Why Health Stories Work Best When You Hear Them with Dan Kendall

Patients leave the clinic with a stack of printed material written at a reading level most Americans can't comfortably follow. Dan Kendall thinks a lot of that information would land better in a podcast.

Recorded for the Love n' Leary Nursing Podcast, hosts Marion Leary, PhD, MPH, RN and Rebecca Love, RN, MSN, FIEL sit down with Dan Kendall, CEO and founder of the Health Podcast Library. Dan started in health podcasting with Digital Health Today in 2016, built the Health Podcast Network, and has now rebuilt the platform as a free, curated library for listeners and a lower-cost home for credible health creators.

Dan explains why oral tradition still outperforms written information for comprehension, why hospitals' own podcasts rarely surface on Apple or Spotify search, and why he wants more nurses behind the mic. He also shares the story that pushed him into the patient perspective: searching for usable information when his daughter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.

Plus: Marion pushes back on whether the world really needs more podcasts, Dan makes his case, and all three talk about why nurses are uniquely positioned to tell the health stories patients are searching for.

Skip Ahead:

• 00:56 - Meet Dan Kendall 
• 02:19 - Why service drives his work in podcasting 
• 06:07 - How the podcasting landscape has changed since 2016 
• 08:17 - Oral tradition, gestational hearing, and the literacy gap 
• 11:22 - Why audio fits patients' and nurses' actual lives 
• 12:56 - What his daughter's type 1 diabetes diagnosis taught him 
• 15:04 - Why clinical checklists miss the messy reality of health 
• 16:28 - From Health Podcast Network to Health Podcast Library 
• 17:20 - When a top hospital's podcast doesn't surface for its own topic 
• 21:32 - Advice for nurses who want to start a podcast 
• 25:40 - Do we really need more podcasts? 
• 28:28 - The podcast election and why healthcare can't cede the ground 
• 33:32 - Wrap up and the HLTH conference Nurse Hackathon

Mentioned in this episode:

• Read the companion article on Nurse.org: https://nurse.org/news/nurses-health-podcasts-dan-kendall/
• Health Podcast Library: https://healthpodcastlibrary.com 
• Dan Kendall on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dankendall/ 
• Nurse Hackathon at HLTH, November 15-18: https://hlth.com/events/usa/agenda/2026/nurse-hackathon

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