Podcasts about Larry Baker

We talk with Larry Baker about his experience with sports parents and their behavior.

Larry Baker managed and owned movie theaters in Oklahoma before moving to Iowa and writing novels. His seventh book, “Harry & Sue,” takes place in just such a theater, populated by a variety of ghosts you will know, such as Marilyn Monroe, Harry Chapin, Mark Twain, Patsy, Cline, and Harry Houdini. But the ghosts, particularly … Continue reading The post Culture Crawl 834 “Steal Shamelessly From Your Past” appeared first on Jazz 88.3 KCCK.

Author and fellow Harry Chapin fan, Larry Baker joins Mac for a chat about his latest book: Harry and Sue. The two also discuss life as a writer, motivation and, of course, Harry Chapin and his influence. Get his latest books at Ice Cube Press and while you're at it, hit like and subscribe for this podcast channel as well:) Look for more at The Forever Adventure Network!

Join us as we talk to Jason & Larry Baker. Hear these two talk about two generations of racing, & what they're doing nowadays! If you want a race car built, these are your guys!

We all know that what happens in our world outside of work doesn't stop at the office door. How do you approach discussing global events with a multicultural team, and how do these conversations affect corporate outcomes? Culture Moments host Larry Baker (he/him), Harvard Business Publishing's Vice President of Diversity and Culture Ellen Bailey (she/her), and The Culture Mastery's President and CEO Christian Höferle (he/him) discuss what it means to create brave spaces where employees feel empowered to embrace discomfort and have authentic conversations. Find the full show notes and transcript here. Follow LCW on social media: LCW LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/language-&-culture-worldwide LCW Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LanguageAndCultureWorldwide/ LCW Twitter: https://twitter.com/LCWllc

While a person's faith or non-faith is a deeply personal experience, it is also part of the authentic, intersectional identity they bring to the workplace. Yet, many organizations do not consider this important part of workers' identities outside the Christian faith. In practicing cultural competency, it is crucial that organizations move beyond religious tolerance and toward inclusion­­—especially for non-Christian faiths and non-faiths—to ensure equitable policies for their diverse communities. In this conversation, Culture Moments host Larry Baker (he/him) and DEI consultant Rahimeh Ramezany (she/her) delve into the complexities of faith in the workplace, drawing on Rahimeh's experience as a consultant, speaker, DEI expert, and multiethnic, neurodiverse, visibly Muslim American woman. After listening to the conversation, we encourage you to share your takeaways on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. This Brave Conversation was originally a live stream discussion recorded on August 25th, 2022.

0:00 A one-woman show is taking place in the Heart Garden outside Government House in St. John's and gracing the stage is Labrador's own Deantha Edmunds. The playwright hopes it'll challenge people's assumptions of our province's history. 07:29 Looking for some rock and country? A Saturday concert fundraising for the Happy Valley-Goose Bay Firettes is taking place at Kinsmen park. Hear from Larry Baker for more.  14:52 More internationally trained doctors from the province will be able to apply to Memorial University. Hear from the Premier's announcement.  19:55 A sugar tax in our province raised some flags for an eating disorder awareness advocate in Ontario. She said villainizing sugar could lead to people thinking wrongly about food and their bodies and may lead to more eating disorders.  25:13 To get more thoughts on the incoming tax, CBC's Margaret Aligbe spoke to some residents of Corner Brook on if the new tax would impact their spending habits when it comes to pop. 27:50 Boats, more boats, and a town all named Emily! Dale Jarvis will tell us all about how Emily Harbour, a former settlement north of Rigolet, came to be in our series 'Place and Time.'  31:33 The Earle family in Happy Valley-Goose Bay wants the Perrault Place community centre to get up and running again but say a meeting with stakeholders keeps being delayed.   

Following 2020's racial reckoning, companies across the U.S. engaged in their own brave conversations, some for the first time. While we know that many of these conversations centered around a U.S.-centric lens, the conversations that resulted are global conversations that have transcended borders. But how do conversations on race differ across borders and cultures? How do you approach these conversations when considering different cultural identities within one organization? What is needed to move these conversations forward? And what can you personally do in your own organization to create space for these conversations? Culture Moments podcast host Larry Baker is joined by, Raashi Sikka (VP Global Diversity & Inclusion at Ubisoft) and Alejandro Tobolski (Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Head at Johnson & Johnson) to unpack all these topics and more. Find the full show notes and transcript here. Follow LCW on social media: LCW LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/language-&-culture-worldwide LCW Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LanguageAndCultureWorldwide/ LCW Twitter: https://twitter.com/LCWllc

Did you know that July is BIPOC Mental Health Awareness Month? BIPOC Mental Health Awareness Month aims to increase visibility of the ways historically disenfranchised, marginalized, or oppressed racial and ethnic groups face unique mental health challenges. Culture Moments podcast host Larry Baker (he/him) is joined by, LCW Consultant, Melonya Johnson (she/her) to take this conversation further and examine the specific challenges facing BIPOC DEI practitioners as they discuss inequality, racism, and oppression on a daily basis, while often still enduring it in the workplace. This Brave Conversation was originally a live stream discussion recorded on July 26th, 2022. Find the full show notes and transcript here. Follow LCW on social media: LCW LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/language-&-culture-worldwide LCW Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LanguageAndCultureWorldwide/ LCW Twitter: https://twitter.com/LCWllc

Across the country, “Critical Race Theory” has been weaponized as a justification for limiting identity-based conversations in schools and workplaces. To date, at least seven states have passed legislation limiting these types of conversations, while citing or banning Critical Race Theory in the process and at least seventeen more states have similar legislation in the works, proving this conversation is not going away. In this Brave Conversation, Culture Moments podcast host Larry Baker is joined by Natasha Aruliah, JEDdi Consultant, Facilitator and Coach at The Inner Activist, and Tahitia Timmons, Senior Consultant at LCW, as they break down the true meaning of Critical Race Theory and de-weaponize it in the process. Find the full show notes and transcript here: https://languageandculture.com/culture-moments-de-weaponizing-critical-race-theory/ Follow LCW on social media: LCW LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/language-&-culture-worldwide LCW Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LanguageAndCultureWorldwide/ LCW Twitter: https://twitter.com/LCWllc

Juneteenth is now a federal holiday and is being recognized more than ever across America. Yet, not everyone knows why we recognize this holiday, what happened on this day, and, most importantly, why it matters. Culture Moments podcast host Larry Baker (he/him) is joined by Dr. Brandon Caffey (he/him), Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Urbana School District #116 to discuss how to keep this meaning at the heart of this holiday and how you can keep this meaning infused within your workplace's Juneteenth programing. This Brave Conversation was originally a live stream discussion recorded on June 16th, 2022. Continue your learning! Access LCW's complimentary learning module Celebrating Juneteenth here. Find the full show notes and transcript here: https://languageandculture.com/culture-moments-lets-talk-about-why-juneteenth-matters/ Guest and Host Info: Larry Baker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larry-baker-8b262b75/ Dr. Brandon Caffey: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-brandon-caffey-5b50977/ Follow LCW on social media: LCW LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/language-&-culture-worldwide LCW Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LanguageAndCultureWorldwide/ LCW Twitter: https://twitter.com/LCWllc

What are gender pronouns and why do they matter in the LGBTQ+ community? What do you do when you misgender someone in the workplace? What's it like to be misgendered? Culture Moments podcast host Larry Baker (he/him) is joined by LCW Associate Consultant Ada Vargas (they/them) for a candid discussion on Ada's experience joining LCW, how LCW upskilled staff on pronoun use in the workplace, and why you should be having these conversations within your own organization. This Brave Conversation was originally a live stream discussion recorded on June 2nd 2022. Find the full show notes and transcript here: https://languageandculture.com/culture-moments-lets-talk-about-gender-pronouns/ Guest and Host Info: Larry Baker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larry-baker-8b262b75/ Ada Vargas: https://languageandculture.com/team/ada-vargas/ Follow LCW on social media: LCW LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/language-&-culture-worldwide LCW Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LanguageAndCultureWorldwide/ LCW Twitter: https://twitter.com/LCWllc

While the pandemic has led to the widespread acceptance of remote work and drawn increased attention to digital accessibility, in many cases, workers with a disability have not benefited from these advancements like their peers. In fact, a 2019 Rutgers study showed that among people who continued working during the pandemic, workers with disabilities were less likely than those without disabilities to be working from home and experienced heightened levels of joblessness. In this Brave Conversation, Culture Moments podcast host Larry Baker is joined by guests Deb Dagit, the President and Founder of Deb Daggit Diversity LLC, and Tracy Lee Mitchelson, Director of Training, Disability, and Inclusion at GSK to unpack these insights and more. Together they discuss what the impact of the pandemic has been on workers with a disability, what we have learned from this experience, and where we go from here. Find the full show notes and transcript here: https://languageandculture.com/culture-moments-what-work-from-home-has-meant-for-workers-with-disabilities/ Guest and Host Info: Larry Baker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larry-baker-8b262b75/ Deb Dagit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deborah-dagit-146823/ Tracy Lee Mitchelson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracymitchelson/ Follow LCW on social media: LCW LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/language-&-culture-worldwide LCW Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LanguageAndCultureWorldwide/ LCW Twitter: https://twitter.com/LCWllc

Author and former literature professor, Larry Baker, visits with us to talk about his newest novel,Wyman and the Florida Knights. The book tells the story of Peter Wyman, a famous American portrait painter, who is nearing the end of his life and wants to escape his past by seeking a place of refuge. “He's told Read More

According to a recent study by Qualtrics, 58% of employees report their job is the main source of their mental distress. The pandemic only exacerbated this trend - further blurring the lines between "home" and "work." But how did this impact the inequities we know already existed in access to healthcare among BIPOC communities? In this Brave Conversation, Culture Moments podcast host Larry Baker is joined by guests Ariel McGrew, Business Psychologist at Tactful Disruption, and Dr. Harry Petaway, Director of Business Development and Community Engagement for the Forum on Workplace Inclusion and Creator of The Equity Community of Practice. Within their conversation, they dive into what holistic health is, how the pandemic has impacted holistic health particularly for BIPOC communities, and what employers can do to support their employees holistic health. Find the full show notes and transcript here: https://languageandculture.com/culture-moments-holistic-health-during-a-pandemic/ Guest and Host Info: Ariel McGrew: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arielshiversmcgrew/ Dr. Harry Petaway: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hpetaway/ Larry Baker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larry-baker-8b262b75/ Follow LCW on social media: LCW LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/language-&-culture-worldwide LCW Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LanguageAndCultureWorldwide/ LCW Twitter: https://twitter.com/LCWllc

Mentorship. You know the term. You're familiar with the concept. But what does it mean to truly foster a meaningful mentorship in the workplace? In this Brave Conversation, Culture Moments podcast, host Larry Baker is joined by Larry is joined by guests Lisa Fain, CEO of The Center for Mentoring Excellence, Kamillah Knight, Senior Global Director of Diversity and Inclusion at Danaher Corporation, and LCW's own Tamara Thorpe, Senior Consultant and the founder of Real Mentors Network. Together, they explore what it means to form an authentic mentorship, why mentorship matters, the different forms mentorship can take, and what it looks like to put this conversation into action and pursue a mentorship in your own workplace. Find the full show notes and transcript here: https://languageandculture.com/culture-moments-podcast-what-mentorship-means/ Guest and Host Info: Lisa Fain: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisazfain/ Kamillah Knight: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kamillahknight/ Tamara Thorpe: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamarathorpe1/ Larry Baker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larry-baker-8b262b75/ Follow LCW on social media: LCW LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/language-&-culture-worldwide LCW Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LanguageAndCultureWorldwide/ LCW Twitter: https://twitter.com/LCWllc

