This week we talk about how real food is the best medicine. Dan Barber is chef and co-owner of Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York, and the author of The Third Plate. A fierce advocate for sustainable, ethical farming and cooking, Barber’s opinions on food and agricultural policy have appeared in The New York Times and other publications. He also co-founded Row 7 Seed Company, which brings together chefs and plant breeders to develop new varieties of vegetables and grains....

This week we talk about simplicity as a strategy. Howard Belk pulls double duty as Co-Chief Executive Officer and Chief Creative Officer of leading global brand experience consultancy Siegel+Gale, which he claims is one (or two) of the six best jobs on the planet. He is an entrepreneur who helped a 50-year-old branding firm reestablish industry leadership by embracing its disruptor legacy. Since his arrival at the firm in 2004, he and his colleagues have established Siegel+Gale as The...

This week we talk about designing for diverse perspectives  Katie is a designer and researcher; she is a design consultant and Senior Research Associate at the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design which is an Inclusive design Centre based at the Royal College of Art in London. Katie is neurodivergent (Dyslexic and Dyspraxic) and for the last 16 years has collaborated with neurodivergent people to explore ways to make their everyday lives comfortable and enjoyable. Katie has worked within a range of...

This week we talk about designing human-centered care, at home. Gregory Snyder is a clinical innovator and physician executive leading technology-enabled care delivery models to improve healthcare quality and safety. He is a graduate of Princeton University, Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University, Brigham & Women’s Hospital Internal Medicine residency, and Harvard Business School. He practices hospital medicine at Mass General Brigham Newton-Wellesley and is...

This week we talk about the story of nursing how it has shaped our world. Sarah DiGregorio is the critically acclaimed author of Early: An Intimate History of Premature Birth and What It Teaches Us About Being Human and Taking Care: The Story of Nursing and Its Power to Change Our World. She is a journalist who has written on health care and other topics for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Slate and Insider, among others. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with...

Today we talk about building a healthy relationship with the ocean. Helen Czerski was born in Manchester. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at University College London. As a physicist, she studies the bubbles generated by breaking waves in the ocean to understand their influence on weather and climate. Helen has been a regular presenter of BBC TV science documentaries since 2011. She also hosts the Ocean Matters podcast, is part of the Cosmic Shambles...

This week, Bon talks about redesigning medicine with Will and Kristin Flanary (aka the Glaucomfleckens)! Knock Knock, Hi! Is a podcast and YouTube series hosted by Will and Kristin Flanary (aka the Glaucomfleckens). I had the chance to join this famous duo on their show and chat about redesigning medicine. We talk about why fax machines are still a thing, how I can die happy if we figure out how to eliminate hallway beds from ever being a thing, And how Dr. Glaucomflecken really just nailed...

This week we talk about The New Designer: rejecting myths and embracing change. Manuel Lima is an internationally renowned designer and author of three bestsellers that have been translated into several languages: The Book of Circles, The Book of Trees, and Visual Complexity. Named “one of the 50 most creative and influential minds” by Creativity magazine, he is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a leading voice on information visualization. His talks have been watched by more than...

This week we talk about designing real self-care versus faux self care. Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, MD is a psychiatrist and author, the founder of Gemma, the digital community focused on women’s mental health and equity; and a contributor to The New York Times. Her new book, REAL SELF-CARE: Crystals, Cleanses, and Bubble-Baths Not Included, has been featured on Good Morning America, NPR’s Code Switch and 1A, Talks @ Google, The New York Times, Vox, and The Guardian. Pooja has spent thousands of...

This week, we are talking about designing better dementia care. Sandeep Jauhar has written several bestselling books, all published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. His latest book, "My Father’s Brain," published in April 2023, is a memoir of his relationship with his father as he succumbed to dementia. In the book, Jauhar sets his father’s descent into Alzheimer’s alongside his own journey toward understanding his father’s disease. A practicing physician, Jauhar writes regularly for the...

On today's episode, we are going to talk about designing for health equity. Adriane Ackerman is a community convener, strategic innovator and life-long rabble-rouser. She currently directs several programs at the Pima County Health Department in Southern Arizona, including a $4 million grant program from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health to Advance Health Literacy, the department’s new Cultural Health initiative with its pilot project, SaludArte, the...

On today's episode, we are going to talk about designing open source medical software.  Maya Friedman is a digital product design lead and art director who designs solutions for unmet needs in the health tech and femtech spaces. She currently leads the user experience, visual and sonic design for Tidepool's FDA-cleared, automated insulin dosing mobile application, Tidepool Loop. She is also the founder of The Period Project, which supports the creation of an ecosystem of software solutions,...

