1:2:1

Crystal Mackall, MD, will lead a cancer immunotherapy center at Stanford that is being launched with an initial $10 million grant from the Parker Foundation.

Over the last 15 years, Stanford Biodesign – now called the Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign - has trained more than 1,000 graduate students and nearly 200 fellows. In a new 1:2:1 podcast, Paul Yock, the Martha Meier Weiland Professor of Medicine, founding co-chair of Stanford’s Department of Bioengineering, and Biodesign’s director, discusses the program's success.

Veteran NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw takes life at a much different pace than during his swashbuckling days as a mega broadcaster. In 2013, he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma at age 73. He chronicled his battle with cancer in the recent memoir, A Lucky Life Interrupted.

Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, calls the human brain “the most complicated object in the universe.” The Stanford psychiatrist and bioengineer is well-known for developing two game-changing techniques — optogenetics and CLARITY.

In this podcast, former President Jimmy Carter talks about the plight of women and girls around the globe.

Jonas Salk: A Life tells the story of the brilliant and complicated physician who discovered and developed the first vaccine for polio. Physician-author Charlotte Jacobs, MD, professor emerita of medicine at Stanford, spent the past decade digging through archives, conducting over a hundred interviews and reading countless first-hand accounts and period news to write her latest biography.

New attention is being paid to a growing nationwide public health crisis - an epidemic of heroin use. In the last 13 years, there has been a fourfold increase in heroin overdoses in the United States. So what’s fueling the explosion of heroin use? Stanford addiction expert Keith Humphreys, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, says that it’s largely propelled by the huge number of prescriptions for opioid painkillers. In this podcast, he discusses the nationwide epidemic and whether or not enough is being done to combat the trafficking and use of the drug.

Thought leaders from several disciplines recently gathered at the Stanford campus for the inaugural ChildX conference to discuss how to solve health problems in pregnancy, infancy and childhood. One session focused on the future of child health in an aging America and featured Stanford health policy expert Paul Wise, MD, MPH, where he discussed the evaporation of child health policy in the U.S. In this podcast he talks about hows health policy has turned into cost-containment policy, spelling trouble for children and child health.

Molecular biologist-turned Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard, PhD, shares his thoughts on the meaning of happiness, the power of mediation and why the world needs altruism more than ever.

In this 1:2:1 podcast, Stanford neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi opens up about his battle with terminal lung cancer and how he is facing his own mortality.

In this 1:2:1 podcast, bestselling author and physician Abraham Verghese, MD, discusses the timeless rituals of medicine. http://stanmed.stanford.edu/2015spring/time-lines.html

Stanford pain psychologist Beth Darnall, PhD, discusses her new book, “Less Pain, Fewer Pills,” which is aimed at helping the millions of sufferers regain control over their chronic pain without the use of opioids.

The post of U.S. surgeon general has remained vacant for nearly a year. An appointment by President Obama is mired in Washington politics. So it raises the question: Can we do without a surgeon general? And, does the role of the nation’s top doctor still matter? Associated Press medical reporter Mike Stobbe’s new book, Surgeon General’s Warning, argues that it does. In this podcast, he discusses the book and the decline of the surgeon general’s office.

Two years ago, Stanford surgeon Sherry Wren, MD, had excruciating pain in her neck. The cause was never really pinpointed. Was it a result of a harrowing escape from a sinking yacht in Malaysia, or just years of wear and tear from leaning over in the OR? The surgery to remove a ruptured disc resulted in a partial paralysis that temporarily derailed her career. In this podcast, she shares her pain — both physical and mental — and how the journey to return to surgery made her both a better physician and a better teacher.

He’s CNN’s chief medical correspondent, and a neurosurgeon too. And now Sanjay Gupta is using his very public platform to talk about the benefits of medical marijuana, and the need to combat loneliness. In this podcast, Gupta discusses why he decided not to become the surgeon general in the Obama administration, what it’s like to report on health crises around the globe and his new campaign to "Just Say Hello."

He apprenticed with the famed photographer Annie Liebovitz at Rolling Stone magazine when he was 18 years old. And over the years photographer Max Aguilera-Hellweg has shot photos for a multitude of international publications including Stern, Rolling Stone, the New Yorker, Esquire, the New York Times, Washington Post, and National Geographic. He has one more credit to his portfolio which is most unusual - he’s a physician. At 43 years old, he received his medical degree from Tulane University with a specialty in internal medicine. Surgical photography is just one of his specialties. In this podcast, he discusses his craft and the photos he shot for the current issue of Stanford Medicine magazine - a special report on surgery.

Stanford neuroscientist Tony Wyss-Coray, PhD, has found that infusions of blood plasma from young mice improves memory and learning in old mice. In this podcast, Wyss-Coray, who is also a senior research career scientist at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System, discusses the new study along with his plans to explore whether the findings could lead to treatments for brain diseases like Alzheimer's.