The great resignation… the great reshuffle… the great realignment… whatever you call it, this period of flux, characterized by high rates of workers leaving jobs for better or more flexible opportunities, doesn't seem to be going anywhere and no organization is immune. In this episode of the Culture Moments podcast, host Larry Baker has a Brave Conversation about the Great Resignation's impacts on businesses and the BIPOC community. Larry is joined by guests Michael Johnson (Managing Director, HR Capital Group) and Kenneth Peck (SVP of Operations, Valor Intelligent Processing). Together, they explore what this moment means for businesses, how BIPOC workers might be affected, and what organizations can do to promote a sense of belonging amongst their entire workforce. Find the full show notes and transcript here: hyyps://languageandculture.com/culture-moments-podcast-great-resignation Guest and Host Info: Michael Johnson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-johnson-phr/ Kenneth Peck: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenneth-peck-9a494447/ Larry Baker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larry-baker-8b262b75/ Follow LCW on social media: LCW LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/language-&-culture-worldwide LCW Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LanguageAndCultureWorldwide/ LCW Twitter: https://twitter.com/LCWllc

In this special edition of our Brave Conversations series, host Larry Baker has a discussion with LCW colleagues José Guardado (Principal Consultant), Melissa Neu (Buisness Development Consultant), and Rebecca Parrilla (Director of Content & Research) on a shared experience many people can relate to: parenting during the pandemic. This unique episode highlights features Language & Culture Worldwide team voices, as they reflect on the past two years together and explore: the challenges of parenting and caregiving during the pandemic, how this experience changed their values, what privileges they might have had that helped them get through it all, and what the pandemic has taught us about work culture moving forward from here. Find the full show notes and transcript here: https://languageandculture.com/culture-moments-podcast-parenting-during-the-pandemic Guest and Host Info: José Guardado: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joserguardado/ Melissa Neu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cmelissaneu/ Rebecca Parrilla: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccaparrilla/ Larry Baker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larry-baker-8b262b75/ Follow LCW on social media: LCW LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/language-&-culture-worldwide LCX Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LanguageAndCultureWorldwide/ LCW Twitter: https://twitter.com/LCWllc

LCW Consultant and host Larry Baker continues our Brave Conversation series with a discussion on the Black community's experience in the time since the murder of George Floyd, what this moment has meant in the context of the Black experience in America, and what can continue to be done to move towards a more equitable society. Larry is joined by guests, Bernard C. Coleman III (Chief Diversity and Engagement Officer, Gusto), Judith Harrison (Executive Vice President, Global Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Weber Shandwick), and Amberley Smith (Diversity and Inclusion Program Lead, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation) for a rich conversation reflecting on personal, professional, and societal experiences. Find the full show notes and transcript here: https://languageandculture.com/culture-moments-podcast-a-year-after-george-floyd-whats-next/ Guest and Host Info: Bernard C. Coleman III: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernardcolemaniii/ Judith Harrison: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judithharrison/ Amberley Smith: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amberleysmith/ Larry Baker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larry-baker-8b262b75/ Follow LCW on social media: LCW LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/language-&-culture-worldwide LCW Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LanguageAndCultureWorldwide/ LCW Twitter: https://twitter.com/LCWllc

Ranked choice voting; Larry Baker; school shopping; Jax BBQ Festival

Ranked choice voting; Larry Baker; school shopping; Jax BBQ Festival

In this episode of the Culture Moments podcast, LCW Consultant and host Larry Baker has a brave conversation about the challenges the Latinx community faced during the pandemic and the obstacles this community continues to face in the workplace today. Guests Daisy Auger-Dominguez (Chief People Officer, VICE Media) and Carlos Herrera (Inclusive Diversity Lead Consultant, Allstate) explore timely and crucial topics including how the pandemic most affected the Latinx community, why some companies find it difficult to support the Latinx community after Hispanic Heritage month, and what it means to go beyond performative allyship. Find the full show notes and transcript here:https://languageandculture.com/culture-moments-podcast-what-about-the-latinx-community Guest and Host Info: Daisy Auger-Dominguez:https://www.linkedin.com/in/daisyaugerdominguez/ Carlos Herrera: https://www.linkedin.com/in/herreracarlos/ Larry Baker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larry-baker-8b262b75/ Follow LCW on social media: LCW LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/language-&-culture-worldwide LCX Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LanguageAndCultureWorldwide/ LCW Twitter: https://twitter.com/LCWllc

In this episode of the Culture Moments podcast, host Larry Baker has a brave conversation about what a post-pandemic “return to normal” might look like for the LGBTQ+ community, how organizational leaders can support their LGBTQ+ staff members, and what authentic change looks like in practice. Indigo Avisov (Sr. Diversity & Inclusion Business Partner, Uber) and Dr. Joel A. Brown (Chief Visionary Officer, Pneumos) share their insights and perspectives on the pandemic, pride month, and what it means to challenge organizations to make meaningful and lasting change. Find the full show notes and transcript here: https://languageandculture.com//culture-moments-podcast-pride-after-the-pandemic Guest Info: Lara Avisov: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lavisov/ Dr. Joel A. Brown: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelanthonybrown/ LCW LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/company/language-&-culture-worldwide/ LCW FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/LanguageAndCultureWorldwide LCW Twitter: https://twitter.com/LCWllc

A youth-focused group is launching a campaign to help inform and motivate young voters ahead of the federal election. We hear from Daniele-Jocelyne Otou from the organization Apathy is Boring. Earlier this week, we heard about language signs that the Nunatsiavut Government was placing in north coast communities, and today we visit some of them. From live music to radio bingo to fireworks, the Greg Penashue Music Festival is back! We hear from Sheshatshiu Innu First Nation Chief Eugene Hart to get the details. And that's not the only music festival happening this week. Rock The Shelter is a family-friendly concert happening at Kinsmen Park in Happy Valley-Goose Bay which will be raising funds for the Housing Hub. We hear from organizer Larry Baker. NunatuKavut Community Council says they're not happy with an Incremental Treaty Agreement between the Innu Nation and the federal government. We hear from NCC President Todd Russell. The girl guides provide important programs to empower youth and strengthen communities, but Labrador's lack of volunteer leaders is making that near impossible. We hear how you can help when we speak with Heather Mesher-Brown. It's Friday, so that means we're hanging with the Waynes to hear their film and book selections for the week. Finally, a new program at the library in Labrador West is encouraging you to explore nature. We speak with Beverly McClenaghan of Nature Newfoundland and Labrador to find out.

We pre-recorded today's conversation with Guy Curtis & Jelise Ballon from LFCC Workforce Solutions to learn the details about their new leadership program: Leadership Basecamp. Leadership Basecamp, a first-level training series for brand-new supervisors and leaders to assist them in their transition into leadership, and develop bedrock skills that will serve them throughout their career and life. Leadership Basecamp consists of six core content classes that all participants take, and four elective courses that supplement their learning. Core classes include: Buddy to Boss, Adapting Your Leadership Style, HR Concepts for New Leaders, Time Management, Supervisor Communication Skills, and Toughest Supervisor Challenges. Elective courses will vary, but may include: Computer Basics, Keeping the Good Ones, Creative Problem Solving, A Heart for Service, Introduction to Microsoft Office, Women and Leadership, and Meeting Management. The first cohort of this new program will be offered in late August, but companies can also reach out to bring this program to their company & have it tailored to their needs. To learn more about Leadership Basecamp or to register, contact Larry Baker 540-868-7283 or lbaker@lfcc.edu. More details can also be found on their website: lfccworkforce.com/LB

We pre-recorded today's conversation with Bonnie Zampino, Workforce Services Director (Northern Region) for Virginia Career Works; Scott Carlson, Employer Network Director/Registered Apprenticeship Coordinator for Virginia Career Works; Coressa Hubbard, Life and Career Coach for Virginia Career Works; Lyle Schiavone from Outlier; and Larry Baker from LFCC Workforce Solutions. The group explained how their new Building Maintenance Technician Program came to fruition, how it works, and who should apply. There are limited slots available for this initial program though another program will be offered, likely in the fall. This program may also be expanded for other industries. The Building Maintenance Technician program is ideal for curious and creative young adults who enjoy solving problems and have excellent attention to detail. Candidates will be selected based on WIOA requirements. By the end of this 6 weeks program, the selected individuals will leave with: OSHA 10 Certification; hands-on knowledge of the job; guaranteed interview with local companies; and opportunities for further training and advancement. For more information, contact Coressa Hubbard via email: chubbard@vcwvalley.com or via phone: (540) 545-4146 - EXT. 301.

Fisheries scientist George Rose speaks with the CBC's Leigh Anne Power about his thoughts on the state of the cod fishery in the province, particularly on the south coast of Newfoundland. NunatuKavut Community Council President Todd Russell joins us to weigh in on possible changes to shrimp licenses, and the role of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Today is the day that all ballots for the provincial election need to be back in St. John's, however the votes of some people will not make it there. We hear from one of those people when we speak with Marilyn Michelin in North West River. Schools in Natuashish and Sheshatshiu have grief counsellors on site to deal with the aftermath of a death of a young Innu man. We speak from Principals Greg Quilty and Jesse Smith. A senior housing initiative in Labrador City is currently at a standstill after a project was denied funding from the federal government. We speak with Carson Gibson of Labrador West Pioneer Living about that. We take a field trip to Birch Island to talk about the practice of snowmobile skipping, and hear why it's a safety concern from Larry Baker and RCMP Constable Jerry Goudie. After that we talk skipping water and get a trail update from Eldon Wheeler of the White Wolf Snowmobiling Club in Labrador West. Finally, this morning we're speaking with Glenn Gear, a Nunatsiavut artist whose work is part of the Inua exhibition at the Inuit Art Centre in Winnipeg.