On today's episode, we are going to talk about designing hope in American medicine. Dr. Ricardo Nuila works as an internal medicine doctor and hospitalist in his hometown of Houston. It’s hard for him to imagine practicing medicine anywhere else but at a safety-net hospital, where he focuses on a person’s healthcare problem. His experiences as a doctor gives his writing its fuel. Ricardo focuses mostly on health disparities, how policies affect real people, and the interface between art and...

In this episode, we talk about what a body can do and how we meet the built world. Sara Hendren is an artist, design researcher, writer, professor at Olin College of Engineering, and the creator and host of the Sketch Model podcast. She is the author of What Can A Body Do? How We Meet the Built World, published by Riverhead/Penguin Random House. It was chosen as a Best Book of the Year by NPR and won the Science in Society Journalism book prize. Sara is a humanist in tech. Her work of...

On today's episode, we are going to talk about designing with biology. Dr. Ritu Raman is the d’Arbeloff Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. Her lab is centered on engineering adaptive living materials for applications in medicine and machines. Professor Raman has received several recognitions for scientific innovation, including being named a Kavli Fellow and a Ford Fellow by the National Academy of Sciences engineering and Medicine, an Army Young Investigator by the U.S....

On today's episode, we are going to talk about designing a good death. Dr. Sunita Puri is the Program Director of the Hospice and Palliative Medicine fellowship at the University of Massachusetts, where she is also an Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine. She completed medical school and residency training in internal medicine at the University of California San Francisco followed by a fellowship in Hospice and Palliative Medicine at Stanford. She is the author of That Good Night: Life...

How can revolt against industrialized healthcare? Can we design careful and kind care? Dr. Dominique Allwood is a healthcare leader with almost 20 years of experience working as a medical doctor and public health physician in healthcare in the UK. She enjoys variety and juggling multiple roles and is currently Chief Medical Officer of UCLPartners, a health innovation partnership across a population of 5.2 million people, and Director of Population Health at Imperial College Healthcare NHS...

Today, we are going to take a deep dive into the promising therapy of fecal transplantation Saffron Cassaday directed her first documentary feature film called Cyber-Seniors in 2014. The film followed a group of senior citizens as they learned about the internet from teenage mentors and the connections made both on and offline. The film has been broadcast in 40 countries including on PBS, Netflix and CBC in North America. Cyber-Seniors screening events were supported by over 900 partners...

Learn how behavioral designers are tackling the most complex health challenges on the planet.  As a founder and lead strategist at Common Thread, Sherine Guirguis turns data into powerful narratives. She brings over two decades of experience leading large-scale behaviour change strategies to tackle public health crises. She’s helped rid the world of polio, mitigate COVID-19, end West Africa’s Ebola outbreak, and respond to the Indian Ocean Tsunami. She spent 15 years working senior behaviour...

On today's episode, we are going to talk about designing harm reduction. Dr. Kimberly Sue is an Assistant Professor of Medicine with the Program in Addiction Medicine (Division of General Internal Medicine) at Yale University School of Medicine. She is the former Medical Director of the National Harm Reduction Coalition, New York, NY, which strives to improve the health and wellbeing of people who use drugs. Currently, she serves as an Attending Physician at the Central Medical Unit, APT...

On today's episode, we are going to talk about design through the lens of policy. Rick Griffith is a British-West-Indian collagist, writer, letterpress printer, designer, and optimist futurist based in Denver, Colorado. As a designer, he works at the intersection of programming, policy, and production. He is a columnist for PRINTmag.com, the two-time programming chair for the AIGA National Conference, and the 2023 Acuff Chair at Austin Peay State University. Rick’s works are collected and...

Can hospital care be delivered at home? Will the hospital of the future only consist of ERs, ORs and ICUs? Dr. Helen Ouyang is an emergency physician, Associate Professor in Emergency Medicine at Columbia University, and contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. She has written for The Atlantic, Harper’s, Los Angeles Times, New York, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and others. Her writing has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award, anthologized in...

Health is not a luxury product. But why have our systems commodified health? How might we design health into our everyday lives? Joanne Cheung is an artist and designer. She formerly served as a Director of Systems Change at the global design firm IDEO. In her ongoing effort to amplify the public impact of research and policy through design, she spearheaded creative collaborations with institutions including the Icelandic Glaciological Society, Harvard Earth and Planetary Sciences...

What role does creativity play in the field of medicine? Vidya Viswanathan is a writer and primary care pediatrician in Philadelphia. She founded Doctors Who Create, a community focused on medicine and creativity, and led the Creativity in Medicine conference in Philadelphia in 2019. She has published longform journalism and narrative nonfiction in outlets including The Atlantic, Vox, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and JAMA. Vidya trained at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for pediatrics...