Book Club

Host: John J. Russell, MD Guest: Victoria Sweet, MD After her father was admitted to the hospital with a wrong diagnosis and consequently received the wrong treatment, Dr. Victoria Sweet found that no doctor would speak with her face to face. This eye-opening experience left her with the following question: What has gone missing from medicine? This became the motivation for her book, Slow Medicine: The Way to Healing. Dr. Sweet joins Dr. John Russell to divulge on the logic, love, and beauty of slowing down in healthcare.

Host: Maurice Pickard, MD Guest: Haider Warraich, MD Dr. Haider Warraich, author of The New York Times article “Dr. Google is a Liar,” speaks with Dr. Maurice Pickard on the growing pandemic of fake medical news and its startling repercussions for healthcare providers and their patients.

Host: Matt Birnholz, MD Guest: Mimi Secor, DNP, FNP-BC, FAANP Compelled to share her personal experience, Dr. Mimi Secor, author of Debut a New You: Transforming Your Life at Any Age, speaks with Dr. Matt Birnholz about her journey from busy and stressed to happy and healthy.

Host: Maurice Pickard, MD Guest: Bob Baker, MD Dr. Maurice Pickard connects with Dr. Bob Baker, author of The Performance of Medicine: Techniques from the Stage to Optimize the Patient’s Experience and Restore the Joy of Practicing Medicine, who shares his strategies and techniques that you should be implementing in your practice to boost the doctor-patient relationship.

Host: John J. Russell, MD Guest: Kate Moore During World War I, hundreds of young women—some as young as eleven—flocked to the clock factories, thrilled at the chance to land wartime work as radium-dial painters. Blended with historical and scientific significance, their personal stories are unveiled in Kate Moore's The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women. Moore spares us no shelter from understanding the pain in which they were living and the fight they inevitably began.

Host: John J. Russell, MD Guest: Aaron Carroll, MD Over the years, the world of food has taken drastic swings, such as the demonization of butter in the '70s and today’s obsession with gluten-free foods to cut out carbs. Dr. Aaron Carroll, author of The Bad Food Bible: How and Why to Eat Sinfully, dives into the myths surrounding nutrition and why common sense might just be the answer to eating healthy.

Host: John J. Russell, MD Guest: Sam Quinones Weaving together two classic tales of capitalism and the unintended collision laying waste to communities across the country, Sam Quinones, author of Dreamland, introduces an unforgettable cast of characters, including pharma pioneers, young Mexican entrepreneurs, narcotics investigators, survivors, and parents, to share what he believes is at the root of the opiate addiction epidemic.

Host: Maurice Pickard, MD Guest: Beth Macy Beth Macy’s Dopesick is a heartbreaking trajectory that illustrates how America’s twenty-plus year struggle with opioid addiction has persisted for this long and has become so firmly entrenched in practically every corner of our country—from desolate cities to once idyllic farm towns. Tune in as Beth Macy joins Dr. Maurice Pickard to illuminate the persistent and often conflicting gaps in the treatment and criminal-justice landscapes while shining a hopeful light on the heroes battling the worst drug epidemic in American history.

Host: Maurice Pickard, MD Guest: Allison Pataki Five months pregnant, on a flight headed for Hawaii, Allison Pataki's life took a sudden turn when she witnessed her husband, Dave Levy, lose consciousness. After an emergency landing and evaluation, Levy was found to have had suffered a rare stroke. When he woke the next day, he had amnesia, leaving the young couple holding onto hope for recovery. True to form, Pataki began to write letters to her husband—letters that became the foundation for Beauty in the Broken Places: A Memoir of Love, Faith, and Resilience.

Host: Jennifer Caudle, DO Career burnout is unfortunately all too common in the healthcare industry, with over half of physicians suffering from at least one symptom of burnout. Not only that, but the rates of depression and suicide in this industry are significantly higher than others. To discuss this very real threat to health care providers, Dr. Jennifer Caudle is joined by Dr. Shawn Jones, ENT physician and author of Finding Heart in the Art: A Surgeon's Renaissance Approach to Healing Modern Medical Burnout, who recants his own personal journey in overcoming career burnout.

Host: Maurice Pickard, MD Guest: Bob Mitchell Quite suddenly, Bob Mitchell became very sick. He would endure three near-fatal episodes of ventricular tachycardia due to a heart muscle comprised of 54% scar tissue, as well as heart surgeries, two harrowing months of waiting on the transplant list for a new heart on life-supporting IV drips (during which time a malignant tumor was detected in his kidney), partial nephrectomy surgery to remove the cancer, another month of waiting, a 12-hour heart and kidney transplant surgery, and 100 days on life support in four different hospitals. Host Dr. Maurice Pickard talks with novelist Bob Mitchell, author of Time for a Heart-to-Heart: Reflections on Life in the Face of Death about his inspiring story of the triumph of hope in the face of the direst of circumstances.

Host: Maurice Pickard, MD Guest: Carl Hart, MD Carl Hart, who grew up in one of Miami’s toughest neighborhoods, escaped a life of crime and drugs and avoided becoming one of the crack addicts he now helps treat as the Chair of the Department of Psychology at Columbia University. His landmark, controversial research is redefining our understanding of addiction and demonstrates how personal experience and scientific study can inform and validate each other for a deeper understanding of human behavior and addiction. Host Dr. Maurice Pickard talks with Dr. Hart, author of the book High Price, about the relationship between drugs and pleasure, choice, and motivation, both in the brain and in society. They explore how his research sheds new light on common ideas about race, poverty, and drugs, and explain why current policies are failing.

