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Public Health

How Our Communities Can Get Healthy at Last: Eric Adams on PYP 432

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams returns to the podcast to talk about his new book, Healthy at Last. Part family memoir, part political mission statement, part science review, part self-help book, and part cookbook, this is a celebration of the possibilities of health for the American people in general, and the Black community in particular.

We talk about the title – from Etta James, and not Martin Luther King, Jr’s “I have a dream” speech, as I first assumed – and the fact that, in Adams’ words, “slavery never ended,” and remains entrenched in the slave foods that are still harming Black people to this day.

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What We Know About COVID-19: The Science: Michael Rothberg, MD on PYP 423

Michael Rothberg, MD, returns to Plant Yourself to share the latest actual scientific understanding of COVID-19. We spoke first in mid-March, when we didn’t know much. Fast forward five months, and we now know a lot, but in the US at least, we’re ignoring most of the science and suffering for it.

I’ve been as confused as anyone else, daunted by epidemiological models I can’t evaluate for accuracy, overwhelmed by social media fights about masks and free speech and hydroxychloroquine and vaccines and government overreach that have riven the plant-based community, and befuddled by competing claims of conferred immunity and how long it might last.

So I got Michael on the Zoom and peppered him with my questions.

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Empowering Black Health with Lisa A Smith: PYP 417

Lisa A Smith is a serial entrepreneur who’s made it her life’s work to empower the Black community with information, skills, and philosophies that support health, peace of mind, and mutual support. 

Ms Smith is the founder of the Black Health Academy, creator of the Pharm to Table course, and executive director of the 7000+ member Plant Based Nutrition Support Group operating in Detroit (see below for an interview with the founder, Paul Chatlin).

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The Role of Science in Public Discourse and Racial Justice: Dean and Ayesha Sherzai, MDs: PYP 414

Team Sherzai, aka Dean and Ayesha, join me on the podcast to talk about the role of science and scientists in dealing with all the false statements propagated on social media (as well as, occasionally, traditional media).

What the Sherzais value highly about science is the holy grail of falsifiability; the challenge that every theory and finding implicitly makes to other scientists: prove me wrong!

They also appreciate the inherent humility that is baked into true science, as well as the imperfect nature of knowledge at any given time.

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Straight Talk on Covid-19 with Michael Rothberg, MD: PYP 379

Michael B. Rothberg, M.D., M.P.H. is the Vice Chair for Research in the Medicine Institute of the Cleveland Clinic and Director of the Center for Value-Based Care Research.

He joined me on Skype to talk about the current state of knowledge about Covid-19, and what we can and should do as individuals and a society to save as many lives as possible.

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