Should physicians weigh the costs of treatments when making decisions about clinical care? Organizations like the American College of Cardiology recently have issued guidelines that allow docs to use cost data to rate the value of medical decisions. Paul Heidenreich, MD, professor of cardiovascular medicine at Stanford and co-chair of the committee that wrote the new policy for the ACC, discusses the issue in this podcast.

A few years ago, Stanford cardiologist Euan Ashley, MD, described the promise of genomics for diagnosing and treating diseases as the "wild west" - a lot of researchers examining ways of using the technique, but too early to have meaningful results in the clinic. Since then, much has changed in the field.

METRICS is a new center at Stanford University that aims to transform research practices to improve the reproducibility, efficiency and quality of scientific investigations.

Many argue that international health aid is wasted and doesn't reach the people who really need it. But a new Stanford analysis of both government and private aid programs shows that the funding leads to significant improvements, especially in life expectancy and child mortality rates. In this podcast, health-policy expert Eran Bendavid, MD, discusses the new study.

Electronic-cigarette use has grown rapidly across the United States, prompting questions about the devices’ safety and whether they serve as a gateway to conventional cigarettes or a means of kicking the habit without inhaling the carcinogens in smoke.

A gene variant know as ApoE4 is the strongest known single genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s, a neurological syndrome that affects about 30 million people worldwide. But a new study led by Stanford neurologist Michael Greicius, MD, shows that women who carry a copy of the variant have a substantially greater risk for the disease than do men.

In his best-selling book, My Age of Anxiety, Scott Stossel describes his long-standing struggle with anxiety, and examines the efforts to understand what is now considered the most common form of mental illness in the United States.

Dick Cheney has lived with chronic heart disease for virtually all of his adult life. At 37, as a young man running for the U.S. Congress in Wyoming, he had his first heart attack. His last – a fifth – occurred in 2010.

For 5 days in Aug. 2006, the hospital staff at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans struggled to care for their patients in a hospital crippled and isolated by Hurricane Katrina. Physician-author Sheri Fink chronicles what happened in her new book.

Carla Shatz, PhD, director of Bio-X and professor of neurobiology and of biology, reflects on the Clark Center and how the building embodies the spirit of the Bio-X initiative, which began 15 years ago.

In 2008, breast-cancer pathologist Kimberly Allison, MD, received the shocking news that she had stage-3 breast cancer. She chronicles her personal experience as both doctor and cancer patient in the book Red Sunshine.

Forty years ago, Marian Wright Edelman founded the Children’s Defense Fund; since then she and the organization have been at the forefront of overhauling public policy in child poverty, early childhood development, education and health.

There have been dramatic advances in the use of genomic analysis, molecular biology, imaging technologies and data management to make cancer treatment less toxic and more individualized. In this podcast, Beverly Mitchell, MD, discusses these trends.

Pain management has come a long way since the days when physicians mainly used anesthesiology techniques to reduce pain. In this podcast, Elliot Krane, MD, discusses the mystery and complexities of treating and managing chronic pain.

According to Stanford sleep specialist Rafael Pelayo, MD, the most common sleep disorder in America is insufficient sleep. Although there are many treatment options available, many patients with insomnia or other sleep issues fail to seek help.

“The Conversation Project,” is a national movement dedicated to the wishes of end-of-life care. It was launched by Ellen Goodman, Pulitzer-prize winning columnist for the Boston Globe and author, after her mother's death.

On April 2, President Obama announced a new federal brain-research initiative aimed at developing new technologies and methods for understanding the human brain. Stanford's William Newsome discusses why this research is important right now.

A new study has found that women who took aspirin on a regular basis reduced their risk of developing melanoma by an average of 21 percent. In this podcast, Stanford dermatologist, Jean Tang, MD, PhD, discusses the findings. (March 11, 2013)

A new study has found that for healthy women carrying a well-known genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, estrogen therapy could be beneficial. Natalie Rasgon, MD, PhD, discusses the findings in this podcast. (February 21, 2013)

Actor Alan Alda is a visiting professor in journalism at Stony Brook University in New York and a co-founder of the school's Center for Communicating Science. In this podcast, he why communicating science effectively is critical. (January 21, 2013)

Lloyd Minor became Dean of the School of Medicine on December 1. He discusses what he has learned about Stanford since coming here in September, what he values in himself and other people, and where health care is headed. (December 3, 2012)

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has issued a new draft recommendation that urges everyone in the country -- adolescents and adults between 15 and 65 -- to get an HIV test. (November 20, 2012)

Captain Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger III is best-known as the pilot who miraculously landed US Airways Flight #1549 in the Hudson River. He discusses why he believes it’s critical for medicine to adapt safety lessons from aviation. (August 22, 2012)

(October 23, 2012) On December 1, Philip Pizzo, MD, ends a remarkable 12-year tenure as dean of the Stanford School of Medicine.

Brian Kobilka, MD, professor and chair of molecular and cellular physiology, discusses winning this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry. (October 26, 2012)