into something much more fun: a full mystery case. ...
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December 9, 2025 • 42 mins
This week, Kristin and I dive into aphantasia, anendophasia, and why apparently my wife’s brain works more like a slideshow than a podcast. I’m learning things about her that I wish I didn’t know, and she’s learning that most people don’t think in GIFs. We also talk about what happens when meditation goes wrong, how brains get rewired after trauma, and why sometimes “turning your brain off” might actually mean “floating into the v...
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December 4, 2025 • 44 mins
This week I ran into something online that made my ophthalmologist brain short-circuit: a brand-new CDC statement about autism and vaccines that… let’s just say does not follow how science actually works. So I’m breaking down the logic, the frustration, and why “prove it’s not true” is one of the worst arguments in medicine.
Then, because I can only rant for so long before needing to retreat into eyeball science, I walk through tw...
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December 2, 2025 • 44 mins
This week on Glauc Talk, Kristin and I unpack the bizarre ways people twist “correlation vs. causation” and why apparently every high school should have a mandatory class on basic biostats. We talk about protestors, parenting, penis decisions (you’ll see), and somehow end up designing the world’s most chaotic public health curriculum.
Then we pivot to something a little closer to home, physician side gigs. From telemedicine to exp...
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November 27, 2025 • 43 mins
This week, I’m doing something different. No eyeball emergencies, no angry rants about healthcare, just gratitude. In this Thanksgiving special, I’m giving thanks to the people who shaped me: my high school English teacher who believed in my writing, the German teacher who let me hide pencils in my hair, the residency mentor who saw the future ophthalmologist before I did, and, of course, Lady Glaucomflecken, for saving my life and...
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November 25, 2025 • 54 mins
This week, Kristin and I dig into my long-overdue skin check, a gift from my mom (because nothing says “happy birthday” like preventative medicine). We talk about awkward gown moments, dermatologists who multitask like superheroes, and why apparently I’m not famous in derm circles.
Then we get a little more serious about why it takes forever to get a doctor’s appointment, how the physician shortage is affecting care, and what it r...
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November 20, 2025 • 41 mins
In this episode, I’m breaking down what a week of ophthalmology call actually looks like, why retinal detachments aren’t the emergency you think they are, and how one cartoon wolf ended up being my latest ocular diagnosis. Plus, in the latest installment of my “Signs and Symptoms” series, we’re talking eyelash loss, bleeding eyes (aka hyphema), and the fine line between “put your pants on now” and “you can wait till morning."
Ta...
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