Progress, Potential, and Possibilities Podcast / Show

Send us a text Dr. Rachel Ramoni, is the Chief Research and Development Officer of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), where she oversees their nationwide research enterprise, encompassing some 2,000 active projects, at more than 100 sites, with a total budget of $2 billion in both direct VA support, and research funding from outside entities such as the National Institutes of Health, other federal agencies, and nonprofit and private organizations. The United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is a federal Cabinet-level agency that provides comprehensive healthcare services to military veterans at over 1,000 VA medical centers and outpatient clinics located throughout the US – It also provides several non-healthcare benefits including disability compensation, vocational rehabilitation, education assistance, home loans, and life insurance; and provides burial and memorial benefits to eligible veterans and family members. The VA serves over 9 million enrolled Veterans each year, employs over 377,000 people with an annual budget of $200 billion. Dr. Ramoni earned a Doctor of Medicine in Dentistry degree from the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, as well as a Master of Science and Doctor of Science in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Ramoni was previously on the faculty at New York University College of Dentistry in the department of epidemiology and health promotion, and at Harvard Medical School in the department of biomedical informatics. While at Harvard, Dr. Ramoni founded and led the Undiagnosed Diseases Network (UDN) Coordinating Center, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health, and brings together clinical and research experts from across the U.S. to solve challenging medical mysteries using advanced technologies. Among Dr. Ramoni's research interests are informatics, genomics, and precision medicine. Prior to her role with the UDN, she was executive director of the Substitutable Medical Applications, Reusable Technologies project, or SMART. Initially launched with federal funding, SMART aims to make it easier for providers across different health systems to securely share information from electronic health records. The overarching goal is to improve the quality and continuity of care for patients. Dr. Ramoni has also led research projects aimed at improving dental care nationwide. She worked on implementing standardized diagnostic terms for dentistry, and developing a patient safety system that would help dentists identify and prevent adverse events. Dr. Ramoni is extensively published and her publications have appeared in Birth Defects Research, Epidemiology, Circulation, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the American Journal of Human Genetics, and numerous other journals. Support the show

Send us a text Dr. James Weinstein, is Senior Vice President, Microsoft Healthcare, where he is in charge of leading strategy, innovation and health equity functions. Prior to Microsoft, Dr. Weinstein was president and CEO of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health, a $2.0 billion academic medical center in Northern New England, where he led the organization to adopt a population health model, including the transition from fee-for-service toward global payments. Prior to becoming CEO, Dr. Weinstein served as president of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Clinic and was director of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice (TDI), home of the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, which for decades has documented the ongoing variations in health care delivery across the United States. Dr. Weinstein is a founding member and the inaugural executive director of the National High Value Healthcare Collaborative, along with Mayo Clinic, Intermountain Healthcare, The Dartmouth Institute, and Denver Health. The Collaborative is a partnership of health systems that has taken on the challenge of improving the quality of care while lowering costs on a national scale. Dr. Weinstein is a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and held the Peggy Y. Thomson Chair in the Evaluative Clinical Sciences at the Geisel School of Medicine while at Dartmouth; he’s a Senior Fellow, for the Healthcare Center and Clinical Professor Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and a Clinical Professor at the Kellogg School of Business, Northwestern University. Dr. Weinstein is a member of Special Medical Advisory Group for the national Veteran’s Administration. He serves on the Boards of Trustees for the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience, the Intermountain Health System, and IMAGINECARE, a company he started while CEO to use remote sensing to manage patients outside the traditional brick-and-mortar medical system and serves on several other boards. Throughout his career as a researcher and renowned spine surgeon, Dr. Weinstein has received more than $70 million in federal funding and published more than 325 peer-reviewed articles and continues as Editor in Chief, Spine. He also serves on the Board of Advanced Regenerative Medicine Institute (ARMI/BioFAB), a Department of Defense (DoD) program to bio-print artificial organs. He is also the author of "Unraveled: Prescriptions to Repair a Broken Health Care System". Support the show

