Divas On Call

✨THE DIVAS CAN READ, even though one of them is very dyslexic...✨

Shocking, we know. This week, we’re picking up the books that made us, moved us, wrecked us, and occasionally made us question each other’s taste entirely.

We’re getting Unaccustomed with Jhumpa Lahiri, playing Pachinko with Min Jin Lee, having an Awakening with Kate Chopin, finding our way home with Aloha Everything, and letting Zora Neale Hurston remind us exactly why our eyes are still watching God. 👀

Along the way:

📖 Khusboo explains how she went from HATING The Awakening as a teenager to crying over it as an adult.

🌺 George brings a children’s picture book to the literary table, and somehow makes us emotional about Hawaiʻi, home, and the books we read to the people we love.

🇰🇷 Pachinko takes us from Sunja’s story to our own mothers,grandparents, immigration, sacrifice, and everything it took for us to live the lives we have now.

🍑 We acknowledge that whether or not you’ve read Call Me by Your Name, THE PEACH SCENE IS ICONIC. IYKYK. If you don’t, perhaps remain innocent.😂

✍️ Zora Neale Hurston gives us prose so fabulous it practically qualifies as a literary LOTTMMERB™.

🌳 The Lorax enters the Diva conversation.

And then George announces that he doesn’t think To Kill a Mockingbird is that good… at which point Khusboo promptly declares: “You’re dead to me.” 💀

Welcome to: READ LIKE A DIVA. Because we don’t care whether a book won a Pulitzer, appears on somebody’s “100 Books You Must Read Before You Die” list, or makes you look impressive on a bookshelf.

We care whether you were the same Diva when you closed it as when you opened it.

And with this episode, we’re officially launching the DIVAS BOOK LIST, our living Amazon bookshelf of the stories that have earned their place in the Diva universe.

We’ll keep adding books as we read, argue, discover new favorites, revisit old ones, and hear recommendations from our guests and YOU.

But admission is selective, and here are the rules: No homework. No medical books. Pleasure counts. Beautiful writing matters. And emotional damage is absolutely admissible evidence.

Think your favorite belongs?

Tell us the book that changed you.

✨THE DIVAS WHO VOTE Featuring Alani Bankhead (Democratic Nominee for US Senate from Montana)✨

SHE HUNTED TERRORISTS. SHE OUTSMARTED CHILD PREDATORS. SHE SERVED HER COUNTRY FOR MORE THAN TWO DECADES.

And now she’s running for the United States Senate.So naturally, we had to ask, is Alani Bankhead a Diva? 👑

This week, Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Alani Bankhead joins Divas on Call for a conversation that went places we never expected. We talk politics. Healthcare. Affordability. Immigration. Trust in government. Money in politics. What happens when public service stops feeling like service.

But this episode became about so much more than policy. Alani takes us inside a career spent protecting some of the most vulnerable people in the world — from counterintelligence and child-exploitation investigations to Lulu, the extraordinary police dog who hunts digital evidence. She tells us why she wanted to THROW UP before operations she was commanding, how imposter syndrome followed her into rooms where other people's lives depended on her, and why sometimes the people most afraid they're not qualified are exactly the people we need leading.

She tells us why she never wanted to enter politics, how she secretly hoped her husband would talk her out of running, and why she cried for weeks when she realized what saying yes would cost her. We talk about how you communicate with people who disagree with everything you believe.

Why admitting you're wrong might actually make people trust you more.How a bowl of chili can apparently support democracy.

And, somehow, Real Housewives enters the United States Senate race.

But our favorite moment came when we asked Alani the question we ask every guest: “What makes Alani Bankhead a Diva?”Her answer? "Because I just don't take any bullsh*t anymore."

And beneath the military career, the investigations, the politics and the campaign, we asked one final question:

When all of this is over, what do you want people to understand about why you tried?Her answer stopped us: “I just want people to feel loved.” ❤️

This is The Divas Who Vote. Not because we're going to tell you what to believe. But because Divas pay attention. Ask questions. Have standards. Speak up. And show up. Your ballot belongs to you. Know what's on it. Know what you stand for. And use it. 🇺🇸

Status? Fabulous.

Sparkles? Always.

Divas? Forever.

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ala...

✨THE DIVAS ARE MARRIED… ✨ but not to each other — important clarification. 😂

And before anything else: this episode is dedicated to our beautiful spouses—the two people who saw the ambition, the chaos, the flaws, the ridiculousness, the enormous sunglasses, the whole Diva…and chose to love us through all of it. 💕

Before the weddings. Before the careers. Before the mortgages, residency, and everything that came after… There was a first date.

This week, we’re going back to where our love stories began: questionable first-date fashion, George’s clinically concerning lack of charm, Khusboo almost SKIPPING the date with her future husband, hours wandering New York City, and the tiny moments when we first thought: “Oh $#*t. this person is different.”

But somewhere along the way, an episode about first datesbecame something much bigger. We realized the people we married never asked us to become less. They made it safe for us to become MORE.

To our beautiful spouses: this one is for you. ❤️ Thank you for loving us loudly, believing in us endlessly, and never asking us to dim the sparkle.

Stay fabulous, and stay on call.

✨THE CASES THAT MADE US DIVAS✨

A teenager with cancer whose story followed Khusboo long after she left the hospital—and changed the way she would advocate for patients forever.

An 80-year-old farmer whose surgery wouldn't heal…who showed up carrying a gift for his surgeon when she felt like she couldn’t do more for him.

