Ep. 157: My youngest son has always been a precocious child, speaking full sentences at a year and a half old. I’ll never forget one night, when he was probably 2 years old. I was laying him down in his crib, tucking him in at bedtime. I covered him with his blanket and laid my hand on his head, if only to feel his soft, warm baby hair. “Goodnight buddy,” I said, expecting a “night night mama” in return. What he said instead unsettles me to this day. “I used to be a grown up,” he said, suddenly

Ep. 156: Picture Japan. Maybe you’re thinking of Mount Fuji towering in the distance, framed by cascades of pink cherry blossoms. Perhaps a buddhist temple perched serenely beside a lake dotted with lotus flowers, ever floating, gliding slightly in the mostly still water. Japan seems… nice. It seems calm. It seems peaceful. In the back of our minds maybe we know Japan was on the wrong side of World War II. There was Pearl Harbor and all that. But we don’t tend to let it taint our views of the

Ep. 154 & 155: In 1847, 150 members of the all male student body at Geneva Medical College in New York were tasked with an unexpected mission. The Dean had received an application for admission to the school. Nothing crazy there, the Dean received applications often and was responsible for deciding whether or not these hopefuls would be accepted. This time was different though, because the applicant was a woman. At the time, 1840s, there weren’t many medical schools in the United States and