Dr. Hayes interviews Dr. Muss on geriatric oncology.   TRANSCRIPT PRESENTER: The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement.   DAN: Welcome to JCO's Cancer Stories, The Art of Oncology brought to you by the ASCO Podcast Network, a collection of nine programs covering a range of educational and scientific content and offering enriching insights into the world of cancer care. You can find all of the shows, including this one, at podcast.asco.org. Today, my guest on this podcast is Dr. Hyman Muss. Dr. Muss has been instrumental in several facets of the history of oncology, the generation and conduct of cooperative groups, the establishment of medical oncology as our board of the subspecialty, and perhaps he's most well known as one of the founders of the field of geriatric oncology.   Throughout his career, he's devoted much of his efforts to research in breast cancer mentoring many young investigators, and, frankly, I'm very proud to consider myself one of those. Dr. Muss's personal journey is fascinating. He was raised in Brooklyn, which even though he spent the last 50 years in other locations, including Boston, North Carolina, and Vermont, our listeners will appreciate from his dialect within the first 10 words from his mouth that he is, indeed, from Brooklyn.   He received his undergraduate degree at Lafayette College in Eastern Pennsylvania, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He got his medical degree at the State University of New York downstate in Brooklyn, where he was elected to the AOA. He did his internship and his residency at the then Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, now the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. That shows how old you are, Dr. Muss.   HYMAN MUSS: [LAUGHS]   DAN: Then he took a tour to Vietnam for a military tour of duty. He won a bronze star during that experience. He returned stateside, and he obtained his medical oncology fellowship at the then Sidney Farber Cancer Institute, which is now, of course, designated the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Following his fellowship in 1974, Hy joined the faculty at Bowman Gray School of Medicine at Wake Forrest, and there he served many roles over the next 22 years before he then moved to the University of Vermont to head the division of hematology oncology.   After 10 cold years in Vermont, he got tired of the snow, and he returned to North Carolina and this time at the University of North Carolina, where he is now the Mary Jones-Hudson distinguished professor of geriatric oncology and the director of the geriatric oncology program in the University of North Carolina Lineberger Cancer Center. Dr. Muss has authored over 500 peer reviewed papers, and like most of the guests on this program, he's just simply won too many awards for me to list them all. However, in addition to his bronze star from the US military, I know he is particularly proud of being an eagle scout. And if you ever meet Hy and he's got his tie on, you have to ask him about his tie tack because it is an eagle scout tie tack, one of the few people I know who has one of those.   Dr. Muss has served ASCO faithfully in many roles. He served on the board of directors from 2004 to 2007, and perhaps importantly, he was the recipient of the Allen S. Lichter Visionary Leader Award in 2020, which was well deserved. I knew of very few people with the vision that Hy Muss has shown for our field. Dr. Muss, welcome to our program.   HYMAN MUSS: Thank you so much. My mother would have loved that introduction.   DAN: [LAUGHS] Let's start with your origin story. I know you weren't bit by a radioactive spider in Brooklyn and became Spider-man, but seriously, I've heard you speak about your father, who was a dentist, and your uncle, a family practitioner, who, I think, shared an office or something. And this sounds a little bit different than the typical medical establishment that we work in these days. How did that influence you?   HYMAN MUSS: Oh my god. How different it is. I grew up in Brooklyn. And I went to PS-167, and we lived in a little brownstone. And my father was the neighborhood dentist, and my uncle was the neighborhood GP, a term not used anymore.   And I grew up with them, and I didn't always know I wanted to be a doctor. But I used to do house calls, especially with my uncle. And patients loved him. An interesting digression is he went to Howard University. He got a minority scholarship. He was picked out of Brooklyn.   He had a lot of African-American patients too, and he would take me in his Buick. And I'd go, and I'd get candy and ice cream and love what he did. And I loved the patient interaction that he had. And I think that was instrumental eventually in college of me after working in a chemistry lab for a semester doing research on cyclic ketones to say I don't think I can do this for a living and consider medical school, which I think was probably one of my best choices. So I had a great upbringing and saw medicine. If my parents saw a credit card or an Epic EMR, they wouldn't know what it was. They'd think it was science fiction.   DAN: And I'm sure you were HIPAA compliant when you were making the rounds with your uncle, right?   HYMAN MUSS: Oh, yeah. So when he got very sick and he couldn't really do his practice anymore, my father said go to your uncle's office and take his records down to the basement. And I went in, and my uncle's records were 3 by 5 index cards with the name of the patient, Mary Jones, diabetes, and her phone number. That was it. That was it. And I could move them down in a cardboard box. And today when we see one patient and start one Epic note, we got 85,000 documents in there, so it was great.   DAN: How did you get to Lafayette College?   HYMAN MUSS: My father had a patient, and I inherited from both my parents loquaciousness. And my dad would talk with all his patients, and bring them up occasionally, have a scotch with them. And he had a patient-- I was probably a junior or a senior in high school. I was really-- didn't know what I wanted to do. I wasn't the greatest student academically in high school.   Although, I went to Brooklyn Tech, a terrific high school. Rich Schilsky went to Stuyvesant, and the patient told my dad that he knew of a small college in Pennsylvania, a boys college, that was really good academically about 100 miles from home. Told me about it. I went and saw it, and liked it, and went there, and it really changed my life going to Lafayette. I got one on-- I went from 6,000 boys in my high school, no women, to a small college with maybe 1,200 boys, but I got to know my professors. It was a lot of one to one. It was terrific, and it still is.   DAN: It's amazing how many people I've interviewed where what they do is serendipity. This sort of thing. Didn't know what I wanted to do, and I was-- you may have heard Dr. Freireich when I interviewed him. Told me that when he grew up in Chicago, his mother was a single parent, and so he started stealing hubcaps to pay for his tuition. [LAUGHS] The founder of our field was a juvenile delinquent.   HYMAN MUSS: Oh, god. Yeah, no, I wasn't that bad. But Lafayette really changed my life, and I had people who actually knew me, knew my name, knew what I was interested in. I had some-- I was a chemistry major, not a really premed. And I had some wonderful professors, and I think they were disappointed when I didn't go for PhD graduate school in chemistry.   DAN: Again, it's just amazing, and I remember this every time I run into a med student, where I think I don't have time to do this. And just one little comment or pat on the back and suddenly they're off in a different way, so I think all of us keep that mind. I've interviewed several of the pioneers, who many of them were so-called yellow berets at the NIH in the 1960s to avoid going to Vietnam and, frankly, changed the picture of medicine in America I think, especially oncology. But so far, only you and one other interviewee, Larry Baker, who I know you know and good friends, actually joined the military and was sent overseas.   He did it sort of unwillingly. It looks, to me, like you did it more willingly. It's not that he was unwilling, but it wasn't in his career plans. That must have really been a very frightening but enlightening experience. Are you willing to give us any back stories on this and talk about it?   HYMAN MUSS: Of course. So I was in medical school. Vietnam was going, and the draft was hot. And we were all worried that if we got drafted out of medical school or out of residency, we'd have to repeat a whole year. So there was something called the Barry plan. And what it was is you joined the military, you could join any service, and they would let you finish medical school and actually credit me for time in the military during medical school.   And then they promised in residency not to draft me in the middle of the year. So I joined the Barry plan, and so I knew I had to go into the military. And so when my time came because I had good training, I was at the Brigham then, the military said, well, if you want to do three years instead of two years, we'll send you to this place or that to do research. And I didn't want to spend another year, so I know the minute I told them that I was heading to Vietnam. I did go to the NIH to look at a cardiology training.   And I got there, and I was the only guy sitting in that interview area who hadn't written 10 papers. So I knew I was going to Vietnam after that day too. And I didn't about the NCI. I didn't know about cancer. Some of my close friends and your friends went to the NCI.   Had I known, it would have been a terrific thing, and I would have applied. I would have worked with the greats there at the time. But I didn't know, so I went to Vietnam. And I was with an artillery battalion. I wasn't anything elegant. I never saw any units with MASH with women or anything.   I was married three months. It was extremely hard on my wife, Loretta, who you know well, but I learned a lot about myself then. I was 27 years old. I didn't have 25 smart people behind me to ask questions to, residents, and terrific faculty, and colleagues, and I got to know myself. I was terrified when I went, terrified, but I got to know the system.   And you learn how well-run the military is. Unlike some of our clinics, they really know how to do it. I got a very valuable experience there, and I set up a drug amnesty program, which is why I won the bronze star. It wasn't anything like I was in front of a machine gun. We had a major drug problem in Vietnam.   Young people, nothing to do, time on their hands, frequently poor kids who got drafted and went in. It was the poor kids. World history, so I set up a program to try to help a lot of them not really get deep into bad drugs. And I think we had some success. Hard to measure.   DAN: So when you say you were an artillery unit, were you like the doctor for the artillery unit?   HYMAN MUSS: I was it.   DAN: Were you patching up injuries and stuff, or taking care of sore throats, or what?   HYMAN MUSS: I did. I did a lot of sore throats. I did a lot of venereal disease. I did back pain. I set one or two fractures. The first fracture I set, I had a big book in another part of our little aid station called the Palma.   It was like a-- we didn't have YouTube. I needed YouTube videos. I put this cast on this guy. It probably weighed 300 pounds, and he said, doc, have you done this before? And I said, oh, yeah, I've done this a lot.   So I did that, and I took care of a heart attack or two on the base in the base hospital. Although, I was in a unit that had little field units out with artillery, and I used to go a few times a week in a helicopter and check on the medics and troops. So it was an extremely valuable experience.   DAN: That's incredible. Well, let's go on. You already sort of alluded to this, but I've asked almost everybody. What made you go into oncology, especially in the 1960s when there wasn't oncology? You came back to the Brigham. What got you interested in doing cancer?   HYMAN MUSS: When I was an intern and resident at the Brigham, our chief of hematology was a guy named William Moloney, and I know you know him.   DAN: I sure do.   HYMAN MUSS: And he was an incredible guy. He was a professor at Harvard, but if you think my Brooklyn accent is heavy, you should have heard his Boston-Irish accent. It was off the wall. And he was the most terrific guy. He kind of served as my dad for part of the time because my dad had passed.   He would round every day, and we'd see all the hem patients. And we had all the AMLs, so I'm talking about, oh, 68 to 70. I never saw a remission. Never.   And they all passed away, but he loved the patient care. And I got interested, and so when I was in Vietnam and when I got out of the Vietnam and was back, I thought, what do I want to do? And I said, I really like that hematology.   DAN: I'll just say that Dr. Moloney was almost exclusively hematology.   HYMAN MUSS: He was almost all exclusive. He used to grow little AML cells in little chambers in mice and treat them with drugs, and so I decided to do hematology. And I came back, and I think in my first weeks there he said, Hy, you're not going to believe this, but you can actually put these people into complete remission and take their leukemic bone marrow and make it look normal. And I'm saying, oh, yeah, right, because I had used all these regimens like VAMP, methotrexate, all the things that never worked.   And we had two new drugs, ara-C and daunomycin. And so I used to go up and treat these patients' IV pushes, ara-C and daunomycin, big doses, and I started seeing remissions. And I said, this is amazing. And then during that year, we had our first child, and I started to run out of money.   DAN: So this is when you're still a resident?   HYMAN MUSS: This is when I'm now a fellow. That year, we were very short of cash. I had a new baby, and I went to Dr. Moloney and talked with him. And he said, I'll try to help you, and he talked with a guy named Dr. Francis Moore, who was chief of surgery, one of the icons of surgery. And Dr. Moore talked with some of his donors in the Brooklyn area, and I became the first Sidney Farber Cancer Research fellow.   I knew nothing about cancer, solid tumors. So as the requirement was, I had to go over to the Jimmy fund, the Sydney Farber Cancer Center and see cancer patients. And all my hardcore hem friends said, oh, you're not going to like it, but it's worth doing for the stipend I got. The first day I was there I knew medical oncology was for me. I loved-- it was open.   We were treating everyone with CAF-- CMFVP, the old regimen, every single cancer. There was so much to be learned. There was so much opportunity for clinical trials. And then in the middle of that year, Tom Frei came, and he was so inspiring. And I knew that I was going to do an onc career.   There were no hem-oncs then. There were hardly any oncology fellowships, so I got to love that. I did two years, not three.   DAN: So let me interrupt you for just a moment just for our speakers-- our listeners. So Tom Frei was one of the three who were the first to put combination therapy together.   HYMAN MUSS: Right.   DAN: Jay Freireich, Jim Holland-- actually, it was Jim Holland's idea frankly. I figured that one out, and Tom Frei. So, again, in terms of pioneers, you were right there with the first pioneer.   HYMAN MUSS: And I did little combinations of things I'm not going to tell you about. They're embarrassing. They didn't work, but I learned so much. And actually, Ezra Greenspan was in that early group in breast cancer treating patients with hormonal agents and chemotherapy. But I learned from them, and I just love the clinical environment.   And those days, there was nothing. I've witnessed other miracles like Larry Einhorn developing platinum and curing testis patients. I'm old enough, every male I saw with testis cancer and mets died. Everyone. Drugs like that were virtually miraculous, and we're doing so many great things today. So I was at a really great crossroads.   DAN: Who else was at your level at the time, especially before Dr. Frei? You must have been pretty much alone.   HYMAN MUSS: There was a fellow named Jacob [INAUDIBLE] you may remember, who was there and was really interested in chemotherapy timed by your biologic clock, and a few other people, people like Craig Henderson and others who came in after. I preceded them, so I was virtually one of the few oncology trainees at that time.   DAN: And who mixed up your chemotherapy?   HYMAN MUSS: I did.   DAN: And who started the IVs?   HYMAN MUSS: I did.   DAN: And who--   HYMAN MUSS: You don't want to know. I was very careful with daunomycin, and so Dr. Moloney had a little office in the Brigham. And it had a little bathroom, and a very popular regimen-- and we had a lot of lymphoma patients-- was COP, cyclophosphamide, vincristine, and prednisone, COP. So I would go into that little bathroom. It's very hard to dissolve this stuff.   I put it all in a little sink. I'd have to tell the patients I'm going to be in here a minute. Don't come in. And I would put it all in syringes. I'd put them in a little chair, like kids sit in in school.   Put your arm on the side. I'd start the IV and give it to them. When I got to the Farber in the second year, now they were training because they had so many kids. They had nurses that could do some of that, but I think I recall giving it there. But in the Brigham, I gave the chemo.   DAN: Did you do any pediatric work with Dr. Nathan?   HYMAN MUSS: I did a few months in peds with Dave Nathan, another amazing, amazing guy, and that's where I met people like Larry boxer.   DAN: Larry was a colleague of mine here at Michigan.   HYMAN MUSS: I know.   DAN: Passed away about two years ago. Just a wonderful guy. He also, by the way, was my attending physician when I was a med student at Indiana on pediatrics--   HYMAN MUSS: Oh my gosh.   DAN: --just by coincidence.   HYMAN MUSS: His wife, Grace, was one of my colleagues.   DAN: Let's move on a little bit. From there, I know you went to Wake Forrest. And I have to say, how does a kid from Brooklyn, who has been at Harvard in the middle of, really, no oncology probably outside of the coast, end up in North Carolina?   HYMAN MUSS: At the Brigham, I knew I wanted to do a career in-- I wanted to try academics, but I didn't want to go in the lab. And I was actually offered a job by Gene Brown Wald and others at that time to work to stay in the Harvard system and do work on methotrexate in the lab. High dose methotrexate was hot then, and I couldn't see myself in a lab. I worked with Frank Bunn, one of the world's great hematologist at the Brigham, who is-- really became a great friend and knew me. And he said, Hy, I know you don't-- laboratory work isn't for you, so he knew someone at Wake Forrest doing work on sickle cell anemia.   They were infusing urea to try to prevent sickling. And he called this fellow, and they said they were looking for oncologists, clinicians. And I went down there and another open place. I met my future boss at that time, a guy named Charlie Spurr, who is also one of the pioneers in oncology. Gave nitrogen mustard after the war.   Just a terrific guy and probably my most-- among my most impressive mentors, and they offered me the job. And I told Loretta about it. I was thinking of Rochester and some other places, but I decided on this job. And one of the reasons was the other places I went it had snowed, and I was delayed and couldn't get out. True story.   You talk about serendipity. And I came out here. There was some azaleas blooming, and I said, I'm going. And it was a difficult adjustment for a kid from Brooklyn to go down here. My mother, who was alive at that time, never heard of North Carolina.   She was one of these women born in a candy store in Greenwich Village over a candy store by a midwife, and she said, they're going to kill you down there. And I said, I think it'll be fine, and Loretta got out of the car when we drove down here and cried. But it turned out that Wake Forrest and my mentorship and ability to work in their cancer center was incredible in my career, so I was able at Wake Forrest to really set up lots of research studies in breast cancer, prostate cancer, brain tumors. It was an open field there. They didn't have, really, many people like me, and it just was absolutely terrific.   DAN: Let me segue that. There's a lot more I want to talk to you about, but I got to know you because of our experience in CLGB and the cooperative groups. And it was clear to me right away you were a major player, but I also-- and you still are as far as I can see at CLGB Alliance. But you're one of the few people I know who then went off and started his own group, the Piedmont Group. What was the background? What made you think you could compete with the big boys, and how did you get those folks to play? And how did you also straddle two different groups at once?   HYMAN MUSS: Well, we had a very-- Dr. Spurr was an amazing man, and he realized that most oncology was going to be practiced in the community. Even at that time when I started my career, I would drive out to these small towns occasionally once a week, once a month, and actually give some of the chemo still or train nurses in practices. There were no medical oncologists around there. I took the second set of boards, so I think I'm talking about 1975 or something.   And so he knew that, and we cultivated some very strong community relationships. And we didn't have CCOPs and NCORP there. Although, Dr. Spurr and his colleagues were instrumental in getting CCOPs and things going in this country, so community people didn't have a lot they could do. It wasn't a formal mechanism. And so we formed a little small group called the Piedmont Oncology Association.   It was kind of fluffy. We didn't have 5,000 bylaws or anything. It was just a conglomerate group, and ironically, I published a New England Journal study out of that group reviewing all the things, and how long to give chemo, things that people like yourself have really expanded on and made much better. But we work with them, and then there was an announcement to form regional cooperative groups from the NCI. And I was involved in CLGB but not heavily at that time.   We didn't have all the traveling and things that we had, and now we've replaced it with Zoom meetings and things. And so I knew a lot of these people. I'd seen a lot of their patients. So we applied, and we got funding for the POA. And we did OK for a few years, and it actually is still in existence as an educational group.   But we couldn't compete with the large cooperative groups. We did well with accrual, but the brainpower to develop and keep up all the diseases-- disease sites were emerging. I was writing prostate cancer stuff. I couldn't keep up with the expertise nor could my colleagues. So it was a good experiment, and a lot of them ended-- my colleagues ended up in CCOP and now NCORP and have made major contributions. And I suspect we got people used to trials and protocols, but it was a short lived experiment.   DAN: Well, short lived but changed practice. And by the way, some of your colleagues still talk about it and what a great experience it was, so you're the-- all right the next thing I want to talk to you about is your real love, which is geriatric oncology. And you got involved in geriatric oncology before the word existed as far as I can see.   Two things, one is you weren't geriatric at the time. Although you are now, as am I. And, two, is-- just talk about the people you got involved. I know Dr. Hazzard had a big influence on you, but also Ludovico Balducci and Harvey Cohen. And tell us about how that all got started.   HYMAN MUSS: Yeah, so when I was in my career at Wake Forrest, Bill Hazzard, who's one of the grand old men of geriatrics, wrote one of the first textbooks, and is still hanging around as professor emeritus, came to all the faculty and said, I'd like you to work with one of our residents in a project related to your specialty and geriatrics. So he came to me specifically and said you would like to do this. He's my chair.   He's got to promote me someday, so I said, oh, of course. So what we did is Dr. Spurr was ahead of his time, and actually, we had codified all people in local protocols, our POA, into a database system with the punch cards from IBM, those little cards. I can remember that great movie about those African-American women where there's one woman who's the only one who knows how to use those cards.   DAN: In NASA, yeah.   HYMAN MUSS: I could go and actually ask our statisticians to run things, so what we did was we compared. We had metastatic breast cancer. We had no upper limits of age on protocols, which was very common then. We were patronizing to older people, and we compared women above 70 with 50 to 70 and less for metastatic breast cancer. And when I looked at the data, I had about 60, 70 patients, and I work with a wonderful woman who's now a medical oncologist named Kathy Christman.   She was the resident, and we put this together in a paper. And we submitted it to JAMA, and I thought, oh, they're going to-- this will be gone. And they accepted it actually without any revision. Then I had to get my friends to read it because if you read the-- if you hear the way I talk and see the way I write, we need a lot of editing here. So in any event, it got there, and I really enjoyed the project.   And I started learning about other people. Then what happens-- and you know this, Dan, your biomarker and all your expertise-- your friends start calling you. Hey, Dan, should we be doing this or that? And so they'd start to call me about older women with breast cancer and say, you think she could tolerate chemo? And so I got more and more interested. And then in the CALGB at that time, there were some other people interested, Peggy Kemeny, et cetera.   DAN: Harvey Cohen, I think.   HYMAN MUSS: Harvey Cohen. And we formed the-- and Rich Schilsky.   DAN: And Stuart Lichtman was also a big player, as I recall.   HYMAN MUSS: Stu Lichtman, yeah. I'm going to mention-- so we thought we'd form something on cancer in the elderly, and Rich Schilsky backed this up. And we made a working group, and one thing led to another. And then we became a committee. We were very successful.   We wrote clinical trial protocols not just in breast cancer. We had terrific people like Stu Lichtman. Harvey and I chaired that committee for 22 years. We didn't even know it was that long, and we saw such evolution in our field. At that time, there was expertise evolving nationally with people like Ludovico Balducci.   And I should add that early in my career at ASCO, BJ Kennedy, who's really considered one of the fathers of oncology, used to get up at meetings and when he heard a presentation and there were no older people, he said, where are all the older people there? And if you know BJ, he was not a man who was afraid to get up and speak his mind. And so he was really-- pushed this too, and Ludovico, and our cooperative group. And we slowly built up a wonderful committee. It really evolved, and then we pulled in people like the late Arti Hurria, one of the world's most incredible people, who really taught us how to get geriatric assessment into clinical trials and do it in the community. And it just evolved, and it's never--   DAN: You just stole my question, which is that you just told us about the first generation, and the second generation has taken this and run with it. This is why you're being interviewed. You were a pioneer. Arti was a settler.   HYMAN MUSS: Oh, yeah.   DAN: In terms off-- and we miss her so much. For our listeners, I think many of you know, she was tragically-- lost her life. She tragically lost her life in a car accident a few years ago, and she was on the board of directors. I remember standing with her during cocktail hour before one of the board of directors meetings, and I said, you know, Arti, you're going to be president of ASCO someday.   And, well-- and she kind of looked at me like, are you kidding? And I said, no, I'm not kidding at all. You're on your way. It's such a tragedy.   Actually, the final thing I want to do is I was going to ask about BJ Kennedy and his role in geriatrics, which you covered, but that allows me to segue into BJ's role in our field becoming a field. And you sort of stepped into his shoes, in my opinion, with the American Board of Internal Medicine, but BJ, I think, was responsible for our becoming a boarded subspecialty. Can you talk more about that?   HYMAN MUSS: Oncology, we were relatively new, and to become an ABIM subspecialty, you have to show a need, that there's a need and enough patients and that you're doing something uniquely different and beneficial. And for a long time, the hematologists were a little-- think what do those oncologists do? They have one drug. They have 5FU.   DAN: 5FU for colon cancer.   HYMAN MUSS: Yeah. And maybe nitrogen mustard or something. But so they felt there's certainly a need. There's no question cancer was a need, but they really can't do much for their patients. And it was people like BJ, Jim Holland, and other visionary guys that really worked with ABIM and pushed to make it a specialty.   And I think we began in 1973. I think hematology was 30, 50 years before because there was so much more knowledge in that field. And so it took people like BJ and Jim Holland, strong, outspoken people, to convince the board and not back off. Well, come back when you guys really have something to do for patients. No, we're doing things for patients now.   This was well before pall care and all the other things we do non-treatment related that are so wonderful for patients. And they pushed it, so this was crucial in BJ building this, and being on the front line, and doing this, and building the whole field. And then what can I say? I think we're all in the greatest field in medicine, most exciting, best biology, can do tremendous things for many sick patients. But they were the people that really got us going or it would have taken 10, 20 years more.   DAN: Yeah, it's a remarkable story. And actually to cap it off, I think you probably saw two days ago, the ACS, Siegel et al, put out their annual cancer statistics. And the last year, which was to 2018 to '19, was the greatest reduction in age specific mortality in the history of the statistical thing. And overall, since the '80s, there's been about a one third reduction in the odds of dying of cancer in this country. And it all started back with you and the generation ahead of you. I mean, there are very few specialties that can look at that kind of success, and look backwards, and talk to the people who were there. The cardiologists can't talk to Harvey and--   HYMAN MUSS: Yeah, I owe so much to my friends supporting us through the years, like you, like Larry Norton, one of my also great mentors and friends, Rick Schilsky, for just supporting the field, and the studies, and things or it never would have happened as well, and so many wonderful people involved. And so many nice things that ASCO has done, like education, and developing YIAs, and things. As you say, it's got to be the new generation. It's going to be the [INAUDIBLE], and William Dales, and all these absolutely terrific people that are going to have to push this field, Heidi Klepin. And I just was in the right place at the right time in all of this and had tremendous friendships and mentoring.   DAN: Well, and I can't remember who said it, but those who don't remember history are destined to make the mistakes of others. So one reason I'm doing this is so all those people know what it took to get us there and the history behind it. So I want to finish this by thanking you for all you've done for me as a mentor, and all you've done for our field in terms of pioneering geriatrics, and the Board of Internal Medicine, which you've been on now for, what, 15 years I think.   HYMAN MUSS: Yeah. Well, I'm off now, but I--   DAN: Oh, you're off now. OK. And mostly for our patients. So many of our patients are alive and doing well because of what you've done, so thank you very much. Appreciate your time today, and looking forward to being on the river with you someday soon.   HYMAN MUSS: Oh, yeah.   DAN: For our listeners, we both like to fly fish, so--   HYMAN MUSS: Thank you so much, Dan. I appreciate you allowing me to do this. I'm very grateful to ASCO. Thank you.   DAN: Until next time, thank you for listening to this JCO's Cancer Story, The Art of Oncology podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, don't forget to give us a rating or review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. While you're there, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. JCO's Cancer Stories, The Art of Oncology podcast is just one of ASCO's many podcasts. You can find all the shows at podcast.asco.org.