And a young father with a devastating arm injury whose medical record told one story—but when Khusboo finally sat down and listened to him, she discovered another.

Purpose. Humility. Confidence. These are the cases that made Khusboo Desai the Metacarpal Diva.

And this week, George puts his attending, mentor, and best friend in the hot seat to ask the questions surgeons don't always say out loud: What happens when you can't save someone? What happens when you've done everything right…and it still goes wrong? When does confidence stop being something you perform and become something you've actually earned?

And can a patient change the surgeon just as profoundly as the surgeon changes the patient?

This episode completely changed our definition of Diva. Being loud isn't Diva. Being arrogant isn't Diva. Thinking you know everything definitely isn't Diva.

Listening is Diva.
Humility is Diva.
Advocacy is Diva.
Giving a damn — even when it's inconvenient — is VERY Diva. 👑

And Khusboo leaves us with one line we won't forget: ✨ KNOWLEDGE BUILDS CONFIDENCE. CONFIDENCE BUILDS TRUST. THERE IS NO SHORTCUT. ✨

We call them our cases. But they were never ours. They were someone's life. And sometimes, the patients we're trying to change... end up changing us. ❤️‍🩹

Boy, have we come a long way from our initial meeting at Weill Cornell.

So stay fabulous, and stay on call.

✨OH, THE PLACES DIVAS GO!✨

Thanks Dr. Seuss, but we'll take it from here.

Some people are born divas. Some people become divas. And some of us had to travel the damn world to figure it out.

Somehow our usual chaos turns into one of our most personal conversations yet. There’s Shade Couture, Starbucks psychoanalysis, a particularly unhinged LOTTMMERB™ and even attempting Hawaiian Pidgin. 🤙

And then... Khusboo Desai becomes Barbara freaking Walters. Hawaii. Korea. Los Angeles. New York. The Midwest.

We talk about the places that gave us culture, confidence, identity, belonging, and the courage to decide for ourselves exactly who we want to be.

Because maybe you don't find yourself in one place. Maybe you collect pieces of yourself everywhere you go. 💅

Pack your bags, Divas. We’re going places. 🌎✈️💋

✨KEM CHO, fellow divas.✨ When the diva besties sat down to record this episode, we thought we knew exactly where it was going. We were going to answer one question: “How did Bollywood create the Metacarpal Diva?”

But somewhere between the laughter, the tears, the songs, the traditions, the mothers, the daughters, the family, and the unforgettable women of Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham...
...we realized we had been asking the wrong question.

Bollywood didn’t create the Metacarpal Diva. It gave language to the values that were already alive inside her. The confidence. The ambition. The loyalty. The love of family. The strength. The vulnerability. The refusal to apologize for taking up space.

This episode isn’t really about Bollywood. It’s about identity.
Because every one of us has a story that quietly helped us become the person we are today. Every diva has an origin story. This is a part of hers.

What is your K3G? What story quietly shaped the person you’ve become?

Stay Fabulous. Stay On Call. 💅

✨ THE DIVAS BESTIES ARE BACK...✨ with The Diva’s LOTTMMBERB 💦. If you thought Episode 1 was chaotic, just wait. This week we're discussing:

🤭 The LOTTMMERB™ (List of Things That Make My Eyes Roll Back). Invented by yours truly in NYC circa 2021, because everyone deserves to know what gives us that chef's kiss, eyes-roll-back level of satisfaction.

🎆 The Diva Holiday. Why holidays look very different when you're the one on call, and the sacrifices nobody talks about.

👠 The Devil Wears Diva. Did Metacarpal Diva actually complete her Costco fashion homework after publicly judging Aesthetic Diva? 👀

🎬 Diva Recasting. We're rebuilding The Devil Wears Prada using only Oscar winners...and then gender-swapping the entire cast. Because naturally.

💖 Plus...we're still doing what we apparently can't stop doing:
Finishing each other's sentences.
Roasting each other. Accidentally agreeing on almost everything. And somehow turning Costco into luxury fashion.

Welcome to the our diva world.

👇 Now it's your turn... What's on your LOTTMMERB™?

Let us know in the comments, DMs, or in your own diva way — you just might hear it featured on a future episode of Divas on Call.

Because around here, being a diva is a compliment. 👑

Stay fabulous. Stay on call. 💅

✨ THE DIVA BESTIES HAVE ARRIVED✨ As you 🎼 put on your Sunday clothes, we humbly welcome you to DIVAS ON CALL 👑 For years, we’ve heard the word “diva” used as an insult. Now, we’re reclaiming it. Our debut episode, “In Defense of Being a Diva,” is exactly that — a conversation about who we are, why we’re proud to be divas, and how that philosophy shapes us everywhere we go. Join us as we discuss our diva origin stories, our initial meeting at Weill Cornell and shared path coming from NYC, the debut of The Devil Wears Diva and how we are totally going to exploit the Costco fashion scene, and the beginning of our long list of rules you can only find in the Diva Manifesto. Welcome to The Order of the Divas Wearing Hairclips (ODWH). If you have ever been told you were “too much,” this podcast is for you. And as you become immersed, we invite you to share with us in the comments or DMs your own diva stories for us to share and consult on. Tag us, share your favorite moment, give us insight into your own diva moments we are here for you. 💃🕺 What does being a diva mean to you? Stay fabulous.
Stay on call. 💖