House Calls with Dr. Vivek Murthy

In celebration of World Friendship Day, the Surgeon General invites an old friend and House Calls producer to talk about how their deep connection has seen them through the best of times and the worst of times, sustaining them both personally and professionally.

(00:28) House Calls gets personal as Dr. Murthy introduces an old friend (who is also a House Calls producer)

(01:56) How Dr. Murthy and his friend Ann Kim met

(03:27) How many marriages have resulted from Dr. Murthy’s personal pastime of matchmaking?

(03:54) How has Dr. Murthy and Ann Kim’s friendship cultivated a focus on social connection?

(04:44) How can we find the light in other people?

(05:28) Why is talking with a friend in challenging times so helpful?

(08:38) How can a friend help us explore our interests and find our focus?

(11:29) How can we help children foster deep friendship with their siblings?

(13:27) Dr. Murthy shares his favorite poem about friendship.

(16:11) How can we inspire more friendship?

We’d love to hear from you! Send us a note at [email protected] with your feedback & ideas. For more episodes, visit www.surgeongeneral.gov/housecalls.

Ann Kim, House Calls Producer and Friend

Instagram: @annkimannkim

About Ann Kim

Ann Kim is Chief Innovation & Design Officer at the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General. In this role, Ann and her team aim to bring creativity and design thinking to government, modernizing and humanizing ways to advance public health. She oversees the surgeon general’s website, first-ever podcast (“House Calls with Dr. Vivek Murthy”), and creative development of new products and initiatives. She served as Chief Design Officer during Dr. Vivek Murthy’s previous tenure from 2016-2017, developing campaigns to address substance use, opioids prescribing, and emotional well-being.

Prior to public service, Ann served as as executive director of health and well-being at global design firm IDEO. During her decade at IDEO, her portfolio included the design of HIV-prevention products, digital mental health tools, and new models of healthcare delivery.

In the first decade of her career, Ann was a producer and filmmaker for public television. Her credits include the award-winning PBS/Frontline series “The Age of AIDS” and “Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?” the landmark documentary series on the social determinants of health. She has reported for the public radio from Botswana, India, and North Korea. Her latest documentary, “Lovesick,” is about a physician in India who is also a matchmaker for her HIV-positive single patients.

Ann is a graduate of Harvard College, with a joint degree in Anthropology & the Study of Religion. She is a board member of Noora Health. And, unlike her dear friend the Surgeon General who identifies as a cat person, she considers herself a dog person.

How can we become healers?

In these times of disconnection, we all search for sources of healing. One powerful, often untapped source is the healing we can provide for each other. For this conversation, I turned to my long-time medical school mentor, Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen. Rachel is widely known for launching the course The Healer’s Art, which has been taught to over 30,000 medical students, including me. Now in her 80s, she has been a guiding light for decades.

In this live conversation, we explore deep questions: What is the difference between curing and healing? What is the role of love in doctoring? How is listening a form of healing? Rachel draws from her own life, including the harsh experience of being the only woman in her medical school class and living with chronic illness; while still painful, those experiences helped her understand who she is.

In an increasingly complex world, knowing ourselves and finding ways to express love is what this episode of House Calls is all about.

(03:40) How Dr. Remen and Dr. Murthy connected through the heart and soul of medicine.

(14:01) What is the difference between healing and curing?

(16:10) What is a wounded healer?

(20:51) What is the role of love in healing?

(23:00) How does serving others help the heart and soul?

(24:28) How did Dr. Remen find a place she really belongs, and how can we?

(30:20) What does it mean to be one of a kind?

(34:30) Why love is a blessing for a lifetime.

(46:22) What has Dr. Remen learned from her cancer patients about healing?

(49:25) How can we be source of healing for others?

(54:09) What can help us break away from feelings of despair?

For more conversations, visit www.surgeongeneral.gov/housecalls.

We’d love to hear from you! Send us a note at [email protected] with your feedback & ideas.

Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, Physician & Teacher

Facebook: @rachelnaomiremen

About Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen

Rachel Naomi Remen, MD is Clinical Professor Emeritus of Family and Community Medicine at the UCSF School of Medicine and Professor of Family Medicine at Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine in Ohio. In 1991, she founded the Remen Institute for the Study of Health and Illness (RISHI) a national training institute for physicians, nurses, medical students, nursing students, veterinarians and other health professionals who wish to practice a health care of compassion, meaning, service and community. She is an internationally recognized medical educator whose innovative discovery model course in professionalism, resiliency and relationship-centered care for medical students, The Healer’s Art, is taught at more than 90 American medical schools and schools in seven countries abroad. Her bestselling books “Kitchen Table Wisdom” and “My Grandfather’s Blessings” have been published in 23 languages and have millions of copies in print.

In recognition of her contribution to medicine and medical education, she has received numerous awards including three honorary degrees, the prestigious Bravewell Award as one of the earliest pioneers of Integrative Medicine and Relationship Centered Care. In 2013, she was voted the Gold-Headed Cane award by UCSF School of Medicine for excellence in embodying and teaching the qualities and values of the true physician. Dr. Remen has a 70-year personal history of chronic illness, and her work is a potent blend of the perspectives and wisdom of physician and patient.

What is hope and why is it so powerful?

For writer Rebecca Solnit, hope is a commitment to possibility in the face of uncertainty. While many of us react to the unknown with anxiety or worry, Rebecca sees the opposite: that inherent to unpredictable circumstances is the possibility people can take action and to come together to create change.

In this conversation, Rebecca Solnit and the Surgeon General discuss why hope is necessary. They look back at communities formed in response to disasters, like 9/11 and hurricanes, and how hope and connection are inextricably linked. A historian, Solnit points to milestones like the fall of the Berlin Wall in which people’s actions, sometimes incremental, led to unforeseen outcomes.