Dr. Hayes interviews Dr. Lawrence Baker on his early involvement with SWOG ANNOUNCER: The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. DANIEL HAYES: Welcome to JCO's Cancer Stories-- The Art of Oncology, brought to you by the ASCO Podcast Network, a collection of nine programs covering a range of educational and scientific content and offering enriching insight into the world of cancer care. You can find all of the shows, including this one, at podcast.asco.org. Today, my guest on the podcast is Dr. Laurence H. "Barry" Baker. Dr. Baker has a long and distinguished career in oncology. It dates back to the early 1970s, when he was intimately involved in new drug development, including doxirubicin or adriamycin, as we know it. He's also led early studies in preoperative chemotherapy in anal cancers. He was instrumental in advances in sarcoma research, and he led the Southwest Oncology Group-- now designated SWOG-- for eight years in the last decade. Dr. Baker was raised in Brooklyn, and since this interview is taking place just a week after the sad loss of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Dr. Baker informed me that he and his wife Maxine were married in 1964 in the Midwood Jewish Center, Justice Ginsburg's home synagogue. He received his undergraduate degree from the Brooklyn College at the University of New York, and then he graduated from Des Moines University of Osteopathic Medicine in Iowa. He completed a residency in internal medicine at Flint Osteopathic Hospital in Flint, Michigan, and then he has a curious two-year break in his curriculum vitae during which he was on active duty in Vietnam. Upon discharge from the Army, he returned to Michigan, and he served a three year fellowship at Wayne State University, where he stayed on faculty from 1972 to 1994, serving at various times as the chief of the Division of Hematology and Oncology, the chair of the Department of Medicine, and director of the Cancer Center. In 1994, he moved west about 30 miles to Ann Arbor, where he served as the director for the Clinical Research and Translational and Clinical Research Program for the UM Comprehensive Cancer Center, now called the Rogel Cancer Center. And he was also the associate chief of the Division of Hematology and Oncology and currently is the Laurence H. Baker Collegiate Professor in developmental therapeutics. Dr. Baker has authored hundreds of peer-reviewed papers, and like so many of our guests on this program, he has a list of honors that are just, frankly, too long to recite, except two that I want to highlight. He received the ASCO Distinguished Service Award for Scientific Leadership in 2007, and he was named an ASCO Statesman, now designated as a fellow of ASCO in 2010, for his many services to our society. Dr. Baker, welcome to our program. LAURENCE H. BAKER: Thank you. Nice to be here. DANIEL HAYES: Well, it's really great to have you. A lot of questions, but I want to start out, I just can't help but ask you, to be trite, how does a nice boy from Brooklyn end up in the Midwest for the rest of his life? Can you give us some stories about how you got there? LAURENCE H. BAKER: I graduated high school at 15 and went into what some know-- but not everyone knows-- was a very competitive college. Brooklyn College accepted-- was a free school. The grades used in the New York City school system were numerical. They weren't letters. And you had to have a 90 average on high school and certain scores on the state, New York State examinations to get in. And that was it. It didn't matter where your parents went to school. It didn't matter if you had money. And so it was a school largely of relatively low-income families. But that's the one who took me, and I guess they accepted me at 15. To not make this into a long story, but to drag it out a little bit, I was fascinated that I was 15 and I could date 18-year-old girls, and they didn't know it. So that's how I spent the first two years of college. And my grades showed that that was my focus of attention. I did pretty well on the MCAT examination. I would not have gotten into a medical school in this country, and I didn't speak a language that would be sufficient for me to go to Europe, for example, to school. So osteopathy he was where I went. I went to Iowa, but their admitting question to me is, do you have $2,000 a year tuition? To which, of course, I lied. And that's how I ended up being a DO, and that's how I came to the Midwest. And I actually got to like the-- I didn't know anybody from Iowa, as you make reference to my Brooklyn background, but I actually came to really appreciate the Iowa people, and particularly the community people that I came to know. At the time there were-- the really good programs in residency in medicine were in Michigan. That's the direct answer to your question. That's how I came to Michigan. Just about then, just about could have gone to California and gotten an M.D. degree just by taking the licensure examination. And then, that closed. That opportunity closed. So a long story to your question. So I came to Detroit, into Flint, and then returned back to Detroit, and I've been in Michigan ever since. DANIEL HAYES: Now, that raises the second issue I talked about a minute ago. And that is, many of our guests were so-called Yellow Berets at the NIH in the late 1960s and really changed our practice. But you actually ended up in the Evacuation Hospital at Cu Chi in Vietnam. And I've heard horror stories about this. How did that happen? What did you do there? Enlighten me. LAURENCE H. BAKER: Well, there were good and bad things about being an osteopath. The American Osteopathic Association was always in conflict, was always trying to defend itself. And at the time that the Vietnam War was going on, the DOs were not eligible for military service as an officer. You could go in as an enlisted man, but not as an officer. But there was a great need for primary care physicians in Vietnam, and the understanding of the military physicians was that all DOs were primary care physicians. So a deal was struck between the AMA and the Department of Defense that led to the drafting of everyone in my medical school class. Every one of the men-- not women. Every one of the men was drafted. There was a universal draft. I then-- I was given a choice. I could volunteer for the Army or go to jail. Those were the choices. And I had, at the time, two little children with Maxine, and I was not-- you might guess-- not a big fan of the Vietnam War. The alternative was to go to Canada, and I wasn't secure enough to consider that I could actually practice medicine. It was uncertain. So I went in. When I got there, they asked me, did I have any interest in anesthesiology or radiology, because they were really short of those two. And of course, being who I am, I said, if you need a radiologist or an anesthesiologist, why don't you go draft one and let me go home? That didn't work, and so I became-- I was assigned to radiology. DANIEL HAYES: [LAUGHS] LAURENCE H. BAKER: They sent me to Fort Jackson, where-- no, that was actually a good experience then, because I learned a lot about imaging, and I still have interest in imaging, but I don't qualify anymore. This is before CAT scans and MRIs. This is IDPs and upper GIs, right? So anyhow, barium lower bowel examinations. So I was trained for six months, and I stayed on for another few months on staff there and then, lo and behold, was sent to Vietnam. I was sent for a year, but I volunteered to stay an extra month so that I could return without any further obligation to the military and begin my fellowship on July 1, which I had actually secured before I went to Vietnam. So that's the gory details of that. I was elevated to Major about, oh, a few months before I was discharged. And then, because they weren't nasty enough to me when I got home, into my fellowship, I then got a letter congratulating me on being in the active reserve. So I had to go two weeks every summer. That was my summer vacation during fellowship and beginning of faculty. And I had to go once a month for a weekend to play soldier with a bunch of guys who were lucky enough that they didn't have to go to Vietnam. And now we're even, I think. So it was an interesting experience, as I've shared some of it with you. It still is a painful experience in some ways. I was out the busy [INAUDIBLE]. DANIEL HAYES: If you don't mind, a quick story you've told me before about the child with leukemia. LAURENCE H. BAKER: Yes. So they made me a radiologist. I'm not a great-- it doesn't matter where you call me. I am who I am, and I'm really interested in patient care. And there were already five internists, and there was only so much gonorrhea that the troops could acquire. So I volunteered to open a pediatric clinic. And the Army thought that was a good thing for publicity. They did stories about it. Anyway, I opened the clinic for pediatrics. I knew nothing about pediatrics. I mean, the truth is, I had a month of rotation. My wife sent me my textbook. It was Nelson's Textbook of Pediatrics. Nothing I ever saw in Vietnam was ever in Nelson's Textbook. But I did what I could of trying to treat the children as best I could. And along came a young girl, eight years old, who had acute lymphacytic leukemia. I had a wonderful pathologist who was my hoochmate. "Hooch" is translated, there were eight guys who lived in a place. That was called a hooch. And he was a pathologist, and he made the diagnosis of ALL. I had my books from my mentor teaching me about chemotherapy. So even though I hadn't started the fellowship, I had some resources about chemotherapy. And now I had to find chemotherapy. Treated her with-- I started with steroids and penicillin, and then I went to find drugs. I was able to-- I won't tell all the details, but I was able to get drugs at an old French hospital in Saigon. And so I would visit that hospital pretending great interest in the pharmacy, but of course, I stole whatever drug I could steal when the pharmacy wasn't looking. And that included some alkylating agents, methotrexate, 6MP. And so I tell Jay [INAUDIBLE]-- to get to where you want to be, perhaps-- that I invented the bicycle therapy, which was every month, you changed the drug to try to avoid resistance. So that's what I did by necessity. [LAUGHS] And I actually-- there was a second child that I also treated. When I left, they were both in complete remission. And I think that that's what you're asking me. I was lucky that I didn't get shot or thrown in jail for many of these escapades. But I look back and think that at least I did somebody some good. So-- DANIEL HAYES: Kind of makes the current generation who complains about work hours look in a different light, I think. LAURENCE H. BAKER: Yeah, we worked every day. We worked seven days a week with-- there was no such thing as time off. This was the busiest American hospital, certainly in Vietnam, and some think the busiest hospital since the Atlanta train station in the Civil War. It was in Cu Chi, which was on the way to Cambodia, which is, of course, where the North Vietnamese troops would enter into South Vietnam. So it was a major, major place. It was about an hour, an hour and a half west of Saigon. DANIEL HAYES: Let's move on to the rest of your career. You come back, then, and trained at Wayne State, and at the time, [INAUDIBLE]-- and I can never pronounce his name. I'll have you do it. Dr. Venutius Vicevicius-- I always heard him Dr. V.-- who was, I think, a real character and really was one of the first chemotherapy pioneers. Can you tell us more about him? Because we've heard a lot about the folks on the East Coast and the folks in Texas, but not so much what was going on in the middle of the country at the time. LAURENCE H. BAKER: Yeah, Dr. V, or Dr. Vicevicius, who was Lithuanian, he has a story of his life that certainly makes me look like a slump. He was a guest of the Nazis, and then he was a guest of the Russians when Auschwitz was freed. So this was as a child. He grew up in a very educated and somewhat affluent family in Vilnius. And when he got out of these camps, he actually got to medical school in Frankfurt, Goethe Medical School in Frankfurt. He had major interest in biochemistry and, without speaking more than three words of English, chose to come to the United States. And he landed-- I don't really know why; I've heard so many different versions-- but he landed in Detroit and showed up at the Detroit Receiving Hospital-- this would be like LA County or Bellevue in New York, that sort of thing, knife and gun club-- not speaking any English but wanting to do training. And somebody was smart enough to accept him. And so he did his training. He also trained-- after medicine, he trained with Mike Brennan-- that's another name from the past who is a past president of ASCO, by the way, the second or third person, perhaps. Mike was present of the Michigan Cancer Foundation and was the card-carrying medical oncologist in the Detroit area. He trained Dr. V., and he trained another man named Bob Tally, who had a great deal of history to contribute to oncology. And then, V was recruited by Wayne to come there and started a program. He was an extraordinary person. English was the eighth language he learned, and he actually taught me how to write. I flunked college English. I had to take it twice. But he taught me how to write and, I think, made me a better writer. He certainly was an inspiration. His devotion to patients was extraordinary. His knowledge was extraordinary. And so he was a great, great teacher. And one of his major early contributions was the recognition that you could make the drug float-- they had four drugs or five drugs at this time-- but one of them was 5-fluorouracil, that was developed by Fred Ansfield in Minnesota. The drug was given for five days and then every other day until their mouth fell out or their white count got to zero. And maybe that's a little of an exaggeration, but not much. At any rate, he figured out if you gave the drug by continuous infusion-- because it had a rather short half-life-- you could avoid a great deal of the toxicity. And that's how infusion of fluorouracil got its start. He then went on to combine it with other drugs and with radiation, and that was the backbone of this anal canal achievement that you mentioned in the introduction. I had very little to do with it, but I was a cheerleader. It was a rectal surgeon who came to us at the time, and those familiar with that disease-- which we now know is a virus disease that could be prevented, but at that time, nobody had any of that-- the treatment was abdominal perineal resection, and it had to be among the most horrible things we did to people. And the surgeon came to us and said, listen, you guys always squirt those drugs in after they relapse, and I'm really tired of this. Maybe you could give those drugs first, OK? And that's how neoadjuvant chemotherapy got started. It wasn't our idea. It was a surgeon's idea. That story gets repeated again in orthopedics, but that's how it began in anal canal tumors. And so we gave 5FU infusion, and mitomycin, and radiation preoperatively. That almost always shrunk the tumor, by the way-- almost always significantly shrunk the tumor. The patient then once they went through that operation but was cured. And so you took a horrible disease and changed its natural history with that development. If it works once, you know, in oncology, then you try it a second and third time. And I had very shortly thereafter the opportunity to work with a wonderful Japanese pediatric oncologist in Houston, Watsu Tao. He was looking for a partner because he was tired of seeing osteosarcoma patients die. Cure rate at the time was around 20%, 30%, and the surgery that was done for osteosarcoma was amputation, usually of the lower extremities. So 2/3 of osteosarcomas occur around the knee, and the orthopedics really dislike the idea of taking a child's leg off. Every teenager and child wants to be exactly like every other teenager and child, so you can imagine how disruptive it is to have a high amputation of your leg. It took about three months to make a prosthesis, and everyone knew that you didn't really have to do an amputation. You