They were an academic power couple at Harvard University when Dr. Arthur Kleinman’s wife Joan became ill with early-onset Alzheimer's Dementia.  Arthur became her primary caregiver.  A harrowing odyssey of decline follows, challenging this capable and loving Professor of Psychiatry and Anthropology and inspiring his poignant and revealing book The Soul of Care; The Moral Education of a Husband and a Doctor. 

Paul talks to Arthur about his beloved Joan’s illness and care, and how he learned — through this devastating experience — that ‘care’ is the social glue of society.  Once artisanal in nature, personal caregiving, now dominated by big business and at the mercy of government regulations, is at risk of losing its soul but for the compassion and love bestowed by individual caregivers in their work with patients. Dr. Kleinman describes how this crisis of 'care' in America is evidenced by caregivers being underpaid, undervalued, and often disrespected.  These workers are often immigrant women of color doing herculean work.  Dr. Kleinman believes there needs to be a moral movement for care, bringing together many currently siloed segments of the population, including parents caring for kids with autism, and those assisting seniors, disabled and sick family members. Recorded before the Covid Crisis, many details of his personal and family challenge, speak to issues underscored by the current pandemic. Join us for this moving tale of a self-described ‘unpromising caregiver’ and his rise to the occasion; one man’s experience in the trenches of care, and his call to action for cultural change to re-humanize care.

Paul has a frank and sobering conversation with Dr. Coleen Kivlahan, Professor of Family and Community Medicine at the UCSF School of Medicine, who is a local and global expert and leader in Refugee, Immigrant, Asylum and Human Rights Medicine. Her name may sound familiar as she was a previous guest on Hippie Docs 2.0, talking about her own experience as a patient with Covid-19.  In this episode, Dr. Kivlahan describes her work in Sierra Leone, Guatemala, the DRC, Syria, and in the US, bringing large scale and personal atrocities to light and justice.  Mass graves and the body tell the stories, and doctors — using forensics— serve as a powerful force in an attempt to answer the twin questions of "how?" and "why?" did these things happen? Dr. Kivlahan also talks about her role as an educator and leader of UCSF's Human Rights Clinic, which painstakingly documents both physical and psychological wounds in immigrant asylum-seekers.  At the same time, the medical students, faculty, and staff working there perform the equally important work of emotionally supporting these immigrants, many of whom suffered unimaginable trauma in their home countries.   She is partially inspired to do this work by her early experiences, growing up one of six children in a working class family, living in a small northern Ohio steel town, with no health insurance.  But it was her gut-wrenching experience as a young physician, fresh out of residency, which charted her path as a reliever of suffering, truth-teller, and policy maker. She speaks about the deadliness of silence, the importance of bearing witness and how small acts of kindness can create hope. Join us for our latest episode in our quest to re-humanize medicine.

Paul chats with Dr. Sondra Zabar, a Professor of Medicine at NYU in the division of general internal medicine and clinical innovation. Dr. Zabar actively supervises hundreds of primary care physicians at NYU. Teaching the “art of clinical medicine” to an entire generation of medical students, interns, and residents, Dr. Zabar cultivates curiosity, active listening, and the development of a good bedside manner. Research has shown that these physician skills lead to better diagnostic reasoning, improved medical outcomes, and higher patient and provider satisfaction. Employing actors in NYC (what better place?) to portray patients with varying personalities and medical conditions, Dr. Zabar utilizes this innovative model to teach the finer points of the clinical arts. Join us as Hippie Docs 2.0 continues an in-depth exploration of medical practice and philosophy in our quest to re-humanize medicine, with this overarching conversation with a highly regarded medical educator who shares our goal of holistically training physicians and other providers of health care.

A one-on-one interview with Dr. John Good, one of the many inspirations for this podcast and an original hippie doc. Recently retired after nearly 50 years of practice spanning the Vietnam, Civil Rights, Women’s Lib, and AIDS eras, Dr. Good shares recollections from his long-haired, bell-bottom wearing, VW Bus driving days, to his most recent experiences treating Covid patients.  This wide-ranging and colorful conversation will not only conjure memories of the 60’s & 70’s, but also focus on our mutual hopes for medicine's future, galvanizing energy for the next generation of Hippie Docs 2.0 and the ongoing quest to re-humanize medicine.

Our healthcare system was already on the ropes pre-Coronavirus pandemic, as our country creeped towards some kind of national health coverage. Much of our current crisis highlights how fragmented, inefficient and unprepared we are to deal with this overwhelming catastrophe, despite incredible heroic actions by many on the front lines of this ongoing medical emergency.  Before our current reality, Hippie Docs spoke with Dr. Jeff Draisin, a San Francisco based Integrative Medical Practitioner about his practice, inspirations and his holistic treatment ethos. Join us for a lively discussion that will open your mind to a medical approach that takes into account more than stats, metrics, tests and and exams. This powerful path, rooted in progressive mindset of hippie doc pioneers, offers a comprehensive and transformative type of treatment and many potential lessons for  the future of how to provide comprehensive healthcare coverage for our citizens.

Our conversation with UCSF psychiatrist, researcher, and educator Dr. Emily Williams delved into her work exploring psychedelic-assisted therapies and her groundbreaking contribution to clinical studies utilizing MDMA for severe PTSD and psilocybin for end-of-life care, as well as her clinical work providing ketamine-assisted treatment for severe depression. Only a couple years out of her psychiatric residency, Dr. Williams represents the HippieDocs 2.0 generation, building on the work of many trailblazing physicians from the heady revolutionary days of the 1960s and 1970s, a movement halted by America's ensuing ‘War on Drugs‘. These interventions, once thought to be radical, are now finding their way into the 21st Century psychiatric tool kit. 

In his Marin County tree-house, surrounded by redwood branches, with squirrels dancing around us, Dr. Robert Okin, author, activist, distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry in the UCSF School of Medicine, and a leading psychiatrist and internationally known expert on mental health service reform, was interviewed by the Hippie Docs team. The conversation with Dr. Paul Linde was wide ranging and centered around Dr. Okin's approach to re-humanizing medicine. 

Months into the Covid-19 Pandemic, we know more about Coronavirus and its epidemiology than ever before, but still not enough, as this dastardly virus continues wreaking havoc on lives and economies across the globe. A Professor of Family and Community Medicine at UCSF, Dr. Coleen Kivlahan sees patients on the front lines of the pandemic. In addition, as one of the first healthcare workers in SF to contract the virus from a patient, Dr. Kivlahan knows Covid-19 intimately.

Here's a quick introduction to our new podcast series. Enjoy!