In facing the massive uncertainty of climate change, Solnit offers why she is hopeful. Rather than fall to despair, she points that humans, throughout history, have seen the possibility to intervene and take action. And THAT is what Solnit calls hope.

(04:34) Why can disasters be so powerful for uniting communities?

(11:16) Why do some types of disasters bring people more together than others?

(16:55) How do you advise young people who feel despair about climate change?

(27:21) How can the way we remember history’s great social changes contribute to hope or hopelessness?

(31:28) How does social media contribute to loneliness and isolation?

(37:45) Has tech convinced us that living efficiently is more important than living in person?

(47:33) How does Rebecca Solnit make herself feel better when she gets down?

(48:35) What does the Surgeon General do to feel better when he is down?

We’d love to hear from you! Send us a note at [email protected] with your feedback & ideas. For more episodes, visit www.surgeongeneral.gov/housecalls.

Rebecca Solnit, Writer

X: @rebeccasolnit

X: @nottoolate_hope

About Rebecca Solnit

Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of twenty-five books on feminism, environmental and urban history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering and walking, hope and catastrophe. She co-edited the 2023 anthology “Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility”. Her other books include “Orwell’s Roses”; “Recollections of My Nonexistence”; “Hope in the Dark”; “Men Explain Things to Me”; “A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster”; and “A Field Guide to Getting Lost”. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she writes regularly for the Guardian, serves on the board of the climate group Oil Change International, and in 2022 launched the climate project Not Too Late (nottoolateclimate.com).

Have you ever had a moment when you’ve wanted to reach out to someone you haven’t seen in awhile, but something stops you, like the worry you’ll say the wrong thing? Or have you had the experience of assuming that someone who disagrees with you must also dislike you?

It turns out, our mind can play tricks on us that make it harder to connect.

Shankar Vedantam, host and creator of the podcast ”Hidden Brain” joins the Surgeon General for a two-part conversation that travels across science and deeper philosophical questions about life.

In this first conversation, Shankar explains the “hidden brain,” the part of the mind that function outside of our awareness, making unconscious decisions and judgments. They ponder the paradox of how social anxieties keep us from connecting, but how acts of connection and kindness have far greater impact and power than most of us realize.

Offering both science and personal stories, Shankar and Dr. Murthy help us work through our fears of connecting. And help us close the gap between our values, like kindness, and our actions.

(04:04) How does Shankar Vedantam describe the origins of the Hidden Brain podcast?

(06:18) How can we understand if our hidden brain is helping us?

(08:34) How does our hidden brain keep us from connecting with other people?

(14:04) What does it mean to express gratitude to someone else?

(18:39) How has Dr. Murthy cultivated his sense of kind and warmth?

(24:20) How can we tell a better story about the nature of our humanity?

(29:36) How did Shankar Vedantam become a translator of science?

(33:12) How do listeners respond to the Hidden Brain podcast?

(36:12) How are ideas for Hidden Brain podcast episodes developed?

We’d love to hear from you! Send us a note at [email protected] with your feedback & ideas. For more episodes, visit www.surgeongeneral.gov/housecalls.

Shankar Vedantam, Host, “Hidden Brain” Podcast

Instagram: @hiddenbrain

X: @hiddenbrain

Facebook: @hiddenbrain

About Shankar Vedantam

Shankar Vedantam is the host and executive editor of the Hidden Brain podcast and radio show. Shankar and NPR launched the podcast in 2015, and it now receives millions of downloads per week, and is regularly listed as one of the top 20 podcasts in the world. The radio show, which debuted in 2017, is heard on more than 425 public radio stations across the United States.

Vedantam was NPR’s social science correspondent between 2011 and 2020, and he spent 10 years as a reporter at The Washington Post. From 2007 to 2009, he was also a columnist, and wrote the Department of Human Behavior column for the Post.

Vedantam and Hidden Brain have been recognized with numerous journalism awards, including the Edward R Murrow Award, and honors from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the International Society of Political Psychology, the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Association of Black Journalists, the Austen Riggs Center, the American Psychoanalytic Association, the Webby Awards, the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors, the South Asian Journalists Association, the Asian American Journalists Association, the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, the American Public Health Association, the Templeton-Cambridge Fellowship on Science and Religion, and the Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship.

In 2009-2010, Vedantam served as a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

Shankar Vedantam speaks internationally about how the “hidden brain” shapes our world and is the author of two non-fiction books: The Hidden Brain: How our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars and Save Our Lives, published in 2010, and Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain published in 2021, an exploration of deception’s role in human success.

Have you ever wanted to gather people, but then something stops you? What if I burn the apps? What if the house is a mess? Will people bring something, or chip in? Or, the biggest fear of all – what if nobody shows up?

Sarah Harmeyer, the founder of Neighbor’s Table, calls herself a “people gatherer,” and is an expert at bringing people together. Sarah offers some practical advice and much comfort. In her view people just want to be invited. As she says, we should be about blessing, not impressing.

Also – In the spirit of building more connection, we have released “Recipes for Connection.” Gathering stories and ideas from all over the country, this booklet offers all sorts of ideas for connecting over food. So whether you’re deepening relationships with old friends or creating new connections, we hope “Recipes for Connection” will be an inspiration to get together.

Download the booklet at SurgeonGeneral.gov/recipes.

(01:51) Sarah Harmeyer and why she started Neighbor’s Table

(11:29) What are the essential ingredients for gathering people?

(13:45) What are some things Sarah does to create a great vibe?

(21:43) How gathering simply comes down to caring and kindness

(25:57) Gathering is joy and service

(29:27) Who is the new Surgeon General of SoHip, Dallas?