could just cut out the bad bone and replace it with a prosthetic device. But it took three months to make it, because they were handmade at the time. And so the idea came to several people-- Jim Holland was involved in this; Tom Frei was involved in this as well. Different cities were approaching it in this way. And we all ended up giving chemotherapy to these young people-- children, teenagers-- and then having the operation. And osteosarcoma went a cure rate of 20% to 30% to 70% or 80%. And they didn't lose their legs. DANIEL HAYES: I have two personal comments on this. One is you mentioned Dr. Brennan and the Michigan Cancer Foundation. Just for our listeners, Michigan Cancer Foundation is MCF. And if you've done any breast cancer work at all, you've worked with MCF-7 cells or MCF-10 cells [INAUDIBLE], which came from that organization. I think people have forgotten what MCF stands for, except for you and me. LAURENCE H. BAKER: That cell line that you talked about, MCF-7, that was developed by a man with, I think, a high school degree who just had a green thumb at that growing cells-- a wonderful man. And that came from a patient of ours. When I say "ours," I mean Dr. V. I was just the flunky, but it was his patient. And she had ascites from breast cancer. And we would tap ascites, in those days, with some frequency. And the cells for MCF-7 came out of that patient. That's its actual origins, and more papers have been written about MCF-7 than even you and I could count. DANIEL HAYES: Including by me. LAURENCE H. BAKER: I understand. No, it was incredibly useful. I mean, we learned about hormone receptors from this [INAUDIBLE]. DANIEL HAYES: Yep, that's [INAUDIBLE]. LAURENCE H. BAKER: It's was incredible. DANIEL HAYES: My other personal story related to your stories is, as a fellow at the then Sidney Farber Cancer Institute, Dr. Frei was my boss. And he, as you mentioned, was starting to work with Holland and others that had already worked with neoadjuvants. And he would cite your data all the time. Now, I didn't know Larry Baker for us from all the tea in China, but we heard a lot about the Wayne State experience when we were fellows. I don't know if that would have [INAUDIBLE] or not, but people definitely-- LAURENCE H. BAKER: No, I came to SWOG-- which is really why you wanted, I think, to talk to me-- in '70 or '71, I can't remember exactly. And Dr. V, it was an incredible experience. He took me with him. You ran into Tom Frei. They knew each other. And he said, Tom, I want you to meet my colleague, Larry Baker. I just had never been introduced like that. DANIEL HAYES: [LAUGHS] LAURENCE H. BAKER: And Tom was the friendliest person I think I've ever met in oncology. He had a wonderful smile. He clearly-- I was always paranoid that I'm a osteopath. Maybe I went on too long about that story. But when they tell you in school you're just as good as the MDs, you can quickly figure out if you were just as good, they wouldn't keep saying it, right? So that's socially accepted paranoia, and that's how I was brought up. So here is the wonderful, famous Tom Frei being nice to me! I was just amazed. DANIEL HAYES: He used to come to the lunch room in the Dana Farber two or three times a week and would just sit with us, and was constantly thinking of new stuff. This is not an interview with me, but someday, I'd like to tell the stories he told us. He was really just a fabulous man. I want to segway into your work with adriamycin, which is now, of course, also one of the workhorses of oncology. We've all used it. And I believe you were an author on either the first or one of the first phase II trials of adriamycin in Cancer in 1973. Is that an outgrowth of that introduction you just told us? LAURENCE H. BAKER: Yes. That study-- it's in Cancer, I think, not-- I don't think JCO existed. But that study didn't distinguish what the primary was. So it was a phase II study of cancer. And so there was, I don't know, 800 patients. I worked with Bob or Brian on that study. Bob was at Henry Ford, and there was a student of Bob Tally that I had mentioned, and I was the student of V. And the two of us were basically the schleppers for them. And so it had hundreds of patients in it. And in that study, we recognized that it worked in breast cancer, that it worked in lymphoma, and it worked in sarcoma-- and nothing worked in sarcoma. So that was the study. It's often quoted by Jim Dorshow because he said, we do everything that's disease-specific, but look what came out of one study that, by the way, accrued, as I say, 600 or 700 patients in 18 months. And this is before computers, so you can imagine how much work was done to evaluate the flow sheets. It was an incredible opportunity here to work. But it was an amazing paper, and it changed my life, of course. That's how [INAUDIBLE] and other things. DANIEL HAYES: So at the time, you recognized that this was not just another drug off the shelf, that it really was going to be a game-changer? LAURENCE H. BAKER: Absolutely, absolutely. You saw people getting better. And my experiences were mostly in breast cancer patients getting better, and some lymphoma patients that were refractory. First time I saw solid tumor patients dramatically improve. DANIEL HAYES: So I saw that your name is before another giant in the field who was a young Italian investigator who spent time in the United States named Johnny [INAUDIBLE]. LAURENCE H. BAKER: Yeah, that's how I first met him. I don't know that this story's been told. We were trying to make some level of peace with the Russians, and the Russians, of course, claimed that they discovered adriamycin. I don't know, but if you don't know this, I'll continue. DANIEL HAYES: Please go. LAURENCE H. BAKER: OK, but we all-- everyone knew, and certainly [INAUDIBLE] knew, this was an Italian drug, OK? "Adriamycin" is for the Adriatic Sea. As far as I know, you can't see the Adriatic Sea from Russia. But this was a time when our government wanted to be nice. They cared more about building a relationship with the Soviet Union than they did continuing a friendship with the Italians. Jim Holland was then sent to Moscow to negotiate this. That's where the name doxirubicin came from. In other words, we didn't know generic names, trade names. This didn't exist in the early '70s. So we called it adriamycin, which was not only the generic name, it was the trade name, right? Made by adria-- I think far Pharmitalia is the name of the company, right? And as a result of Jim Holland's diplomacy, it became doxirubicin as the generic name. It's a true story. DANIEL HAYES: Yeah. I know that "adria--" came from the Adriatic Sea, but I've not heard that's where "doxi-" came from. That's a good story. That segways into the next segment of your life that fascinates me, and this is your work in SWOG. When I moved here to the University of Michigan, you were on your way to becoming the chair of SWOG, which you did. And it occurred to me that University of Michigan wasn't even in Southwest Michigan, let alone the Southwest of the United States. Just reminisce a little bit about Dr. Coltman, who ran SWOG, the beginnings of SWOG, even before that, and where you see the [INAUDIBLE] groups now. LAURENCE H. BAKER: So Dr. V brought me to a SWOG meeting in San Antonio, Texas, as you said, in 1970 or '71. At the time, Tom Frei was running the group. J. Freireich was chairman of the Leukemia Committee. Chuck Coltman was chairman of the Lymphoma Committee. V specifically chose to work with this group because of those people. You're right, Michigan is not in the Southwest, obviously, and, there were other groups that wanted-- we had a large population of patients we treated, so there was actually some competition, if you will, for us to join other groups. V was adamant that we would be SWOG and that was it, for reasons that I told you. Tom Frei then was invited to go back to Boston. That's how you came to know him. And there was an election for a replacement. And J. Freireich was somebody that we clearly supported. There was no doubt that J. an absolutely brilliant man-- he still is-- and taught a lot of people, trained a lot of people, and taught us a great deal. But he had one flaw. He could not control his ability to saw inappropriate things. If you knew him, you loved him. If you didn't know him, you were like your reaction to the debate, OK? That's how he ground on people. I grew up with the respect for J., as I told you, as I was introduced to him, and he was always incredibly kind to me. Anyway, so we were actively supporting J. To be the replacement. There were some other people that did not want Freireich. So you had some people who didn't have the same feeling. And that's how Boris Hoogstraten became chairman. Boris Hoogstraten was a hematologist from the University of Kansas. And I remember-- and you'll be very proud of me, Dan-- one of my colleagues from Wayne wanted to do a study of this new drug called tamoxifen-- DANIEL HAYES: [LAUGHS] LAURENCE H. BAKER: --for breast cancer, OK? [LAUGHS] And Hoogstraten said, don't you get it, Baker? We're a chemotherapy group. What's with this hormone stuff? I don't have to tell another story, but that one is true. So SWOG didn't study tamoxifen for a long time. Any rate, Boris was an interesting man. I don't want to cut him short. But there came a time when it was clear that SWOG needed to go in a different direction. And we all thought that the right person for that was Chuck Colton. At the time, I have to tell you, there was two things relevant to this. There were lots of regional cooperative groups that don't exist anymore. I led a revolt-- that's what Colton said-- that included the University of Indiana-- Larry Einhorn was in Detroit plotting against Hoogstraten-- along with the University of Michigan. Al Labulio was in Detroit doing that. So you got the idea. So it was a group of institutions, if you want, that were geographically somehow related to the Great Lakes in some way. There were seven or eight of us. And we represented probably 40% of the [INAUDIBLE] of SWOG. And Coltman came to me and said, listen, stay with the group. Don't do this. Stay with the group. And I said, I can't stand this nonsense. I mean, we're not working anymore. We're just-- Anyway, he said, please stay. And he ended up becoming the chairman. And then he turned to me and he said, listen, Larry, I want you to be the deputy. I don't need a title. I don't want a title. He said, no, no, no, I don't care what you need or what you want. I need you right next to me, because if you led a revolt once, I don't want to see it happen again. DANIEL HAYES: [LAUGHS] LAURENCE H. BAKER: Absolutely true story. And so we abandoned the idea of a regional group. I still think that may have been a dynamite group, by the way. But we all stayed-- Indiana was not [INAUDIBLE] SWOG, so let me be clear. That was ECOG, I think. I think that's right. Anyway, so that's how I came to know Chuck, and I was his deputy for 25 years. I had the best job as deputy, because I had nothing to do. He just wanted me sitting there, and that's what we wanted. Then there was some push from the NCI that maybe to 25 years of being chair is a long time, and maybe there's a reason to move on. From that team the suggestion from Bob Livingston and John Crowley, that I was the natural person to do that. I really didn't want it, to be honest. I still maintain that. But there was a good deal of pressure exerted, both from within the group and from the NCI, for me to do that. So I became the chairman, I think, for a couple of terms. I made some changes in the group. I think as groups go on, institutions either get better or they get worse. I think that's true. And we made a number of different ways of appointing disease chairs and things like that, that the group did get better and started on a better path. But I really didn't want to continue it, and there was a time when I was not only running SWOG, but I was also running this sarcoma group called SARC. And it became overwhelming to me. I was working literally 80 hours a week there. So I gave up SARC first. That really-- University of Michigan was thrilled that I did that-- and stayed with SWOG another year or two. But I knew that I wasn't going to stay at that. And so after two terms, I thought I would set the precedent that, maybe, group chairs should have two terms and move on. Witshoski had two two terms. [LAUGHS] But anyway, being serious, I really think there should be a limited amount of time. There's so many talented people in our field that it's silly to think that one person has to stay in these jobs. And so that's-- I think I answered your question. I'm not sure my [INAUDIBLE]. DANIEL HAYES: I have to tell just a brief-- Nobel laureate Bruce Beutler was my intern when I was a resident at UT-Southwestern. After he won the prize, he came up here as a visiting professor, and we went to dinner. And I said, Bruce, I kind of lost track. I know you did an internship with us, but I never heard if you finished your clinical training. And he said, no, I went-- I loved the lab and went back into it. I never did go back and finish my training [INAUDIBLE]. And then he looked at me and said, but I think I worked down all right, don't you? LAURENCE H. BAKER: [LAUGHS] DANIEL HAYES: And in a similar manner, I would say, for all your humility that you've laid out, I think it worked out all right. SWOG is a powerhouse and has changed practice in so many ways. And part of that, a lot of that, was your doing. So we've actually run out of time. I had hoped, actually, to-- you've done too much in your lifetime, Larry. I was hoping to get into the sarcoma work, but we've run out of time. I think everybody who's listening to this who knows about the work you've done in sarcoma-- and lord knows there's plenty of work to do in sarcoma, so-- LAURENCE H. BAKER: Can I give you just one more anecdote, and you can cut it, and I'll try to be very [INAUDIBLE]? DANIEL HAYES: No, no. Please do, please do. LAURENCE H. BAKER: Remember I told you I became chair of the Sarcoma Committee of SWOG? The man I replaced was a man named Jeff Gottlieb. Jeff was a pediatric oncologist-- little did people know-- who was a student of J and Tom at the NCI. Jeff died in his mid-30s of cancer, by the way, but he was the most brilliant medical oncologist I ever met. He was the originator of combination chemotherapy that became popular in breast cancer, and he was involved in sarcomas in combinations as well. I was handpicked by Jeff to be his replacement, which was probably the nicest thing that ever happened to me. And during that period when Jeff died, I went to Houston to his funeral. And I can give you one-sentence description of J. Freireich going to speak at Jeff's funeral. He stood up, and he said, Jeff-- and he broke down and cried for minutes. And that was his talk. When anyone says something to me critical of J. Freireich, I remember that love he showed to his colleague. So that's worth [INAUDIBLE]. DANIEL HAYES: No, that's-- LAURENCE H. BAKER: Not many people were at that funeral. DANIEL HAYES: --very touching. He also gave Dr. Frei's eulogy in Boston, and he got through it, but just barely. It was very similar. These are the kinds of stories I'm hoping to capture in this series. Larry, I'd really like to thank you for taking time to be on. I'd also like to thank you for all you've done for the field, for me personally, frankly, with my time here in Michigan the last 20 years, and most importantly, for our patients who have benefited from all your contributions, your training of-- we could go on about all the people you've trained. So anyway, thanks a lot. We appreciate it. LAURENCE H. BAKER: Thank you. DANIEL HAYES: And have a nice day. LAURENCE H. BAKER: Thank you very much. I appreciate your kind words. DANIEL HAYES: Until next time, thank you for listening to this JCO's Cancer Stories-- The Art of Oncology podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, don't forget to give us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. While you're there, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. JCO's Cancer Stories-- The Art of Oncology podcast is just one ASCO's many podcasts. You can find all the shows at podcast.asco.org