Host: John J. Russell, MD As a young critical care physician, Dr. Rana Awdish was transfigured from a doctor into a critically ill patient in an instant. This transposition, coincidentally timed at the end of her medical training, instantly laid bare the vast chasm between the conventional practice of medicine and the stark reality of the prostrate patient. Host Dr. John Russell chats with Dr. Rana Awdish about this transformation and how she came to understand the fatal flaws in her profession, from her own past actions as a physician to the perils of navigating her own illness. She presents a new paradigm and rationale for embracing the emotional bond between doctor and patient and outlines the redemptive possibilities of dismantling the barriers to connection in all relationships. Dr. Awdish is the author of In Shock: My Journey from Death to Recovery and the Redemptive Power of Hope and Director of the Pulmonary Hypertension Program at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

Host: John J. Russell, MD Guest: Meredith Wadman, BM, BCh, M.S. Until the late 1960s, tens of thousands of American children suffered crippling birth defects if their mothers had been exposed to rubella, popularly known as German measles, while pregnant; there was no vaccine and little understanding of how the disease devastated fetuses. In June 1962, a young biologist in Philadelphia, using human tissue samples sent from Sweden, produced a line of cells that allowed the creation of vaccines against rubella and other common childhood diseases. Two years later, in the midst of a massive German measles epidemic, the vaccine that would one day wipe out homegrown rubella was introduced. This vaccine has since protected more than 150 million people in the United States, and its development method has also led to other vaccines that have protected billions of people around the world from polio, rabies, chicken pox, measles, hepatitis A, shingles, and adenovirus. Host Dr. John Russell chats with Meredith Wadm

Host: John J. Russell, MD Revolutionary advances in medical knowledge have caused doctors to become so focused on their narrow fields of expertise that they often overlook the simplest fact of all: their patients are suffering. Dr. John Russell welcomes Dr. Thomas Lee, Chief Medical Officer at Press Ganey and author of An Epidemic of Empathy in Healthcare: How to Deliver Compassionate, Connected Patient Care That Creates a Competitive Advantage. Their discussion focuses on the growing divide between world-class medical treatment and compassionate care, and why the two are not mutually exclusive.

Host: John J. Russell, MD Do pets help prevent allergies? Does the 5-second rule actually exist? And is dirt really good for a child’s immune system? Host Dr. John Russell talks with Jack Gilbert, Ph.D., Professor of Surgery at the University of Chicago and Director of the Microbiome Institute. Dr. Gilbert is author of the book Dirt is Good, answering questions about the potential benefits of exposure to germs and bacteria. He and Dr. Russell sift through common misconceptions about microbiomes to better understand their actual risks and benefits for the body's immune system, explaining its role in disease and health.

Host: Maurice Pickard, MD Guest: Bonnie Rochman With the ever-expanding array of prenatal and postnatal tests, from carrier screening to genome sequencing, parents’ access to this previously unknown information is altering perceptions of disability, redefining the question of what sort of life is worth living, and who draws the line. Is this technology a triumph of modern medicine or a Pandora’s box of possibilities? Host Dr. Maurice Pickard chats with Bonnie Rochman, author of the book The Gene Machine: How Genetic Technologies are Changing the Way We Have Kids - and the Kids We Have, about the new frontier of gene technology and how it is transforming medicine, bioethics, health care, and the factors that shape a family.

Host: Maurice Pickard, MD Guest: Robert Pearl, MD Most patients wrongly assume the “best” care is dependent mainly on the newest medications, the most complex treatments, and the smartest doctors. But according to physician and author Dr. Robert Pearl, Americans tend to look for healthcare solutions in the wrong places. Host Maurice Pickard chats with Dr. Pearl, author of Mistreated: Why We Think We’re Getting Good Health Care—And Why We’re Usually Wrong, about the subconscious misperceptions that have become so commonplace in medicine today. Dr. Pearl explains how modifying the structure, technology, financing, and leadership of American healthcare could radically improve quality outcomes.

Host: Brian P. McDonough, MD, FAAFP Guest: Signe Whitson What is passive-aggressive behavior, and what can (or should) people do when confronted with it? Host Brian McDonough sits down with Signe Whitson, author of the book The Angry Smile: The New Psychological Study of Passive-Aggressive Behavior at Home, at School, in Marriage & Close Relationships, in the Workplace and Online. Ms. Whitson is an educator on bullying, crisis intervention, and child and adolescent emotional and behavioral health. She offers real-world examples and empowering, practical strategies for individuals confronted with passive aggressiveness.

Host: Maurice Pickard, MD Guest: Danielle Ofri, MD Despite modern medicine’s infatuation with high-tech gadgetry, the single most powerful diagnostic tool is the doctor-patient conversation, which can uncover the lion’s share of illnesses. However, what patients say and what doctors hear are often two vastly different things. Host Dr. Maurice Pickard chats with Dr. Danielle Ofri, Associate Professor of Medicine at NYU and author of What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear. The two discuss ways in which refocusing conversations between doctors and their patients can lead to better health outcomes.