Send us a text On today’s show we are going to be weaving together a really interesting range of themes including psychedelics, pharmacognosy and medicinal botany, history, religion & spirituality, end of life care, dreaming, mental health and a whole lot more. Brian Muraresku is the author of "The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name". Brian graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University with a degree in Latin, Greek and Sanskrit. As an alumnus of Georgetown Law and a member of the New York Bar, he has been practicing law internationally for fifteen years. He is also founding executive director of Doctors for Cannabis Regulation. Their work has been featured on CNN and ESPN, as well as The Washington Post and San Francisco Chronicle. In arbitration with the NFL in 2018, Mr. Muraresku represented the first professional athlete in the United States to seek a therapeutic use exemption for cannabis. The Immortality Key is his debut book. Support the show

Send us a text Mr. Ken Shamrock is the very first athlete elected to the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Hall of Fame, widely regarded as one of the biggest stars in the history of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), as well as an icon and pioneer of the sport. He’s widely known for his participation in the Ultimate Fighting Championships, The World Wrestling Federation, Pride Fighting Championships, Pancrase, and Total Nonstop Action Wrestling, and during his career earned the title of "The World's Most Dangerous Man." Over his career, Mr. Shamrock garnered no fewer than 14 World and other Major Championships. He is the founder of the Lion's Den mixed martial arts training camp, a mixed martial arts team and training facility with its headquarters in Reno, Nevada, with now new training facilities, including Lion's Den Arizona and Connecticut. In addition to his MMA career, Mr. Shamrock is one of very few trainers allowed to teach US Military troops self defense, and currently serves as a subject matter expert in the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program (MCMAP) and is regularly asked to train Army troops as well. When he’s not training them, Mr. Shamrock also tries to meet with wounded warriors whenever possible during his travels. Mr. Shamrock is also the author of several books including: "Inside the Lion's Den" and "Beyond the Lion's Den", and his latest book “Life Story of Ken Shamrock” is due to be released in 2020. Mr. Shamrock is actively involved in children's issues, which he considers of paramount importance, specifically troubled children, and he freely donates his time to meet with kids in schools, juvenile facilities, recovery centers, hospitals, and churches wherever he travels. He currently heads a new project that will eventfully house and care for over 200 at- risk boys and girls, passing on the education, training, hope, and encouragement Additionally, Mr. Shamrock is also currently a bare-knuckle boxing promoter, through promotion organization called Valor. Support the show

Send us a text Dr. Leonard Hayflick, is Professor of Anatomy, University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, where he has been part of the faculty since 1988 Dr. Hayflick received his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, did a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Texas under the tutelage of the renowned cell culturist Prof. Charles Pomerat, and then returned to Philadelphia, where he spent ten years as an Associate Member of the Wistar Institute, and two years as an Assistant Professor of Research Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Hayflick is extremely well known for his research in a range of domains including cell biology, virus vaccine development, and mycoplasmology. In 1962 he discovered that, contrary to what was believed since the turn of the century, cultured normal human and animal cells have a limited capacity to replicate. This phenomenon became known as “The Hayflick Limit” which became a discovery that overturned a dogma that existed since early in the twentieth century and focused attention on the cell as the fundamental location of age changes. Dr. Hayflick is a member of numerous national and international scientific and public boards of directors and committees. He is now, or has been, on the Editorial Boards of more than ten professional journals including as Editor-in-Chief of the international journal “EXPERIMENTAL GERONTOLOGY” He is a member of twenty scientific and professional societies in which he has held high offices including President of the Gerontological Society of America, a founding member of the Council of the National Institute on Aging, NIH and Chairman of its' Executive Committee, consultant to the National Cancer Institute, the World Health Organization and member of several scientific advisory boards. He was also Chairman of the Scientific Review Board of the American Federation for Aging Research where he was also a Vice President and a Member of the Board of Directors. Dr. Hayflick is the author of the popular book, “How and Why We Age” and was also a consultant at Genentech from a year after its founding and for the next 25 years where he was instrumental in developing their technology for growing animal cells in fermentation tanks in which most of their billion $$ blockbuster biologics products were produced. Support the show