Fort Collins is a beautiful, historic college town in Northern Colorado where Larry Baker cuts hair at Headturner's Salon. He's in his 70's and he loves to walk his nightly beat downtown, popping in and out of restaurants and clubs, listening to music, saying hi to his friends on the wait staff, and gathering new friends of all ages as he goes. In this episode, Larry shares a bit of his history, which includes a miraculous healing from paralysis, and his L.O.V.E method of evangelism... which sometimes looks like being the designated driver for a young friend at 2am. Find Larry on Instagram: www.instagram.com/larrygbaker1 Follow Headturner's Salon in Fort Collins, CO: https://www.facebook.com/Headturners-SALON-213478848793218/ Check out Larry's book, It's a God Thing: https://www.amazon.com/Its-God-Thing-Life-Changing-Friendships/dp/0615525237 Special thanks to Bradley Rodermond (www.instagram.com/bradleyrodermond) for engineering this episode. And to Linda Billson, Barry Green, and Ray Kurzweil for supporting the podcast at www.patreon.com/HannahOnTheKeys Music by Hannah Holbrook & Kevin Dailey (www.instagram.com/kipcentral) --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Listen to this Digging Deeper podcast where Editor Becky Schultz talks with Larry Baker, president at Earthwave Technologies, about the company’s telematics technology and how it differs from other providers. Baker discusses how the Earthwave system focuses on measuring operators not just equipment usage numbers.

