Penny Lane, the "Confessions of a Good Samaritan" filmmaker explores the dysfunctional world of kidney transplants.
reason.com/video
00:00- Introduction
1:17- Excerpt from ‘Confessions of a Good Samaritan’
2:19- Penny Lane’s altruistic kidney donation
4:21- Effective Altruism’s influence on Lane
6:12- Lane’s obstacles before surgery
7:13- Recovering from surgery physically & psychologically
11:25- Parable of the Good Samaritan
12:24- How Lane’s perspective changed
15:43- Kidney donation policy
18:17- Economic inequalities in access
19:34- How financial incentives would change the equation
21:03- History of kidney transplants
23:34- What makes donating a kidney to a stranger so much more controversial?
24:17- Could man-made organ transplants be common soon?
26:56- History of the political debate around organ donation
28:49- ‘Disgust’ around selling organs
30:51- $50,000 tax credit pilot program
32:23- Starring in your own documentary
36:33- State of documentary film
38:12- Are audiences more media literate now?
40:33- Lane’s history with documentary filmmaking
41:46- Lane’s documentarian heroes
43:15- When documentaries lie
48:06- Lane’s current projects
Today's guest is Penny Lane, the acclaimed documentary filmmaker whose previous works include Listening to Kenny G and Hail Satan?, both of which formed the basis of previous Reason interviews linked in the show notes.
Her exceptional new film is Confessions of a Good Samaritan. It's currently streaming on Netflix and follows her experience as an "altruistic" kidney donor, or one who gives an organ away to an anonymous stranger. Reason's Nick Gillespie talks with Lane about how she came to make her decision; its effects on her body, mind, and finances; and the ethics of current policy, which prevents donors from being paid for giving away life-saving organs. "My instinct as more or less a libertarian is, yeah, pay people," Lane tells Reason. "It seems like a really obvious thing." But it's not a simple one, she explains, both because of current laws and medical history. They also talk about the state of documentary film making, if we're in a golden age for the genre, and whether audiences are becoming smarter consumers of media.
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