Most counties in the San Joaquin Valley have been on the state’s COVID-19 watch list for months, and are still restricted under the state’s new rating system . For counties where the virus is deemed “Widespread,” schools are not allowed to reopen for in-person lessons, but some schools in Tulare County are partially reopening under the jurisdiction of day camps. One of them is Visalia-based Central Valley Christian Schools, a private school that serves kindergarten through 12th grade students. Larry Baker is the school’s superintendent. “I view what we’re doing as kind of an enriched distance learning,” says Baker. “A good share of our learning is happening still at home.” The school is reopening as a day camp and has established a staggered schedule where only a part of the student population is on campus at any given time. Kindergarten through eighth graders will attend for only two hours in the morning or afternoon from Tuesday through Friday. High school students will attend one

We pre-recorded today's conversation via Zoom with Guy Curtis, Director of Marketing for LFCC Workforce Solutions; Carlene Hurdle, Corporate Training Director and Jay Foreman, an instructor for corporate training and the upcoming Leadership Excellence program. Jay is also a John C. Maxwell-certified trainer, coach, and best-selling author. Leadership Excellence is a cohort of seasoned leaders who want to continue to invest in their leadership acumen. Participants will take a deep dive into eight leadership topics with time dedicated to collaborate and develop action items to implement in their workplace. The program is designed for alumni of LFCC Workforce Solutions' Leadership Institute; managers who want to improve their leadership skills; professionals wanting to advance their careers; and, individuals preparing for further advancement in management, supervision, or leadership roles. Carlene explained that this isn't an "intro to leadership" program. The Leadership Excellence program is an 8-week course with in-person classes held from September through December 2020 from 8am - 12noon at LFCC's Middletown campus. The program is limited to 20 participants. The program will focus on three core leadership competencies: adaptability, communication, and resiliency. Jay explained how these topics will be incorporated into each session and discussed the value of learning in this type of group setting. Carlene told us about the research & feedback behind the decision to focus on these core competencies. You can download the white paper Guy mentioned during the show as well as registration information here: https://lfccworkforce.com/le Guy also mentioned a YouTube video that you can watch here: https://youtu.be/9dMfoox7OuE For additional information contact Larry Baker via phone: 540-868-7283 or email: lbaker@lfcc.edu.  

S. Camille describes what it was like to be in the first four-year graduating class for Mercy and then shares the exciting times at the school when she was principal in the ‘70’s. She also catches us up with all the interesting work she has doing since her Mercy High School days. ------- Follow Mercy High School and interviewer Larry Baker on Twitter at @MercyHighMI and @labcbaker. Music by permission of concert pianist Julia Siciliano ‘01 http://www.juliasiciliano.com/

Shannon describes her passion for yoga. She also describes her new life in Texas as well as some Mercy memories, connecting American Government class with Performing Arts at Mercy ------- Follow Mercy High School and interviewer Larry Baker on Twitter at @MercyHighMI and @labcbaker. Music by permission of concert pianist Julia Siciliano ‘01 http://www.juliasiciliano.com/

Mari tells us about her educational and career journey since Mercy but also shares her fondness for travel to other countries. She also reminisces about Mercy and some of her favorite faculty members. ------- Follow Mercy High School and interviewer Larry Baker on Twitter at @MercyHighMI and @labcbaker. Music by permission of concert pianist Julia Siciliano ‘01 http://www.juliasiciliano.com/

Kerry describes her career in broadcasting including twenty-five years in sports and her more recent gig with a history program that originates in Chicago where she lives. She also describes lessons learned in Mercy softball as well as how she currently achieves fitness. ------- Follow Mercy High School and interviewer Larry Baker on Twitter at @MercyHighMI and @labcbaker. Music by permission of concert pianist Julia Siciliano ‘01 http://www.juliasiciliano.com/

We track Mary down in Berlin, Germany where she is studying for a Masters in global history. The focus of her study is early 19th Century Detroit history. She also describes her voluteer work for NADA and some Mercy memories. ------- Follow Mercy High School and interviewer Larry Baker on Twitter at @MercyHighMI and @labcbaker. Music by permission of concert pianist Julia Siciliano ‘01 http://www.juliasiciliano.com/

Cathy describes her wonderful non-profit store, Angels, Saints, and Stuff. https://www.facebook.com/angelssaintsandstuff/ She catches us up on her family and reminisces about her Mercy English class and the impact Mercy had on both she and her daughters. https://www.facebook.com/angelssaintsandstuff/ ------- Follow Mercy High School and interviewer Larry Baker on Twitter at @MercyHighMI and @labcbaker. Music by permission of concert pianist Julia Siciliano ‘01 http://www.juliasiciliano.com/

Alicia describes her passion for teaching middle school students in Chicago, Illinois. She also shares fond Mercy memories of English, social studies, Newsprint, performing arts, and the DEAN’S SCOOTER.. ------- Follow Mercy High School and interviewer Larry Baker on Twitter at @MercyHighMI and @labcbaker. Music by permission of concert pianist Julia Siciliano ‘01 http://www.juliasiciliano.com/

Anna catches us up on her current studies through Indiana U. and her work for Altarum in Ann Arbor. Anna also takes the time to remark upon the strong bonds of her Mercy sisterhood formed during her high school days. ------- Follow Mercy High School and interviewer Larry Baker on Twitter at @MercyHighMI and @labcbaker. Music by permission of concert pianist Julia Siciliano ‘01 http://www.juliasiciliano.com/

Katie describes her work at the Detroit Achievement Academy and their wonderful model for raising the achievement levels of their your students. Katie lives in the city and describes the new vibrancy there. She also reminisces about Mercy. ------- Follow Mercy High School and interviewer Larry Baker on Twitter at @MercyHighMI and @labcbaker. Music by permission of concert pianist Julia Siciliano ‘01 http://www.juliasiciliano.com/ Mercy High School ------- Follow Mercy High School and interviewer Larry Baker on Twitter at @MercyHighMI and @labcbaker. Music by permission of concert pianist Julia Siciliano ‘01 http://www.juliasiciliano.com/

Anna describes the formation of her firm, edtech central, and the work they do serving the educational needs of children, youth and families which historically, have been underserved. Anna also shares the impact of S. Ignatius on her life and reminisces about the Mercy High School of the ‘70’s. http://www.edtecschools.net/home ------- Follow Mercy High School and interviewer Larry Baker on Twitter at @MercyHighMI and @labcbaker. Music by permission of concert pianist Julia Siciliano ‘01 http://www.juliasiciliano.com/

Kaitlyn Mardeusz Class of '06 Mercy High School Katlyn currently works as an attorney in Detroit in the Blue Cross Blue Shield legal department. She shares insights about her career but also describes her dedication to fitness and nutrition. Her classmates will recall she was a top golfer at Mercy, and will be glad to here that she still participates in USGA qualifying tournaments. ------- Follow Mercy High School and interviewer Larry Baker on Twitter at @MercyHighMI and @labcbaker. Music by permission of concert pianist Julia Siciliano ‘01 http://www.juliasiciliano.com/

Tracy describes the Polytrauma Amputation Network Site and her work as a medical doctor who specializing in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. She also reminisces about Mrs. Yager and the great MHS swim program of the 80’s. ------- Follow Mercy High School and interviewer Larry Baker on Twitter at @MercyHighMI and @labcbaker. Music by permission of concert pianist Julia Siciliano ‘01 http://www.juliasiciliano.com/

Erin McClaine is an educator, artist, entrepreneur and a woman who is passionate about social justice who lives in the vibrant community of Ferndale. She discusses where she has been since high school and how Mercy has impacted her. ------- Follow Mercy High School and interviewer Larry Baker on Twitter at @MercyHighMI and @labcbaker. Music by permission of concert pianist Julia Siciliano ‘01 http://www.juliasiciliano.com/

Jeff was joined by former Representative Larry Baker. They discuss his history in Alaska, including why he moved here in 1968, how he brought Burger King to Alaska, why he decided to run for the Anchorage Assembly, his time in the State House, his very narrow loss for the State Senate in 1992, his time working for Mayor Dan Sullivan, and his thoughts about the current state of politics in Alaska. 

The show starts off talking to Larry Baker, Production Stage Manager of the Drury Lane Theatre and Jessica Fisch, Director of the theatre's play production And Then There Were None. Later on, Damian Mason joins us on the phone to discuss his book "Do Business Better."

Sarah discusses her important PhD studies in Environmental and Occupational Hygiene. She describes a project in the rain forests of Borneo with other grad students and explain the importance of the public understanding how science works in order to accept effective of health initiatives. She also describes the way that Mercy has impacted who she is and what she is doing today. ------- Follow Mercy High School and interviewer Larry Baker on Twitter at @MercyHighMI and @labcbaker. Music by permission of concert pianist Julia Siciliano ‘01 http://www.juliasiciliano.com/

Larry Baker - Assembling a student tech team by Derek Rhodenizer

Larry Baker was on the podcast today. A digital leader himself, Larry is curating a collection of leaders who "walk the talk."

This week on Navigating Change, we continue our conversation on governance with trustee Larry Baker. Dr. Baker serves as medical director for the emergency department of UnityPoint health in Des Moines, But for our conversation today, his most important role is as trustee, serving as chair on the board of Des Moines University Osteopathic Medical Center. Our conversation has wound around a central theme: What is it that stakeholders in leadership look for in one another as they guide the collective institution? From the trustee perspective, how do you tell the story of relationship building with the president, senior administration, and beyond, balancing the needs of authority, accountability, and responsibility between parties? What is the role of the trustee in guiding and leading change in the institution? This week, Dr. Baker joins Howard Teibel and Pete Wright to discuss the key principles that guide his work as chair on the board of the Des Moines University Osteopathic Medical Center.

You’ll enjoy the fun sound effects our audio-engineer son, Toby Lyles, added to this podcast. He always does a good job, but he had a few extra minutes and threw in some special bells and whistles, just for you (smile). First off, we present an excerpt from Renee Blaire’s debut romantic suspense novel titled “The Beast of Stratton” about a former military helicopter pilot, followed by Pam McCleary’s thought-provoking poem, “Where I’m From,” and Steve’s story of a road-trip the two of us took long, long ago. Our last story is from “It’s a God Thing! Stories of Life-Changing Friendships,” the book Becky coauthored with Larry Baker. This chapter, titled I’ll See You Again, will tug at your heartstrings but leave you with a smile on your face. The podcast finale features more poems from Eugene Shea, who just turned 89. Happy Birthday, Eugene! Renee Blaire: http://www.reneeblare.com/ Toby Lyles: http://twentyfoursound.com/  

The subject for our third Let Me Tell You a Story podcast is springtime. It's official -- trees are budding and flowers are blooming. And our friends with pollen issues are miserable. Maybe these stories will help you forget the sneezes and itchy eyes. The first story comes from a nonfiction book Becky authored with Larry Baker titled It's a God Thing! Larry had a life-changing experience early one morning on a golf course. You'll enjoy hearing how he handled adversity. Other readings include a poem by Steve, a short story by Becky and a chapter from her first novel, Winds of Wyoming.

every artist has a story...we tell them here! Please join Rebecca for a lively chat with author Larry Baker. His latest novel, A GOOD MAN (2009), was nominated for “Book of the Year” by the Southeast Independent Booksellers Association in 2010. This year, he was included on the Iowa Literary Walk of Fame; joining other writers such as John Irving, Marilynne Robinson, Kurt Vonnegut, and Flannery O’Connor, et al. This is a no miss episode!!!  

every artist has a story...we tell them here! Please join Rebecca for a lively chat with author Larry Baker. His latest novel, A GOOD MAN (2009), was nominated for “Book of the Year” by the Southeast Independent Booksellers Association in 2010. This year, he was included on the Iowa Literary Walk of Fame; joining other writers such as John Irving, Marilynne Robinson, Kurt Vonnegut, and Flannery O’Connor, et al. This is a no miss episode!!!  

A video that details Larry Baker’s experience in assessing Challenge Based Learning using our model

Larry Baker explores various options for assessment throughout the Challenge Based Learning process.